The Summer Field

32 one batsman who scorned pads as ‘soft’. The Middlesex spinner, Jim Sims, in an August 1936 article said that very few players tried to bat without pads, ‘but many still persist in doing without batting gloves – even many first-class cricketers’. He called a good pair of gloves ‘an essential part of the cricketer’s bag’ – neatly suggesting any cricketer ought to have a proper bag. The most obvious piece of kit that made you a cricketer and not a passer- by roped in was the white (or cream) trousers. In an era when a man might own a best suit and a set of work clothes and little else to wear, a pair of whites took some affording (or justifying to the wife). The East Riding Chief Constable, R.D.Lemon, sent a memo on May 22, 1940 – while his county shared the nationwide fear of a German airborne invasion – asking men playing for their divisional teams to be ‘properly dressed in white flannel trousers, white cricket shirt and white shoes or boots’. Whites were the custom well before then. In April 1909 the Walsall Observer reported a batsman came out ‘with a maroon rear to his trousers’. Was it new club colours? the crowd wondered. No, the batsman had only been sitting on a newly-painted seat. This visible separating of players from spectators was matched by the physical separation of the field of play from the surrounds. Walsall knew its Victorian home as ‘the old heath’; likewise, cricket fields were once farmers’ fields. In the summer of 1818, a tenant of the Eastern Hoe in Plymouth complained to the mayor – and more to the point refused to pay rent – because the militia playing cricket matches did ‘much injury’, destroying the grass and frightening the cattle. Paying spectators, given the chance, liked to wander on a cricket field like cattle, and organisers handled them much like cattle too. On Tuesday, August 17, 1875 for instance, while Gloucestershire hosted Nottinghamshire at Clifton in Bristol, heavy rain drove the visiting fielders and home batsmen to shelter at 4pm: ‘It was it seemed likely to cease and the bell was rung to clear the ground, but before the men could come out, there was a fresh storm,’ the Western Daily Press reported. Perhaps because it was so hard to travel, and free time was so precious, once men had gathered – like Anonymous who beat Ashby in August 1868 – they played even though it was raining ‘almost incessantly the whole time’, according to the Derby Mercury . Likewise teams might begin in mid- morning or, more likely, not finish until near nightfall. Derby at Burton in July 1846 won a one-day, two-innings game at 8.45pm, ‘which all must admit was too late for good cricket’, the Mercury reported. In a July 1849 game, Derby County wanted three Derby Town wickets when they gave up at 8.30pm – presumably beaten by the light. And in August 1843 the Mercury merely said Burrow Hill and Loughborough played ‘up to the hour when it became too dark to go on’. They were hosted by Sir F.G. Fowke at Lowesby Hall, and given lunch; many owners of land did likewise. The Marquis of Anglesey’s ground at Beaudesert on the edge of Cannock Chase hosted its first match, Staffordshire Hunt versus Leicestershire, in 1861, after ‘nearly two years’ of preparation and ‘sparing neither trouble’ - presumably the What Was Cricket Like?