Historic ground brought back to life

Posted by Tony Hutton

Again following in Brian's footsteps, this time a day later on Wednesday 8th June, I
arrived at a ground which I knew about sixty years ago when I lived in the Birmingham area. In those days the ground at Portland Road was known as the Mitchells and Butlers cricket club, who played in the Birmingham League and were one of the top teams. Some of the professional in that period were Eddie Watts of Surrey, Horace Hazell of Somerset and I believe some time later Alan Townsend of Warwickshire.

M & B were brewers and the ground was adjacent to the Cape Hill Brewery to the west of Birmingham city centre. For some reason although I visited most Birmingham League grounds this was one that passed me by. I can remember Jack Bannister taking all ten wickets for Warwickshire in a first class match with Combined Services here. It must have been a midweek game and I was probably still at school.

Edgbaston Foundation Sports Ground, Birmingham

However this long standing ambition was achieved as the ground, which had been derelict for many years, has recently been restored by the Edgbaston Foundation as a splendid base for both junior cricket and Warwickshire second XI. Today was day two of a three day second eleven championship match. Yorkshire had batted first yesterday and made a modest total of 261 with Callum Geldart, recently returned to the fold along with Azeem Rafiq, making top score of 45.

View from the boundary at Portland Road.

The overnight batsman for Warwickshire were veteran Ian Westwood, who scored 196 for Warwickshire first team at Headingley last season, and youngster Aaron Thomason, who has played for England under 19s. They batted throughout the morning sesssion and beyond to put on a partnership of 244. Westwood soon got to his century, but not content with that went on and on to reach a double century and was on 230 not out when rain stopped play just before the tea interval. Thomason, who was the more aggresive of the two completed a fine century of his own before being bowled by Karl Carver for 136.

Yorkshire applaud as Westwood reaches his century

The new batsman Mellor, wicketkeeper from Staffordshire, took advantage of the tiring young Yorkshire bowlers in the mid-day sun and added a not out 50 before the rains came. Warwickshire had reached a huge total of 502-4 and it looked like an uphill struggle for Yorkshire to avoid an innings defeat the next day. More of that later.

A good morning's work. Westwood and Thomason go to lunch.

One interesting fact emerged during all this carnage, when a young man in a Pudsey St. Lawrence T-shirt walked around the ground. We were able to advise the locals what the letters PSLCC stood for, but had no idea who the player was. By a process of elimination of all the other Warwickshire players we worked out that it must be C.R.M. (Charlie) Parker who had taken four wickets on the first day. On searching the PSL website, we found that he had joined them pre-season after being at Sedbergh School, the Durham Academy and Menston CC. It was also revealed that his great uncle is none other than Roland Parker a stalwart of the PSL club for many years.

With the detective work over and the rain getting heavier we headed back to our base in Stourbridge, a mere eight miles away. This took us about fifty minutes as the rain became torrential, the roads turned into rivers and the valley bottoms rapidly filled with a lot of water. A horrendous journey, which might well have been even worse had we left an hour later. Not an experience we want repeating.

Next day everything had dried up rapidly as we set off for the final leg of our tour towards Loughborough. Back at Portland Road play started on time, Warwickshire declared and then bowled out Yorkshire for 296, thus leaving themselves just 56 runs to win but only seven overs to get them. Yorkshire's opening bowlers had other ideas and Wainman with 5-24 and Barnes with 2-18 almost brought about an amazing turn round as the batsman tried to slog the runs. So match drawn and some pride restored.