The pulse races in festival week (12 July 1999)

12 July 1999

The pulse races in festival week

Michael Henderson

This is festival week. The County Championship, which has rumbled on soundlessly since the second week of April (what do you mean, you hadn't noticed?) has finally emerged between the first and second Tests as a competition in its own right, and the games this week are taking place on grounds that are entirely suited for the enjoyment of a summer pastime.

Southend, admittedly, is not the sort of place you visit willingly. Essex must surely be the least interesting county in England. But Stanley Park is a decent spot (Blackpool may be tacky, but it's honest, unlike horrible, self-deluding Brighton), and Guildford has a cosy club ground. The charms of Arundel, with its splendid view of the Downs, are well known.

Best of all is the college ground at Cheltenham. Good old 'Chelters' never disappoints. Then, next week, comes Scarborough. These are probably the best two places in England, outside Lord's, to watch cricket. Each has a wonderful frame: in Cheltenham, the hills that surround the town; in Scarborough, the sea. No wonder they have good matches. Just going there makes one feel well-disposed towards the world.

Festival cricket, away from county headquarters, is where the heart of county cricket beats most strongly. It is where spectators loaf in deckchairs, munching sandwiches they have made themselves and napping between overs; where people renew friendships left off the previous summer; buy second-hand books from lovingly-tended stalls; quaff pints, decent and otherwise, in tents; and generally rediscover why they fell in love with the game.

It is where spectators watch with quiet attention, rather than making the mindless noise that is now compulsory at Test matches; where the talk is of players seen, and deeds that live on in a collective memory sharpened by scores of gentle conversations; where cricket remains, thankfully, a game; where people give thanks simply for being alive, in summer, in England.

In fact, it represents everything that our groovy Prime Minister and his toadies would have us believe is hopelessly outdated. Because the underlying feeling on these grounds is old-fashioned, and essentially rural, and because its supporters see no reason to apologise for these treasonable things, it suddenly seems so precious. There are those who say the days of festival cricket have gone. They may well be right, and if they are then we are all the poorer.

Let's stay with Cheltenham. Drive up Cleeve Hill at mid-day, with the Vale of Evesham shimmering below, and then say that this is not England in all its glory. There are echoes of Elgar and Housman, who was not a Shropshire lad at all. He came from Worcestershire, and those famous "blue remembered hills" were the ones at Malvern.

It is a landscape rooted firmly in the national mythology, which is more powerful than anything the 'Celtic twilight' can muster because England has better poets, and more of them (not to mention painters and composers). To borrow from one of them, T S Eliot, who began his life as an American, and evoked the elemental power of landscape more convincingly than any writer of this century, "history is a pattern of timeless moments".

Cheltonians still talk of Charlie Barnett, who lived not far away, near Winchcombe, and there are whispers of Wally Hammond. The fathers of these men may have seen Grace bat. That is the sort of place it is, a ground peopled by exiles who have come home. It was in a Gloucestershire orchard, in the second part of Henry IV, that Shakespeare put one of the most evocative lines in our literature into Falstaff's mouth: "We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow!"

Cricket has heard them, too, alas. What has occurred over the past few years amounts to nothing less than the erosion of county cricket as the framework of the English game, with the implicit endorsement of those who administer it. This season a championship match starts on each day of the week, except Saturday and Sunday. Nobody knows where they are any more. All is chaos.

Next year the erosion will become a landslide. A group of senior players will be contracted to the England and Wales Cricket Board, and released to play for their counties only when it suits the paymasters at Lord's. How, then, will members identify with players, and players with the clubs that nurtured them?

Some players will not be greatly missed. Since he was appointed England captain in 1993, Michael Atherton has appeared for Lancashire about as often as a sinner takes communion. That is not to damn him. It happens to be a fact. Nor is he alone. The last Test batsmen who offered their counties a full hand were Graham Gooch and Mike Gatting. Today's players use the four-day game either as an opportunity to rest, or as a net.

County cricket has been bled dry by official indifference, to the point that nobody can really say what it exists for, other than to produce a few players for England. Perhaps the wisest course is now to go semi-pro, trim professional staffs significantly and rely on emerging youngsters to fill the second teams.

Why not go further? Why not surrender the Test match grounds to the authority of the ECB, which would be responsible for their maintenance, and send out the counties to play most of their games on the outgrounds? Fund them to go back to Buxton and Chesterfield, Harrogate and Ebbw Vale, Folkestone and Weston-super-Mare. Let the battle cry be: bring back Ashby-de-la-Zouch!

That would be real missionary work, and possibly rewarding. Players may not like it, because they don't like playing on club pitches, which they often condemn in their minds before they have even set foot on them. But they can't be any worse than some of the pitches prepared on county and, dare one say it, Test grounds. Cheltenham, incidentally, usually offers both batsmen and bowlers the best pitch in the country.

Enjoy your festival week. I certainly intend to get the most out of Cheltenham, and if a glass of something pleasing is not plonked down the moment I step into the Montpelier Wine Bar tent, there'll be trouble. But remember this, humble cricket-lovers of England: nobody high up cares for you, or will defend the game you have grown up with. So, at the end of the week, when the deckchairs are set aside for next year, won't you just slip quietly away?

Source :: The Electronic Telegraph