The Summer Field

178 out competition, each team’s innings to last one hour and 25 minutes. Played on midsummer weekday evenings, such contests sounded like the T20 of the 2000s onwards; and were as popular. In Lichfield, teams from workplaces in the cathedral city and villages nearby began competing for the 20-overs-a-side Chauntry Cup in 1936. The semi-finals drew crowds of 400; more than 1000 watched Kingsbury Colliery win the final of nearby Tamworth club’s competition on Tuesday evening, July 23, 1946. Since that era, few English cricketers have not played such matches – typically 20 overs each, starting at 6pm, though some districts differed. In Durham in the 1930s teams played Kerridge Cup games over two Monday nights, each batting 32 overs. In an undated letter around 1950 L.C.Ware, the secretary of Wills Athletic and Sports club in Bridgwater, asked nearby Woolavington club for two Friday evenings for return matches: ‘Owing to overtime worked during the week it only leaves us Fridays free.’ So much for Twenty-20 as a 21 st century invention for an ever-busier society. This extra cricket was welcome to the ever more men in indoor or seated jobs that tired the brain rather than the body – teachers, clerks, drivers, shop assistants; who might not have the time, or the ability, or stamina if older, for the longer weekend game. The county pro’ game, by contrast, had too much cricket, or as the Findlay Commission chose to put it, too many county clubs. Even if two clubs offered not to be first-class, or four volunteered to merge with a neighbour, would slightly less cricket make matches much ‘brighter’? And even if it did, would more pay to watch? Renewal Brighter cricket was an issue long before this 1961 David Langdon cartoon in Punch.