'Hallowed Homes of Cricket'

posted by John Winn

Happy New Year and I hope this mild January finds you well and looking forward to the 2012 season which begins in just 81 days. Father Christmas was kind to me, in particular because he delivered Chris Arnot's lovely nostalgic book 'Britain's Lost Cricket Grounds'. The front cover of the book shows the Central Ground at Hastings where I was fortunate enough to play on a number of occasions and to be present when the last first class fixture was played between Sussex and Middlesex in 1989. Although the ground sustained club cricket until 1994 it is now a shopping centre.The book was previewed via this blog in October by Tony Hutton and Tony described how he was approached by the author when he was researching the loss of the Fartown ground in Huddersfield.Tony's contribution to the text appears on page 161.

The idea behind Arnot's book is a simple one: find forty cricket grounds where the game is no longer played, visit the site of each one,talk to people who recall when cricket was played there and illustrate with photographs showing how it was and how it is now, the sort of idea that might have produced a mundane book with a few very familiar photographs. Fortunately Arnot's book is not like that. It is the work of a craftsman who has thoroughly researched the project, cares deeply that such grounds have been lost and he has used many lovely photographs which I suspect in many cases will be new to readers, especially those from the Edwardian era. Photographs, not readers!
Back to Hastings, which occupies the first chapter and in which two photographs commemorate the remarkable achievements of Denis Compton in 1947 when he eclipsed both Hayward's aggregate of 3518 runs and Jack Hobbs' record of sixteen centuries in a first class season. Compton achieved both these landmarks at the Hastings Festival that year. First he beat Hobbs' record when scoring 101 against the touring South Africans for the South of England and a few days later and again representing the South, this time against Pelham Warner's XI, Compton scored the 35 runs necessary to beat Hayward.How those large post war crowds must have enjoyed that week's cricket.
At the same time as Compton was entertaining seaside crowds in Sussex the Scarborough Festival was in progress at North Marine Road. When the original fixture list was published it had featured a match between Leveson Gower's XI and the South Africans but 'shipping conditions' compelled the men from the veld to return home early and the fixtures were rearranged with a North v South match taking the place of the tourists' match. The final match of that year's festival was between The Players, captained by Hutton, who comfortably beat The Gentlemen. One little peculiarity is that the 'Indisposition of Brennan left The Gentlemen without a wicketkeeper and (J.L.) Cheetham of Bridlington took his place'. This was to be Cheetham's only first class match and almost 10% of The Players' runs came in byes but he could perhaps have gained consolation from the fact that his only victim was England opener Cyril Washbrook, caught behind for 7.

In closing I should point out that Arnot's book is not just about the demise of county grounds like Hastings and Fartown, for these are in the minority, although they do include The Circle at Hull where Yoekshire played until the 1990s. Many of the lost grounds described were works' and village grounds. Arnot's description of such grounds will equally bring a tear to the eye of those who played and watched cricket there and perhaps to those who just love the game.