A new future for an old favourite as Leyton gets £900,000 investment windfall

As the ECB pledges to help turn Leyton into a world-class hub, The Cricketer's HUW TURBERVILL takes a tour of the old ground

It is a case of fashionably Leyton again! Exciting news this morning for cricket fans, especially those who love county outgrounds.

Waltham Forest Council is joining forces with the England and Wales Cricket Board to turn Leyton Cricket Ground into "a world-class cricket hub which will play host to professional matches".

Waltham Forest News reports: "The Leyton County Ground Main Sports Hall will be fully refurbished in time for this summer’s ICC men’s Cricket World Cup, which will allow the ECB to capitalise on the tournament and promote the new centre while interest in cricket is at a peak, especially – but not exclusively – among South Asian women.

"The project forms part of the ECB’s South Asian Action Plan, which aims to better engage with South Asian communities at every level of the game including the grassroots. Research shows that between 24 and 28 per cent of the local population who live within a 30-minute walk or drive of the site have South Asian heritage. The project will be funded with an investment of £450,000 from the ECB, to be matched by the council."

Huw Turbervill visited the ground – where the Aussies and Windies were vanquished and Percy Holmes and Herbert Sutcliffe put on 555 – to report in the March 2018 edition of The Cricketer. He was in the company of JK Lever, of Essex and England.

^{JK Lever and Huw Turbervill visited Leyton last year}

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It is a welcome green space in a distinctly urban jungle, and the Victorian pavilion is magisterial, but most people walking or driving down the A112 presumably have little knowledge of Leyton Cricket Ground’s illustrious history.

Before Chelmsford was a gleam in their eye, it was the home of Essex County Cricket Club. They moved there in 1885 (after nine years playing at Brentwood) and stayed there until 1933 – a sporting rival to Clapton (now Leyton) Orient Football Club in the area; it was the ground at which Essex defeated Australia, West Indies, New Zealand and Pakistan in front of crowds of 8,000–10,000; and it was also where Yorkshire’s Percy Holmes and Herbert Sutcliffe posted their record first-class stand of 555 in 1932.

Essex continued to play festival games there until 1977, but then abandoned it. With Leyton Cricket Club believed to have stopped playing there in 2013, it is now used for games in the National Cricket League, Last Man Stands, Wicketz and Capital Kids Cricket, but – a little down at heel these days, especially that Grade II-listed pavilion – it could do with some love, despite a new artificial pitch being laid in 2015.

Fear not… help is at hand. Its owners, Waltham Forest Council, say they have plans to transform it.

The venue is a mile from Leyton Underground station, and there is no sign of the regeneration work yet, but Leyton Amateur Boxing Club is on one side of the pavilion, and on the other is an arts block and a sports hall, used by George Mitchell School, among others.

It is the pavilion that invites exploration though. Its exterior is white-walled with black-painted beams and with two layers of terracotta-brick roofing. A few steps lead up to an expansive ground floor, and, inside, visitors were once able to use the top floor – although health and safety restrictions unfortunately preclude that at the moment.

On the ground floor – which also now contains council offices – is a fascinating display of words written by David Pracy and pictures highlighting that rich cricket history. Essex CCC had been playing in Brentwood, but in 1885 they decided to make their home in densely populated east London, so bought the Leyton site for £12,000. They needed £3,000 for ground improvements, and attendances were poor, but they did achieve first-class status in 1894, and that inspired them to produce some entertaining cricket. In 1897 they finished third in the County Championship, their highest position until 1978.

Then the David-versus-Goliaths acts began. In 1899 Joe Darling’s Australians were slayed (as they were again in 1905). In that final year of the 19th century there was also controversy. Warwickshire were ordered to go through the professionals’ gate on to the field of play, but their captain Edwin Diver instead defiantly instructed his men to go through the amateur gate instead.

^{The pavilion as it was in the 1930s}

Dark days followed for Essex. Chairman Charles Ernest Green, their benefactor, announced there was no more money to give. He resigned in 1912, and with the ground now in disrepair and covered in discarded bottles, it was sold a decade later. Essex became tenants of the British Army, but it did not seem to affect them too adversely, for in 1927 they vanquished the New Zealanders.

Cleaned up, the ground was known as a batting paradise, as shown on June 15 1932 by openers Holmes and Sutcliffe, although the former, who nearly had not played because of lumbago, was dropped on 3 by Essex wicketkeeper Roy Sheffield. To say the hosts paid the price was an understatement, for the duo scored 423 on the first day, and then on the next broke the record of 554 held by another Yorkshire duo, Jack Brown and John Tunnicliffe, set against Derbyshire at Chesterfield in 1898.

Sutcliffe was bowled the very next ball after the record was broken by Laurie Eastman. History was made. Or was it? In one of those heart-in-your-mouth moments, the scoreboard clicked back to 554. The impasse was solved by Essex captain Charles Bray telling scorer Charles McGahey to “find them a run”, and a supposedly overlooked no-ball was found. Yorkshire went on to win by an innings and 313 runs, a rather overawed Essex being bowled out for 78 and 164, England duo Bill Bowes and Hedley Verity sharing 19 wickets. Stacks of ‘555 State Express’ cigarettes arrived in the dressing room for Sutcliffe and Holmes, but word about the scorecard tinkering did get out, with Surrey captain Percy Fender giving Bray a dressing down when he found out.

The record stood until 1976/77, when Waheed Mirza and Mansoor Akhtar posted 561 for Karachi Whites’ first wicket at home to Quetta, and has subsequently been broken another six times. It now stands at 624 – by Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene for Sri Lanka against South Africa in Colombo in 2006.

Demand for cricket in the actual county of Essex was growing, however, and they left Leyton the year after that record was set. Their final match was a high-scoring draw against Sussex.

They returned to guest at Leyton from 1957, beating Middlesex in their comeback match (despite trailing by 159 on first innings). There was a notable tie with Gloucestershire in 1959 (a game that saw Essex captain Doug Insole make an unbeaten 177), and they beat the Pakistanis in 1962. Essex also hosted Jamaica in 1970 (a draw), and their final match there was in 1977, a win over Glamorgan thanks to the spin of Ray East (match figures of 12 for 113) and David Acfield (7 for 157). Trevor Bailey was sad to see it go, saying it was “our ugliest ground… but it had a certain gnarled charm”.

John Lever is also fond of the venue, and met me there to jog his memory. “The King George hospital in Redbridge was full up for my birth so I was born in nearby Stepney,” he said. “Mum said ‘don’t you dare tell anyone’, because being a bit of an East-end boy was not the done thing then… born within earshot of the Bow Bells and all that… but I’m actually proud of it now!

^{Lever outside the pavilion}

“Back in the day pro cricket had a lot of university types, and amateurs. People with a few bob. There was no money in the game. Essex had a bit more of a working-class feel, like the crowd here. Graham Gooch went to Norlington School, and Eastie and Brian ‘Tonker’ Taylor were also from the state sector, although there were still uni boys like David Acfield, who went to Cambridge.

“Leyton didn’t have a lot going for it as far as the players were concerned, because in those days it was a very sociable game… you used to have a drink with the opposition after play, and there was nowhere here to do it. The changing rooms were next door, where the boxing ring now is. You used to have to stand on the seats and look out of the top windows. You couldn’t see too much!

“We never went in the pavilion… we were in a marquee. With the marquees all the way around it did have a nice feel to it, though; a village feel in the middle of town, with all the city types jumping off the Tube to watch the last couple of hours. It was always free entry after tea. The highlight for me was all the local club players coming to watch and seeing so many familar faces.

“We had lots of grounds. Ilford, Brentwood, Romford, Clacton, Southend, Colchester – eight, I think. Essex is a big county and taking it around was the right thing to do, getting the kids interested.

“The great Keith Boyce was the best one-day cricketer at the time, and he lived just up there, in Richmond Road. It’s Greater London – not Essex as such – and there was a bit of a fight for cricketers around here, between Essex and Middlesex. Maurice Chambers is from around here as well.

“This is also where Fred Trueman knocked Roger Wrightson’s teeth out in 1965, the year before I started. Wrightson was a left-hander, a good player, and he hooked Fred at Bradford on a slow pitch. Fred then came down here, and Roger had one of those dads who was all mouth and trousers. ‘My son hooked you Fred, he hooked you,’ he said; and Fred said: ‘Ahh, did he?’ The pitches were quite quick here and Roger only got halfway through the shot. Bang! His teeth were pushed back like stump poles.

“We also had Somerset nine down here one year [1976], and the crowd were going wild, but we could not get the wicket.

“I live in Epping now and have driven past a few times. I have seen a few games of football going on, and I always wondered if the square had managed to survive. There are 22,000 South Asian cricketers in the North-East London area, I am told, so it is good that they have kept it going here. There is so much money being thrown at it to keep kids playing sport rather being radicalised. The places where there isn’t money now is in the outlying areas of Essex – Chelmsford and beyond. In Greater London there are all sorts of organisations pushing money at groups.

“The hardest thing around here is to to get cricket played in schools. Groundsmen cost a lot of money. There was talk of playing at the Olympic Stadium in Stratford, but there are no signs of Essex games yet.”

Aficionados of outgrounds would love to see Essex back at Leyton one day. Let's keep our fingers crossed.