The raison d’etre of my friend Annie Chave’s magazine County Cricket Matters, is that county cricket, in its traditional multi-day red ball format, is such a central part of English sporting culture – indeed English culture generally – that it must be preserved and supported in an age when it is under threat like never before.

It is a sentiment I wholeheartedly support, and this piece, written after a couple of days watching Lancashire play Hampshire at Southport in 2023, embodies a lot of my feelings about something which transcends so many of the worst aspects of the modern world.

Cricket is a game of stillnesses and of conjunctions.  It lacks the constant movement, the periods of incessant flow, absorbing time and tide, of sports such as football and rugby.  These are sports based on motion; cricket is a game at least partly based on thought.  After every ball there is a pause as the bowler returns to his mark and while there may not be physical stillness there is the stillness that permits consideration, reflection, motivation, anxiety.

Conjunctions can be the simple meeting of bat and ball, of ball and pad, of ball and hands as a catch is taken, or it can be the meeting of youth and experience, of knowledge and ingenuousness, of the confidence of accomplishment and the confidence of youthful naiveté.

So it is on the Southport and Birkdale Cricket Club ground on two hot June days in what might bureaucratically be described as early summer but which as sure as hell feel like the highest of high summer times.  The sun is enervatingly strong; there is a timid breeze, but its origins are uncertain.  The sea may have an influence but the thought occurs that the yellow trains that scoot past every twenty minutes or so are also playing their part.  At the Harrod Drive End an elderly man has positioned a bench at the end of his garden, facing the play.  He watches the game intently, only retreating inside when the sun begins to feel too strong.  Around the scorched earth there is torpor; ice creams are consumed, people talk about what is on their mind, whether it be their recent experiences of surgery, or the pitfalls of travelling to Sedbergh, or football.  In this, one of the most successful areas which that sport has ever known, there is always football.  The Everton supporters exchange opinions about England’s goalkeeper Jordan Pickford, while on the other side Manchester United fans recall the days when they, and not their rival city club, were champions of Europe.  Young club members chat about the game, about cricket, about their club’s overseas player and the indoor net he has at his home in India.  People are always saying that ‘young people’ aren’t interested in cricket, but there is no such thing as ‘young people’.  Young people are not homogeneous; it is obvious that these young people know and love cricket and once a year they let county professionals play on their field of dreams.  Here they watch bowlers – Will Williams: staccato but rhythmical; Kyle Abbott, bulky, unsubtle, but highly skilled; Keith Barker: muscular and persistent.

They watch batsmen too.

Daryl Mitchell is a tall man with a patrician demeanour born of the confidence of achievement.  He knows what it is to dominate far more substantial attacks than Hampshire’s in more pressurised circumstances, and he wastes no time in reaching double figures.  In the 63^rd over of Lancashire’s innings, with his team’s lead already exceeding a hundred, he is joined by George Bell.  Bell is more than a decade Mitchell’s junior and his confidence is the product of gifted youth.  He has discovered something that he can do very well.  What is more, he is paid to do it and he can bring joy to people.  At a time when his fellows are searching uncertainly for their place in the world, for the time being at least, he has his.  In the future he will know failure; the vicissitudes of professional sport and life itself will have their time, but for now they are things of which he has little awareness.

It is a classic partnership of complementary opposites.  Mitchell has seen too much for him to be excited about what he is doing, although he takes pleasure from it, but Bell’s jauntiness and poise reveal his relish for the contest and his part in it.  On a few occasions Bell plays a false shot or appears uncertain and Mitchell comes down the pitch to punch gloves and offer advice.  This is gratifying and there is as much elegance and certainty about it as there is about Mitchell’s batting.  At these moments Bell can only benefit, but the overwhelming impression is of a young player who knows his game – knows the game – very well.  The partnership accrues a tidy 76 in 20 overs before Bell is lbw to Mohammed Abbas; he slopes off with his shoulders slightly hunched but it is merely a sign of disappointment at the way an enjoyable time has been curtailed.  He will be back for more.  Imagine being 20 years old and being able to do this, in this setting.  The crowd is full of men decades his senior, bruised by life’s disappointments and denials, who would love to have been able to dip their toes in the water which George Bell, the same age as many of their grandchildren, occupies.  But they never could, and this is something they made their peace with long ago.  They have seen more cricket than George Bell possibly knows has ever existed, and they can talk about it for longer than he could imagine anyone talking about anything.  The only interludes in their reveries of warm reminiscence involve trips to the bar or the ice cream van.  This existence may not be what they once wished for, but for now it will do very well.

There is another conjunction.  It is that of the professional game and its amateur cousin.  Club members have spent months preparing for this.  Meetings, arrangements, plans, purchases, discussions, agreements, disagreements.  Snatched conversations on Lord Street or Marine Drive on bleak winter days, hoping for sunshine.  Now the game is here and professional cricketers occupy their dressing rooms and walk round their ground, eating ice creams as they go.  The pleasure is mutual.

In recent years there has been a renewed appreciation of the qualities which make County Championship cricket so special.  In the era of incessant international cricket, and of franchise leagues devoid of context and meaning, there is pleasure to be taken in its familiar cadences, suffused as they are with an indefinable humanity which the modern world so often seems to lack.  Many people – myself very much included – have spoken and written of how a day at this sort of cricket can feel like a sanctuary from the madness of what lies beyond the boundary.  An adjunct of this has been an increased awareness of the virtues of cricket played away from counties’ headquarters.  It is obvious that a crowd of 1500 at a ground such as Trafalgar Road will create more atmosphere than a crowd of the same size in a Test match arena.

Cricket mixes strategy with brutality, heritage with innovation, prosaic utilitarianism with ethereal beauty.  For those of us with a particular cast of mind it is best enjoyed in an atmosphere that permits compulsion and excitement, but also reflection. 

On those days at Southport, this was what we had.  The chaos and dislocation of the wider world is one thing, but there has been more than enough chaos in the way English cricket is organised in recent years too.  Far too many facets of the game have been denuded as the result of empty promises and misplaced ambition. 

We cannot let outground cricket be another.

County Cricket Matters, Volume 16, September 2023