The Summer Field

142 sand boys’ and named Mitchell, Wyatt (the captain in place of Jardine) and Tate as having a joke with the crowd. When play stopped for rain, the fielders ‘raced one another for the exit gate with all the exuberance of a school team’. Some could learn to love fielding; others did not. The ball was too hard, for a start, as the fictional fielder Semuel Pips found out. Men with hard hands, thanks to physical work as a miner or labourer, might take catches more happily than the stereotypical 21 st century pro’ who drives everywhere and only handles weights or an exercise bicycle. Wicketkeepers had it worst. The former Derbyshire batsman turned coach Denis Smith, during a series of articles in the Derby Evening Telegraph in 1952, recalled that some wicketkeepers wore beefsteaks inside their gloves, to prevent bruising, ‘but because beefsteaks are too scarce to use for that purpose these days, I suggest Plasticene as a suitable alternative’. Mocking spectators were hard to learn to love – which might explain why the MCC at Sydney acted light-heartedly, to win any barrackers over. Even the English county game suffered. In July 1929 Plaindealer described barracking at Derby: ‘It came in the main from an individual unwashed, unshaved, collarless but full of liquor.’ One visiting Sussex player had to escort an intruder off the field. Plaindealer added: ‘A former captain of Derbyshire told me he always apologised to the visiting captain for the Chesterfield crowd’s behaviour before the match …’ Barracking plainly angered some. The same month Plaindealer recalled the Victorian cricketer A.J.Webbe, who once played for Heanor Wanderers against South Derbyshire at Derby: Fielding and Wicketkeeping In poking fun at its favourite target – common people - in this June 1910 cartoon Punch captured the long grass, sheer variety of humanity (note the fat man and boy striding out to bat) and disorder (the dog has knocked the bails off) of the village game. ‘Thou taks first over, Croft, and thou stumps, Blacksmith,’ says the captain, ‘and t’others spread yersens aboot i’ likely spots.’