The Summer Field

180 the Second World War, only to decline in the 1950s, which forced renewal in the 1960s. In fact gate takings at Hampshire fell as early as 1949 compared with the season before, when the Australians toured. The county game found itself in the same four-year cycle of feasting off Australians, and famine otherwise. ‘The support by the general public is not adequate to the club’s requirements,’ Desmond Eagar wrote in Hampshire’s 1950 handbook. To take another example, from Derby (‘not a hotbed of cricket’, Plaindealer wrote in 1929) from June 1954, when the champions Surrey beat Derbyshire by ten wickets. The Derby Evening Telegraph described the number of spectators paying at the gate as ‘astonishingly small’: 683 on the first day, a Wednesday, then 581, and 103 on Friday, a short final day that only saw 90 runs. It did not matter much who visited - in this case, Ashes winners Peter May, Alec Bedser, Jim Laker and Tony Lock; nor that Derbyshire had done well for the past 20 years. What prevented a mass audience was the weather (‘far from summer like’) and the reality that on weekdays, except bank holidays, most adults were at work and were only free on evenings and at weekends to take their children out. County clubs, and newspaper reporters, seemed unable to grasp this. Across the country, year after year, gates were alike: largest on Saturday and smallest on Tuesday and Friday, Renewal Slow batting, beer, and watchers’ (heavily-accented) humour were such a part of matches between rivals Lancashire and Yorkshire, they inspired this prewar postcard cartoon.