A game of reminiscing

PAUL EDWARDS: I rarely buy art but it took me only a few seconds to decide I’d buy this painting. Part of the reason, apart from its obvious quality, is that it spoke to so much I believe about cricket

I bought a painting last week and it is already one of my most precious possessions. It shows a cricket match taking place at a village ground, perhaps in Essex. The field is sunlit but in the foreground two men are sitting on a bench in the shade and are clearly having a conversation. To the left but in the background there is a wooden pavilion, also shaded, and supported by slim white posts, in front of which indistinct figures can just about be made out.

Nine players and an umpire can be seen on the field and it is apparent that a run is being completed. Trees overhang the men on the bench and the partial yellowing of their leaves suggests the first brush of autumn. I’ve said a reasonable amount yet I also have the feeling I’ve told you nothing.

Some facts then: the acrylic painting is entitled “Reminiscence” and it was the work of Joyce Kingston, who, so it appears, was based at the A&K nurseries, Arterial Road, Rayleigh, Essex. The work was completed in June 1989 and it originally sold for £20. The only other useful communication on the back of the frame asks the mysterious question: “How’s Flo?”

James Bracey is ready to play for England

The painting is also tiny: even nicely framed, it measures no more than 9.5 by 7.5 inches. It now hangs a couple of feet from my desk and it is keeping me from my work. (And no, I am not an eccentric millionaire. Fortunately for me, “Reminiscence” had appreciated little in price by the time it was offered for sale by Mike Down at Boundary Books. Mike has been more than civilised and reasonable in his cordial dealings with me and therefore deserves some public thanks.)

I rarely buy art but it took me only a few seconds to decide I’d buy this painting. Part of the reason, apart from its obvious quality, is that it spoke to so much I believe about cricket. That includes the idea that what occurs beyond the boundary rope can be quite as involving as what takes place within it. To meet a friend at a match is to look after one’s mental wellbeing.

To reminisce with them is to recall people, possibly cricketers, who lived just as vividly as we lived and who loved the game, after their habit, quite as much as we do. And yes, absolutely they have passed it on to us. If no one had raised the money to level this unnamed ground or build its pavilion, there would have been nothing for Joyce Kingston to paint and my column this week might have concerned Test Matches, the stuff about which everyone else is writing.

^{The Emirates Old Trafford faithful watch on as Luke Wells bats}

A small portion of my past week was spent watching people watching cricket. The Roses match at Emirates Old Trafford attracted decent crowds and many folk were meeting friends for the first time in 20 months. Yet again one was reminded of the value of county cricket and the extrinsic importance of a game often taking four days to complete.

In between overs I scanned Saturday’s crowd through my binoculars and was delighted to see a footling misconception disproved again. Many of the spectators were clearly under 30 years of age and it will be a few weeks before many of them will be called for their first Covid jab. Half-term helped, I suppose, but these people were watching LV= Insurance County Championship cricket because they wanted to do so.

The crowd is likely to be larger at Headingley this week when Yorkshire’s cricketers will be keen to expunge some uncomfortable memories. Their innings and 79-run defeat at Old Trafford represented only the third occasion in 108 years that Lancashire had won the Roses Match by an innings.

It was the home side’s first victory of any sort on the ground since 2000 and their first win at home since 2011 when Farveez Maharoof smacked Adil Rashid for six at Aigburth to complete his team’s pursuit of 120 in 15 overs with four balls to spare. That sort of run chase might not seem so testing these days, given the even greater range of exotic strokes available to skilled batsmen, but it would still be a tough test on a fourth-day pitch against bowlers using a red-ball.

The Liverpool crowd went cheerily berserk when Maharoof whacked Rashid into the tennis courts and Peter Moores, Lancashire’s coach at the time, showed no more restraint than anybody else. Moores’ players would win every close game that summer and become champions when they beat Somerset at Taunton. People still reminisce about it.

No, I haven’t forgotten my painting. For all its grandeur Aigburth is still a club ground and on almost every Saturday during the season you will see predominantly amateur cricketers on that same field, competing in the local league; the same league, indeed, in which Josh Bohannon played for four seasons before Lancashire claimed his services.

^{"Reminiscence", by Joyce Kingston}

Bohannon made an exceptionally fine century in the Roses match and has always seemed to me one of those players with a preternatural understanding of the game. Others might observe that the Boltonian “gets” professional cricket and the verb supplies in accuracy what it lacks in elegance. He is far more at home on a cricket field than he would be in any other working environment. A friend of mine who is also a very good judge of cricketers reckons Bohannon will play in Test matches.

Should that occur I will remember my first sight of him, playing in an under-15 representative game at Old Trafford something like a decade ago. Or I will recall him playing for Southport and Ormskirk on afternoons when he was clearly more talented than the vast majority of the other players on the field.

And so men sit on benches and they talk about cricket. They do so on small village grounds and at well-heeled clubs; they do so at great schools and at county second-team venues; they do so during County Championship matches, 50-over games or Tests.

Other sports will make similar claims but it seems to me that these links are so much stronger in cricket, partly because they are clearer and much more powerful. And that is why Joyce Kingston’s painting will always attract such a very strong emotional response from me. I bought it because I thought it represented one thing; only now do I see that it stands for everything.