The Summer Field

186 white Commonwealth circus, are losing their appeal, save the West Indian fixtures,’ a New Society editorial crowed in June 1968. ‘It is probably impossible on either rational or economic grounds to defend the three- day circuit,’ was Albert Hunt’s verdict in August 1971, after watching a first day at Leicester. He saw ‘an ever-dwindling audience of devotees’ (he counted about 300) and ‘placid’ play. If only he had stayed for the second day, he would have seen Glamorgan bowled out twice by the Australian Test bowler Graham McKenzie, to lose by an innings. Glamorgan included the Test batsmen Majid Khan and Roy Fredericks. Far from a class-ridden ‘strange ritual’ as Hunt put it, the county game was – you could at least argue – entering a golden age, bringing the best of the world’s players to English provincial cities. Did Worcester, Nottingham or Northampton as regularly, or ever, see the equivalent world-class actors, musicians or footballers? Needless to say, only one out of county cricket and New Society has lasted. * The pro’ game survived because it was a ‘much more progressively minded game than it is often given credit for, resistant only to change which seems out of keeping with its best traditions’, according to Surrey’s unsigned annual report in its 1970 yearbook. In the same publication, the newly-retired Ken Barrington proposed – much as in his memoir Playing it Straight – one-day league matches on Saturdays and Sundays (single- innings, not necessarily limited-overs), and a three or four-day match in the week. Once the Benson and Hedges Cup came in 1972, with matches on April and May Saturdays leading to a midsummer Lord’s final, the pro’ summer was much as Barrington suggested. Even before the extra one- day matches, counties showed an appetite to sell themselves. In Surrey’s 1968 yearbook committee man Raman Subba Row admitted it had been a ‘badly-sold’ club, and more to the point reported hiring a ‘sales promotion officer’. In an echo of Leicestershire’s aborted speedway track of 1929, Subba Row admitted that the new advertising boards inside the ground were not ‘everybody’s cup of tea’. That Surrey sold the boards anyway was a sign that Test grounds, at least, had to do more than make ends meet; they had to find money to afford new everything, from restaurants (Surrey was already marketing itself as a venue for such 1960s affairs as dinner- dances and reunions) to overseas players. To keep going in an ever more international entertainment market, they could not afford to say ‘cricket has always been broke’, as Brian Johnston did in his All About Cricket in 1972. That was typical not only of the man, but a BBC broadcaster who never had to wonder where the money was coming from. What of the players? They favoured whatever kept them in work. They had mixed feelings about the playing changes, as Donald Carr had after his brief experience. Barrington, like many, disliked ‘exhausting’ Sunday matches splitting a three-day game that started on a Saturday, which might force a team to journey elsewhere and back on Sunday summer roads. Looking back in 1982, having played the most John Player League matches in the competition’s first 13 years, the Essex all-rounder Stuart Turner admitted ‘I will not pretend that we greeted it with enthusiasm’. Modern Changes