Summer Sports - Cricket
Surviving BOMBS and BOUNCERS - but not BOOTS!
In his splendid book, Britain’s Lost Cricket Grounds, author Chris Arnot describes the former ‘truest piece of turf in the United Kingdom’ as being buried “under the concourse, somewhere between Boots and River Island”. If you were the recipient of a book token at Christmas, you could do a lot worse that using it to purchase this insight into our lost cricket heritage
W
G Grace described the wicket at Priory Meadow in Hastings as “the truest piece of turf in the United Kingdom”. And he should have known. Over
forty-four summers, he turned out everywhere from Lord’s to the lowliest club grounds, as well as the mole-plagued pitches of country-house estates. Indeed, he would still have been playing when Alf Tutt began his 50-year stint as groundsman in 1902 at what was also known as the Central Ground, because it was smack bang in the middle of Hastings. Tutt protected his turf with the zealousness that Grace guarded his wicket. He used to bark through a megaphone at any stranger straying towards it. Heaven knows how he would have addressed the German airmen who had the effrontery to
drop five bombs on the Central Ground in July, 1940. Fortunately, they avoided the square. Apparently, they had out-of-date maps and flew home under the illusion that they’d destroyed Hastings harbour. Within two years of the war ending, big
crowds were once again flocking to Priory Meadow for the end-of-season Cricket Week and the local derby between Sussex and Kent. Bomb damage to the outfield had been expertly repaired by Tutt and his team. Just as well. Cricket history was made that summer in Hastings when Denis Compton broke Sir Jack Hobbs’s record by hitting his 17th century of the season with the second ball after tea, whilst playing for a South of England X1 against the South Africans.
Photographers piled on to the field and
a large section of the crowd followed. Tutt must have been beside himself. It took
Priory Meadow Cricket Ground is now Priory Meadow Shopping Centre
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