Our beautiful game is back: After vectors of twaddle, all we needed were a few protocols

PAUL EDWARDS: Less than two months earlier I had walked around an unmarked boundary at the ground that has become my second home and it was tricky to see how we would get anything at all

It has been a summer of lists and some of them have been gloomy indeed. So let us begin today with another list, one filled with cautious joy: Abinger Hammer, Send, Fleetwood, Henley, Toft, Hampstead, Ide, Chorley, Instow. At all these places recreational cricket has been played in the past week; I’m sure you can supply some fresh names and the suggestion of renewal and hope can grow with every club you add.

Naturally there were stories attached to each game: Simon Briggs reported in the Sunday Telegraph that a black spaniel was hit, but not seriously hurt, by a powerful drive at Henley; a friend emailed that 32 runs had been scored off an over at Send; and I saw a wonderful leg-side stumping by Littleborough’s wicketkeeper Matthew Hernon at Chorley.

Every incident in the last seven days has been watched by players and spectators, almost all of whom will have felt a particular frisson of pleasure when cricket got under way at last. This was the season we nearly lost.

And Hernon’s piece of skill was only one reason why I returned from my first game of the season on Saturday evening in good spirits. Windsor Park is a lovely ground, nicely banked on one side, tree-lined on the other and with a splendid view of Parbold Hill beyond the Walgarth Road End.

The people at Chorley could not have been more welcoming. They were a little surprised their pre-season friendly was being covered in the press – so was I – but they were keen to tell me about their club and their plans for this weird season. There were 50 or so people at the ground to see the first ball bowled and by the time the home team completed their victory there was a crowd many clubs would not get for an important league match.

Chorley, you see, is a cricket town. (It’s a football town, too, but they don’t talk about that quite so much at present.) In 1994 and 1995 the first team won the National Club Championship and Roland Horridge, the skipper of that famous side, was present on Saturday to see another season break its duck.

^{The game has returned at long last}

On Wednesday Roland came to Southport and saw his lad, Monty, make a shrewd 19 not out in Chorley under-15’s 73 for seven in a 20-over game. That turned out to be enough to beat Southport and Birkdale’s juniors but the bigger result was lost on no one. This was the first match played at Trafalgar Road this season.

Less than two months earlier I had walked around an unmarked boundary at the ground that has become my second home and it was tricky to see how we would get anything at all. Then a few weeks ago we had vectors of disease and vectors of twaddle.

It turned out that all we needed were a few clear protocols and the tough common sense of people prepared to observe them. Neither at Chorley on Saturday nor at Southport on Wednesday evening did I see anything that would worry the health professionals upon whom our lives have depended this year. We’ll just have to go without tea for a while.

All of which is not to say that our cricket lacked for humour. Listen to two men talking at a cricket match for ten minutes or so and you will probably hear something wise, witty or daft. Like this, for example from Chorley: “Did you get out much during lockdown?”

“Not really, no. I didn’t think that was the point of it. But at least I’m now a world authority on click-and-collect.”

During one of the darkest springs any of us have known I remember saying that it’s the people we’ll miss more than the cricket. It only took an hour or so at Windsor Park on Saturday to suggest that, for once, I hadn’t been talking a load of Boris.

When I got back to the flat on Saturday evening, I found something else to hearten me. The kind folk at Slattery Publishers had sent me the revised and updated edition of David Frith’s biography of the Australian batsman, Archie Jackson. If you’re not sure who Jackson was, he played eight Tests for Australia, scoring 164 on his debut against England at Adelaide in February 1929. He was 19 years old.

Just over four years later Jackson died of pulmonary tuberculosis. People said his star would have outshone Bradman’s. Years later you could find folk talking about the elegance of his strokes and the gentleness of his nature. David has written a classic biography of him; it is marked by shoe-leather research, piercing insight and fond affection. An earlier edition is subtitled: “The Keats of Cricket”. The foreword is written by Harold Larwood.

^{Recreational cricket was allowed to begin on July 11}

In late June 1930 the touring Australians played Lancashire at Aigburth. Jackson made 52 and his mentor, the graceful Alan Kippax, made 120, both on a ground where I have covered many days of county cricket. Nobody dies as long as people remember them; the more detailed the recollection, the more vivid the life. To read about Jackson again on Saturday evening was to be touched by him - again.

Now some of you may be relatively young cricket followers or only beginning to read about the game. You may be wondering who David Frith is. (To be truthful I now feel a little like JRR Tolkien when he tried to describe Gandalf.) David is one of the finest historians the game of cricket has known.

Without his work we would know far less about Anglo-Australian cricket, the Bodyline tour and at least two other cricketers whose biographies he has written, including A E Stoddart. And we would have to get by without Pageant of Cricket, the best illustrated history of the game. David’s work will last for as long as cricket is played and men are charmed by the beauty of it all. His house in Guildford is a trove of books and cricket memorabilia and its owner is a benevolent guide to it all.

But don’t take my assurance as gospel truth. This is what three other people have said, and please accept that I am as suspicious of book-cover blurb as anyone: “Thank goodness the cricket world has always thrown up men like David Frith, who seem to regard a contribution to cricket history as a duty to mankind,” commented Sir Donald Bradman. “When I see the quality of writing by people like David Frith, I feel daunted. I can never write as well as they can. So I don’t try,” added Rahul Dravid. “David Frith is cricket.” said Gideon Haigh. David’s supporters make up a decent top three in any author’s side but they are nothing more than he deserves.

If I know David, he will be settling down to watch some Test cricket this weekend, but I also hopes he gets to see some of the four-day county matches that are being planned. Then he can join the rest of us in the vital acts of reclamation for which this summer will also be remembered.

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