Looking ahead to this COVID-19 summer takes me back to my garden cricket days

HUW TURBERVILL: Growing old is mandatory but growing up is optional is a quote I love. If my summer of cricket is wiped out, I may just have to get my ball and bat out again and find a suitable wall

Most recall the summer of 1984 for the whipping West Indies gave England. I recall an alternate reality, however, in which the tourists only just sneaked over the line in a thrillingly close series. That rubber was played out in my garden, with me alone – and a wall, tennis ball, bat, stumps, notebook and pen.

All this coronavirus talk – and fears that some if not all of the cricket season could be affected – has made us at The Cricketer magazine talk about how the time could be filled.

Yes as a youngster I had a ZX Spectrum and there were a few cricket games, like Graham Gooch’s Test Cricket, but addiction to screens was not a thing then, and I spent hours at the back of my house, the lonely-yet-content only child.

It was a fairly flat patio, and even if the ball hit a crack where the paving stones met, that was good, for it imitated seam, swing or spin. With my right arm I threw the ball against the wall, and had enough time to assume a normal stance and play the delivery. Overarm for seam, underarm for spin – inside out with the wrist for off-spin, a flick of the fingers for slow left-arm.

Then it was the subjective bit, assessing the merits of the shot. How many runs was it worth? Had it hit the fielding ring? Or did it pierce it on its way to an imaginary boundary? I kept the scoring rates authentic. And I deliberately had to play badly to imitate tail-enders.

Thud, crack; thud, block; thud, drive; thud, cut; thud, glance; thud, block. Notice there weren’t many leaves. What would be the point? The ball would invariably go over the small wall behind me and I would have to retrieve it down a slope. This actually had an impact on my real play. A Suffolk coach observed that I never left the ball, fishing outside off stump compulsively.

Dad was the other side of the wall, watching telly, and was remarkably tolerant, save when my ‘bowl’ was wild and it thwacked the patio window, making him jump out of his skin. “Don’t you have any homework to do, Huw?” was the shout.

Occasionally a ball would be lost in neighbouring gardens. Whether I attempted to retrieve it depended on if they were in, and how many tennis balls I had left.

A trip to the loft to retrieve my records to find my clip file of scores shows things started properly in 1984. West Indies won a low-scoring first Test at Headingley; England snuck over the line at Lord’s by one wicket thanks to 55 from Derek Randell (sic); and Joel Garner – elevating my arm as far as it could go – sealed the series at The Oval. How England would have settled for 2-1 though – the real scoreline was 5-0.

^{Allan Border's 'mixed tourists' came out on top when faced with Huw's garden wall}

Tim Robinson (124) made ‘my’ first century in the first Test of the following summer – 1985 – against Australia at Old Trafford, with Paul Allott bowling the tourists out. England sealed the series at The Oval despite Simon O’Donnell’s century (in reality his highest Test score was 48).

And so this went on, through the teenage years, through girlfriends and homework, and GCSEs and A-Levels, my adoring mum, pet dog and cat often watching from the kitchen window.

There was a Test against India 1986 (that seems a lean summer – maybe it was wet?); and 1987 (who can forget that Saleem Malik century in Manchester – believe me, it was sublime).

Then West Indies were back in 1988 for two Tests that saw Viv Richards in prime form; before England played the ‘Mixed Tourists’ at Lord’s in a three-day, one-innings-per-side match. Desmond Haynes, Jeff Dujon, Allan Border*, Richards, Javed Miandad, Ravi Shastri, Imran Khan, Richard Hadlee, Kapil Dev, Malcolm Marshall and Narendra Hirwani were, unsurprisingly, too strong.

Australian regained the Ashes in 1989, and my scorecards had become a thing of beauty by then, the entries in fountain pen, with even modes of dismissal entered. Allan Lamb “played down the wrong line after a marathon innings” of 166 in the second Test at Lord’s that England won; but Australia won the series 2-1, with Merv Hughes taking 16 wickets at 17.25 (I do hope I chucked in a few ‘arsewipes’ for authenticity).

I played two World Cup-style competitions – the TSB World Series, which featured an England B team containing Paul Parker and Vic Marks among others. That was won by West Indies in 1985. The second then followed in 1989, and that saw Australia win.

How county pre-season plans have been affected by COVID-19

Bizarrely while the group games for that one were played in England, the final was at the MCG, the hosts defeating West Indies. That makes me wonder if I’d run out of summer, and so had to play it with a sponge ball in the front room, the Bang Olufsen speaker serving as the stumps.

One-day matches were trickier because obviously you had to up the scoring rate late doors, which meant more balls lost, more drives over the house, and more clips into the patio doors. “Huw!!”

Not much seems to have happened in 1990 or 1991. I was perhaps playing too much, at school and for club. Or being made to take holiday jobs: barman and the person who holds the pole in ditches for a quantity surveyor the character-building highlights.

But I was back on it again in 1992, despite being at university in London by then and by parents probably wondering: Will he ever grow up?

Growing old is mandatory but growing up is optional is a quote I love. If my summer of cricket is wiped out, I may just have to get my ball and bat out again and find a suitable wall.