The Summer Field

159 beginning to feel how good a thing cricket is when lo, the heavens opened and the rain came down in torrents and though 18,000 people many of them drenched to their skins stood it for hours, yet it was so bad that no further play was possible. Also there was Plaindealer. He recalled the queue outside before the gates opened at 9.30am: ‘We were a mob but the policeman marshalled us with a “five abreast please” ... of course we talked. We all talked. We were all cricketers and that made us forget the English stiffness and shyness …’ After you paid your half a crown (two shillings and sixpence) at the turnstile you got an unreserved seat – if you were among the first 5000; otherwise you had to sit on the grass or stand. Members went through their own gate by showing their card and took a seat in the pavilion. Membership stood at a record 5000 for the Australian tour and the list was closed for the time being. If you had no money you could – as about 300 did – gather on the Sunday at George Parr’s grave in Radcliffe church cemetery, because of a rumour the Australians would place a wreath there. In fact players were golfing miles away. A generation and a war later, Trevor Peacock, an English flight engineer, after serving on a wartime RAAF squadron in Lincolnshire, was at RAF Hemswell near Lincoln during the 1948 Test match at Nottingham. His crew wanted to go, but had orders to drop 25-pound practice bombs on the range on the coast at Wainfleet. ‘We dropped them into the sea,’ he recalled in old age, and the Lancaster bomber headed for Nottingham. ‘We did a circuit of Trent Bridge. The aeroplane was flying on auto-pilot.’ They were there to pick up the radio commentary from the ground, staying high enough not to be a nuisance to the cricket. However, they heard a Watching A young Jack Hobbs advertising the ‘Force’ bat.