The Summer Field

68 Chapter Eight The Myth of the ‘Golden Age’ ‘All periods of history are periods of transition, but some are more transitional than others.’ Robert Blake, Disraeli On the first or last couple of days of the England-Australia Lord’s Test match in June 1956, Ernest Dain, a rescue instructor for civil defence in Wolverhampton, bought an evening newspaper on his way from work to the bus stop. The top deck of his bus was fairly full, so he sat by ‘an old gentleman who sat pulling at an old pipe’. After he paid the conductor, and as the bus cleared the town, Dain opened his paper to read the Test report. The old man fidgeted; Dain sensed his neighbour, too, was trying to read it. ‘Finally he spoke. “Excuse me, but can you tell me the latest score?”. Adding apologetically, “you see I am a cricketer”.’ In a coarser age, Dain might have told the old man to buy his own paper; in a later age, anyone interested would find it hard not to know the score. Dain replied that he too was a cricketer; and with that bond shared, the two strangers discussed first the Test, then England. “I haven’t seen many of today’s cricketers,” the old man said. “A bit old for getting about, you know.” Then the old man’s eyes glittered, so Dain recalled for a civil defence newsletter. “But I used to see them all, wonderful days in the sun, at the Oval, Lord’s, Old Trafford and Worcester.” The man sighed; then spoke of Hammond (‘never a dull moment, watching him. Broad powerful shoulders, and what power behind every stroke’) and of seeing Compton once (‘a slim, boyish figure, good to watch’). Woolley, Dain asked; did you ever see Frank Woolley? “Yes, there was a sight, of suppleness and grace; tall, he was, and good to look at. They never could hold him down, and in his younger days a good bowler too, the pride of Kent and England.” And Ranjitsinjhi, Dain asked; he was a cutter, wasn’t he? The old man sighed. “I never saw him, but -” Dain saw that the bus was nearing his stop. He had to jump up. “Cheerio,” Dain said. “They can’t cut nowadays.” “Oh, good afternoon,” the old man replied, as if disappointed Dain was leaving so soon (and could he not have stayed to the next stop?). Dain wrote: “On my way from the bus I too had memories which crowded in, and I thought of the cricketing giants of the past who I had not seen but seemed to know after all. Will those of today ever reach that stature? I wondered.” * England in the 21 st century, materially better off than in 1956, does not offer such face-to-face chances for a younger man to enrich his mind from