Lives in Cricket No 49 - Enid Bakewell

17 does remember being taken somewhere to see Great Expectations and (like many other children) having nightmares about Magwitch: but the film came out in 1946 so she would have been very young. For many people (and for the industry) the dawn of mass television was 1953 and the Coronation, but Enid’s parents did not get the box until she had passed her O level GCEs, and with that and her dad in bed during the day it was easier to go out and play and explore. They did have neighbours who would let them watch TV on a Sunday evening, and Enid remembers the BBC production of Nineteen Eighty-Four , broadcast late in 1954. ‘All the dads were railwaymen or miners, and the bus conductors used to call Newstead ‘sleepy valley’. There was just the one bus (Trent number 61) that went past the top of the village, so for most things the train, then running from Mansfield to Nottingham, was more convenient. I was able to have friends to play in the garden but as I got older we would play games in the street as there were fewer cars.” But although Enid played cricket and football with the boys (and had her own football boots when she was nine) no other girls played these games. It probably helped that Enid’s parents had provided her with the gear, always a position of power in street games. The wicket was an electric ‘box’ at the junction of three roads. Hours would go by until the ball was hit into a garden whose tenants would not let us retrieve the ball. This made us move to the field next to the vicarage.’ But the policemen moved them on from there because the lads scrumped the vicar’s apples, then they were moved on from the outfield of the cricket field proper (now covered with houses) and decided to cut their own pitch opposite the cemetery. It had been a cricket field once, so was reasonably flat, but was now overgrown. The first time I met Enid to talk about the book we sat on a bench overlooking the rough field where they had played. It was very rough even after we trimmed it with hedge shears and scissors and you couldn’t let the ball bounce so you learned to use your feet. The miners’ lads played and there was John Cotton 5 who went on to play for Notts. They were strong and could bowl quite fast – good practice. This field was owned by the NCB and the horses who worked down the mine would take possession of the field for the annual pit holiday. Then we would try to play on the cricket pitch - an excellent one in the middle of the village It was always a fast bowlers’ area. “Larwood and Voce were both from round here.” Harold Larwood had worked in Annesley pit. “The village I live in now is where Larwood’s family were – there’s a plaque on the wall there.” She had seen very little cricket (with no TV until 1957) and was playing herself rather than watching locally, but she listened to the wireless; and 5 A month older than Enid, John Cotton played 239 first-class games for Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire, taking 652 wickets at 25.57. In 1963 he played for MCC against West Indies, taking four for 49. Youth