Lives in Cricket No 23 - Brief Candles

119 A Life in Cricket playing, and also appearing three times for a representative Thurrock League XI, and playing a few games in the reserve side of Basildon United. Bob’s other main sport was table-tennis, where he held his own in the top local leagues. He was never as good as his mate Ken Sandeman, and not quite up to county standard, but still well up there with the best league players in Southend, Thurrock and Basildon. As with cricket, he also took a coaching qualification, passing his exam despite having his right leg in plaster following a football mishap. There’s dedication. A toast to them all So, surely a life in cricket; but not a life wholly of cricket. Bob Richards is a man for whom cricket has shaped almost his entire life, from his early schooldays, through his days in the RAF and in non-cricket employment, when bosses and others appear to have stretched the rules a little to allow him to play more, through his 20 years in a tracksuit at Chelmsford, right up to the present when he is still playing regularly, and to a good standard, in his later 70s. At all levels of the game, he has always given his best. In our meeting, he said more than once that his aim, in every game, was simply to be the best on the day, once adding, ‘When I play, I look at the other wicketkeeper and if he has a good game, I think “I’m going to be better than that.”’ And although the speed of play may vary the higher the standard of the game, for Bob every match is ‘just another game’: not in the sense of another boring day at the office, far from it, but rather that every game is as special as every other one; they are all opportunities to enjoy and to excel. To Bob, even his one and only first-class match was just another game of cricket rather than being, as you might have thought, the most significant or important game he ever played in. Ronald Mason lauded Fred Hyland on the grounds that ‘the distinction that he can wave in the teeth of all competitors is an indisputable and proud one: he had played first-class cricket; and what proportion of genuine cricket-lovers can say the same?’ But six pages later he went on to write: ‘The distinction is perhaps one without a difference; in fact it may be entirely illusory, and to those who have once stepped across the magic line there is no glamour at all.’ Bob Richards is, I fear, evidence that Mason was right on the latter point, at least in some cases; but then how much ‘glamour’ could anyone glean from a dark and rainy three days at Leyton cricket ground in the 1970s? On those three days, Bob did indeed step over the magic line, and I for one look at him differently for that, and with extra respect. But his personal appreciation is of cricket itself, and not the fact that he, just once, made it to the first-class level. In Mason’s words, let him ‘stand toast’ to all those who simply love the game, at whatever level they can achieve; and who play it to the very best of their abilities for as long as they are physically able.