The Summer Field

158 Chapter Nineteen Watching ‘Cricketers are precious little different from footballers, and react strongly to enthusiastic support.’ Micky Stewart, Surrey year book, 1971 Wartime, and the arrival of many strangers, gave Britain a chance to see itself through fresh eyes. What a foreigner sees in cricket can always offer amusement – condescending or genuine – as when an anonymous American visited Lord’s on August 7, 1944. An England eleven was playing the Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF). He began with the contrast with baseball: the play from 11.30am to 7pm (‘no wonder the English don’t mind a long war. They get used to it young’); the decorum of the ground (‘there wasn’t even a chewing gum advert to be seen’); and the clothes (‘the players looked as if they had just come from a country house’). Hammond came in after a couple of men were out. The American praised the Australians: ‘… they know a thing or two. They kept shifting their positions and wherever Hammond slammed the ball there was an Australian to keep it down to one run or no score at all. I take off my hat to those Aussies from the Flying Corps.’ The American went for lunch to his host’s club, who suggested they go to see a movie; but the American could hardly wait to get back ‘to the Lord’s cricket ground’. When Hammond reached his century, the American ‘yelled like a fool’; ‘all around me the folks were clapping and saying well done, well done, to each other, and there was I yelling my head off. A nice old boy from down front brought me back my cap although I didn’t remember throwing it.’ In reply Keith Miller made 85, Doug Wright took six wickets, and after 136 overs in the day England won by 33 runs. No wonder the American enjoyed it. * The English have a spectrum of interest in the game, ranging from the extreme of paying to watch all the time, to the regular or occasional watcher, and the follower from afar thanks to the papers and radio, to the indifferent or hostile. Let us take one match – the Nottingham Test against Australia in June 1926 – as an example. The widower Thomas Pickbourne was there for the first day: It rained rather heavily early Saturday morning but towards eleven o’clock the sun came out and about 12 o’clock our captain A.W. Carr won the toss and decided to bat. The famous Jack Hobbs and Sutcliffe went in and for about 50 minutes gave us a superb exhibition of what batting at its best may be. 32 runs were scored and we were just