The Summer Field

167 if those child watchers became players, would any connoisseurs be left? * Perhaps precisely because the professional game needs spectators, for their money, those watching have always been the least respected. MCC’s official instructions in 1914 told umpires they were to decide if ground was fit for play, not players; ‘Still less are they to allow themselves to be influenced by the impatience of the spectators’. After the rain-shortened Trent Bridge Test of 1964, a Mrs Binn of Stapleford pleaded in the Nottingham Evening Post for ‘a little entertainment, or just soft music over the loudspeakers’, if it rained. ‘Does anyone spare a thought for the loyal spectator?’ she asked. It was the sort of question that carried the seed of its answer. Every spectator can recall players and umpires leaving the field to suit themselves; or staying on the field just long enough for the regulations to deny spectators a refund. The crowd hooted at Leeds in July 1968 when in mid-afternoon the Australians appealed for bad light. ‘Seldom can the slow handclap have been heard so often during the Headingley Test,’ J.M.Kilburn reported afterwards in the Yorkshire Post . Always there was a sense, as in all commerce, that the customers – forever demanding facilities, autographs, news - spoiled what would be an enjoyably quiet life for the game’s workers. And the rubbish they left behind! After the August 1966 Test against the West Indies, the Surrey club complained of ‘the worst litter problem ever experienced at the Oval’; clearing ‘disposable bottles, beer cans, plastic glasses, plates and cups’ had become an ‘increasing problem’ according to Oval ground manager John McQuirke by 1975. Such was progress; previous generations never had plastic to throw away, and could not have afforded it anyway. Once the club took their money at the gate, the spectators, like the club, got what they deserved: unhelpful stewards, over-priced food and drink (the thrifty brought their own), and urinals where you passed water against bricks. In the Leicestershire club yearbook of 1963, Harry Brown, the cricket correspondent of the Leicester Mercury , wrote that he was often asked, by what right did he sit behind a typewriter, and take sportsmen to task? A good question, he admitted. ‘However The Voice has the uncanny knack of placing the most vitriolic newspaper critic into the category of fair and informed.’ Every ground had ‘The Voice’: The Voice never has any doubts. That so and so batsman should get on with it, another easy catch has gone down, why doesn’t the skipper declare … it goes on and on. I hear him from the Press Box, I hear him from the press enclosure on top of the pavilion, I hear him in the bar, I hear him on the popular side. For The Voice is universal on all sports grounds in all parts of the world … he is thousands of men. He always knows best. ‘The Voice’ was unobservant, unsympathetic, not clapping enough, or clapping the wrong things. Thus the regulars, the press and players alike – the connoisseurs, to use Cowdrey’s word — lumped all the spectators together, because the silent ones allowed ‘The Voice’ to represent them. Watching