Dad already has his much loved copies
of ‘Moving On’ and ‘Someday, Maybe’, so I suggested a ticket to a cricket
match as a special gift for Father’s day
Offspring seemed to think it was a good idea and are
currently debating the virtues of the One Day game on the Saturday versus the
International 120 at on the Tuesday. (It’s no use asking me. I do know that he
isn’t keen on One Day matches, but that’s as far as watching it on telly is
concerned, and I haven’t the faintest what a 120 is. You’d think I’d have
picked up a bit more after 55 years of being a cricket widow, but I haven’t.)
I know he really only enjoys
watching test matches on the television, and I can’t think why. I hear him occasionally swearing or cheering
and clapping at some mysterious event, but the pleasure of five days spent
watching the grass grow and men in
white* wandering about rubbing a ball up and down their leg, eludes me. If
you’ve got to watch a sporting game, it shouldn’t last more than one hour and
it should be clear all the time who is winning and who is losing. I’ve learned
not to ask that question anyway with cricket. The answer is always too
complicated to hope to understand.
(*Or red or green or blue, these
days, what’s that all about? The only
good thing about it was that the whites against the green all looked quite pretty.)
Andy Brice (‘Moving On’) knows
he’s found a good man when he hears that his neighbour likes cricket, and
looked forward to joining the local club. My man, though, doesn’t seem to want
to get involved with local club matches any more. I have it on good information (his) that one
of the things that seems to have happened with is that it is very hard to get
team members actually out to play. They
don’t want to play away fixtures and will rarely appear for duty more than once
in a week, if that. “Now, in my day…”
Ah, the good old days…. Let me
tell you about his day.
Back in the dark days, when the
dinosaurs roamed the land, there would be a match every Saturday and every
Sunday throughout the season, which seemed to last a lot longer than it does
now. There would be mid week games on a Wednesday and Thursday as well, and
then there was at least one tour (which is another whole story). Very rarely
did anyone miss a match. All team
members played in every game, sudden
blindness, two broken legs or similar providing the only possible excuses for
missing one. Matches seemed to go on from lunchtime until after eleven or
twelve in the evening, longer if the game was away from home.
It took me quite a few years to
realize that they didn’t really play on after dark under floodlights.
I did try to like cricket, I did,
really. In the very early days, I used to go along to matches and try to pass
the endless, boring hours perched on a deckchair in the long grass and batting
away the midges and the wasps by trying to do some embroidery. We ended up with
quite a few grubby and badly decorated pillow cases and table cloths in our
bottom drawer before I gave up the will to live - I mean, the will to pretend
that I was enthralled and happy. I actually hadn’t a clue what they thought
they were all up to out there for hours and hours on the field. It wasn’t even
as if you could join them for tea or get together with your man in the bar
afterwards, because of course, Women Were Not Permitted To Enter The Clubhouse.
It was quite a well-appointed clubhouse,
too, well decorated, with plenty of facilities and plenty of room for all. Occasionally,
visiting wives with bedraggled children
tried to break into our clubhouse to shelter from a shower of unexpected rain,
only to find themselves chased out again
sharpish, to wander and keep dry where they might, until their men had finished
draining the free jugs, buying each other extra pints, dissecting the match in
the every minute detail, laughing at
each other’s jokes, patting each other
enough on the backs, (always calling each other, presumably in a gesture of male
bonding and camaraderie, by the surname with a ‘y’ or an ‘o’ attached at the
end, as ‘Jonesy’ or ‘Gibbo’; it seemed to be mandatory.) and they (and the coach driver if any) were ready to
leave the bar.
After a long, long while, it was grudgingly
agreed that the women might come just a little closer and shelter on the verandah
outside beneath the overhanging roof – and then, a few years later again, under
pressure, the decision was taken to allow the women (though only those
unaccompanied by children) to sit upstairs in the committee room on match days.
They would even be welcome to purchase a drink, or to have one sent up to them,
but downward ordering or upward despatch of liquid refreshment would be done
only via a butler’s hatch.
The committee suggested that in
return for this privilege wives ought to take over the making of teas from the
caterer.
We said no.
This noble committee decision was,
some time later amended in an enormous gesture towards equality. One small area
at the far end of the clubhouse from the bar would be closed off by a set of heavy
doors. Drinks could be carried to this area and the ladies were free there to
disport themselves at will. They could even be joined by those men who wished
to be with them (though not many did as there really wasn’t very much room.) Should
one of the men passing through the doors on their occasional provisioning of
drinks carelessly leave one open and should a Female be spotted peering through
it towards the bar, someone would stride across smartly and slam the door
sharply shut.
Some men, of course, would have
been happy to have a mixed membership without restrictions, and they do indeed
have one now, but for me, it came too late. Even if I did not applaud the great
GBS for his comment that “The English are not a spiritual people, so they
invented cricket to give then some idea of eternity,” for me, it is much, much
too late. But bless him, it is Father’s
Day coming, and he’s allowed to have his passions.
“There’s a breathless
hush in the close tonight -*
Ten to make and the
match to win.
A bumping pitch and a
blinding light
An hour to play and
the last man in…
*Sir Henry Newbold.
