Summer Sports - Cricket
five minutes for order to be restored. When the innings finally resumed, Compton strode down the wicket and was promptly stumped for 101. I came across this story whilst talking to Hastings Priory CC’s current groundsman, Mark Foster, in the course of researching my book on Britain’s Lost Cricket Grounds.
As the title suggests, the book is about
grounds and not groundsmen. About the strokes that were played, the balls that were bowled, the catches that were taken on those grounds as well as the social and economic circumstances that led to their demise. But, meeting someone as dedicated and unassuming as Mark was also a reminder that great cricketing deeds can only be performed because someone has devoted time, effort and skill to produce the right platform - a playing surface flat enough to build an innings, yet with enough in it to keep the bowlers interested.
Mark had joined the groundstaff after leaving school in 1980. He learned his trade from Jim Case, one of a long line of Hastings groundsmen who stood no nonsense. Perhaps the most revered after Tutt was Len Creese, the South African- born former all-rounder who had played for Hampshire before the war. He was considered so good at producing top-class pitches that, at one point, he was lured away to Sussex’s headquarters at Hove - only to be called back again when the Hastings wicket deteriorated so badly in his absence that county cricket was temporarily suspended. Sussex’s trips down the A27 came to an end for good in 1989, after they lost to Mike Gatting’s Middlesex by nine wickets at the Central Ground. By that time, the writing was on the wall - or rather on plans for a new shopping centre. Controversy had raged for much of the 80s after property developer Sam Chippendale had approached Hastings Borough Council with a proposal to build on the site. The outcome was finally settled in 1994. Hastings Priory upped stumps and moved to their new ground at Horntye Sports complex on a breezy cliff top.
That’s where Mark now plies his trade. They are better facilities, of course, for the players and the staff, but you don’t have to be a cricket lover to understand that the building of the Priory Meadow Shopping Centre was a prime example of the replacement of the distinctive with the
bog-standard. The “truest piece of turf in the United Kingdom” is buried somewhere under the concourse between Boots and River Island.
It was an all too familiar story as I travelled from Hastings to Hull and beyond. If wickets weren’t buried under shopping centres, it was estates of Barratt or Bovis homes, outposts of Tesco or Sainsbury or, in one case, the cooked meat counter at Asda. Other grounds had been given over to the relentless pounding of all-the-year-round football boots. Bramhall Lane in Sheffield, where England had played Australia in a test match in 1902, became a four-sided football ground soon after Yorkshire played their last match there in 1973. And The Circle in Hull, where Yorkshire clinched the county championship in 1968, is now under the KC Stadium. It was here in 1937 that Len Hutton celebrated his 21st birthday by putting on 315 for the first wicket against Leicestershire with Herbert Sutcliffe. One of the Leicestershire bowlers was
heard to mutter; “I’d rather be back working down the pit than bowling to these two buggers.” It was also at The Circle that Ray Illingworth hit his maiden century, 146 not out against Essex in 1953. Three years later, he took 6 for 15 against Scotland. When I rang Illy to remind him of those feats, he was well aware of the figures but in no mood for warm reminiscences. “All I remember about playing at Hull,” he said, “was that the ground was wide open, it was bloody cold and smelt of fish.” Nonetheless, the groundstaff produced pitches that seemed to suit not only the county side on their trips “out East” but also the resident Hull Cricket Club. They won the Yorkshire League every season bar two from 1947 to 1953.
That was the year when a bungalow for
the groundsman was built. It was to prove a mixed blessing for future inhabitants. When Wally Hillaby took over the post from George Cawthray in 1969, they sat outside having a drink together watching a county match. Suddenly, the ball whizzed past them and thundered into the front door. George was, apparently, unperturbed. “You’ll have to get used to that, Wally,” he told his successor. “I was once in the lounge having a beer when a ball came straight through the window and smashed my glass.”
The pavilion at Hull was condemned as unfit in 1986, and demolished the
following year. Wally Hillaby and his wife moved out of their vulnerable bungalow and vandalism increased. Drained of resources, the club eventually accepted an offer of £250,000 to vacate their ground and make way for the future. And the future belonged to Hull City. As the 90s wore on, more and more counties took a hard-headed look at their finances and concluded that visits to their outgrounds were becoming too expensive. Members and the corporate clients could be accommodated more profitably at headquarters. By that time, the economic upheavals of the Thatcher years had taken a severe toll on the works grounds that had proudly hosted first-class cricket once or twice a season - the likes of Courtaulds in Coventry, Hoffmans in Chelmsford and Imperial Tobacco in Bristol. Paternalism evaporated as the balance of the economy tilted towards the financial and service sectors. Manufacturing companies could no longer afford to pay full-time groundsmen to keep their pitches in pristine condition. At Imperial Tobacco’s ground in Bristol, there were once six squares and six groundsmen to go with them. And still a young shaver called Shane Warne was expected to do his fair share of groundstaff maintenance when he wasn’t rewriting the Western League record books. Warne spent his first night in England in 1988, sleeping (alone) in the old groundsman’s flat above the magnificent Edwardian pavilion. “When the wind blew, it creaked a bit,” I was told by Imperial’s former coach Micky Hall. “He was convinced there was a ghost in there.” Five years later, Warne was on his way to becoming the bowler who haunted English batsmen and the old Imperial ground was on its way out. Lord Hanson had bought it in the early 90s. No paternalist he, support for sport in general and the time-consuming business of cricket in particular seeped away. Imperial CC left in 1996, played for one more season at the home of Fry’s Chocolate and folded the following year. And the pavilion? That was destroyed by fire in 1999, just as Bristol City Council was working towards having it listed. The opportunity never arose to put up a plaque proclaiming “Shane Warne slept here”.
*Britain’s Lost Cricket Grounds by Chris Arnot is published by Aurum at £25.
“Apparently, the German bomber pilots had out-of-date maps and flew home under the illusion that they’d destroyed Hastings harbour”
DECEMBER/JANUARY 2012 PC 93
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