WOULD NOT HAPPEN THESE DAYS...

Among my collection of cricket books, there is a series of Wisden Anthologies, edited by Benny Green.   They were published in the early `80s and  cover a  span of time from 1877 to 1982 and they are the kind of volumes that you can pick up at any time, randomly turn the pages and always find something to grab the attention.

And during an idle moment or three (I have quite a few of those) I was flicking through the 900 odd pages of the anthology from 1940 to 1963 when I came across an entry that immediately brought back memories of my own leap in the dark, my own spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.   It goes like this....

In August 1953 - 67 years ago - I had just turned fourteen.  Having spent an idyllic boyhood up to that point along the Waterside of Southampton Water, my parents entered the `licensed trade` and in order to gain experience they took an off licence in the south-east London area of Catford.  It was a traumatic lurch from the quietude of the New Forest and the Solent shoreline to the noise and the choking atmosphere of 1950s London....and I wasn`t happy.

But throughout my boyhood I had always followed cricket and my heroes - Hampshire, Shackleton and Cannings, Somerset and Harold Gimblett and so, one August evening it dawned on me that there was a Test Match to be played in the capital - England were about to play Australia at The Oval - not too far away from downtown Catford.   And with all the innocence of youth I thought I might go and see some of it.   

Now I`m not sure what my parents thought about it but they agreed I might have a go.  So, on the Wednesday evening before the game was due to start the next day I gathered up a few `essentials` - some sandwiches, a bottle of something to drink and a camp stool which I had made in the woodwork lessons at my new school. 

In those days, unless you had a ticket for the game, you took your chance of getting into the unreserved area of the ground but this meant queuing up and hoping for the best and the earlier you queued the better your chances, hence my evening departure.  This involved a bus ride to Kennington Oval, finding a place in the queue that had already formed and settling down for my first night under the metropolitan stars.  Didn`t sleep of course - too uncomfortable and too excited but people were kind and come the morning and the gates were opened I made my way into that great cricket ground.

My Wisden tells me that "As in 1926 stories of long all night queues frightened away many would be spectators on the first day when the ground was comfortable with 26,300 people present."   Australia had won the toss, "which was received gloomily by most England supporters but by mid-afternoon, when seven Australian wickets were down for 160, pessimism turned to optimism."   I`m afraid that by that time my adventure had caught up with me and I fell asleep on the grass beyond the boundary - you were able to sit beyond the boundary at The Oval in those days.

The rest of the day and the journey back to Catford is lost to me but not the memory of my leap in the dark, of that spontaneous unpremeditated act that I had taken without benefit of experience, nor the agreement, however tremulous, of my parents who let a 14-year old loose amid the perils of the city and all its unpredictability. 

 Wouldn`t happen these days, I`m sure.