FSOM: Cricket – Don’t go the way of football

Enough hot air has been pumped out about England’s abject failure in the European Under-21 Championships to ensure Fifty Shades doesn’t have to add his two lungfuls.

Fifty Shades is not going to get dragged into the argument of whether the Premier League’s riches blocks the path of promising young English players from first-team action, or whether the FA is scared of asking the big clubs to release their young player for international duty.

Nope, we’ll leave that that lightweight subject to somebody else.

Fifty Shades is deeply concerned about a far more insidious threat to something England are currently not bad at, cricket.

This threat comes dressed in a high-vis vest and operates behind a ‘keep off the grass’ sign.

Time was that the lunch and tea intervals of a country cricket match were the dinner gong to invite legions of kids to swarm on to the outfield.

The umpires pocketing the bails and saying; “Over bowled, and that’s lunch (or tea)” was the starting gun to a race between the groundsman and an invasion force armed with a variety of bats and balls.

The groundsman would scuttle out with stakes and a rope to corrall off the square – not that there was ever any danger of it being desecrated by the respectful feet of an invasion force which treated the square like warring countries treat Switzerland.

Once the square was roped off, the groundsman would go through his ritual of filling in bowlers’ foot marks, sweeping off loose dirt, remarking the creases.

The real action, though, would be going on around him as tens of mini-games would erupt like mushrooms in a damp field.

The mealtime outfield invasion was one of the great sights of cricket.

It was a rite of passage for all youngsters who harboured any sort of ambition to one day be out in the middle. Allowing them on to the outfield was giving them a delicious taste of setting foot on the playing surface like allowing a 12-year-old half a glass of cider at Christmas.

But it was also an act of cricket connecting with its public. It was a game saying to its followers; “We actually like you being here. Please come and be part of us.”

And to be honest it wasn’t just kids who spilled on to the outfield.

It was accepted that the intervals provided a welcome chance to stretch aching legs. Where better to grab a bit of the most leisurely exercise than on a huge patch of grass?

The older cricket follower would venture out to have a look at the strip.

It was one of the odder sights of the game as grown men would huddle round and cast wiseacre stares at the 22-yard strip where the action had been taking place like generals surveying a battle field.

“Should take spin soon,” one sage would venture, his mates nodding knowingly in agreement as though they could read the pitch as thoroughly as a shaman reading runes when in fact it’s about as familiar territory to them as Holly Willoughby’s boobs would be to Graham Norton.

The older fan’s perambulation was likely to be interrupted by the occasional tennis ball whizzing by at ear-height or a dribbler crossing his toes, but that was a more than acceptable risk.

Similarly, the cricket watcher of more advanced years who populated the ringside seats up against the advertising hoardings would accept it as an occupational hazard that their lunchtime butty or tea-time sponge finger might incur some structural damage from a stray ball.

And they didn’t moan or complain. People would take genuine pleasure from watching youngsters get their kicks on the outfield.

Fifty Shades and his press-box colleagues certainly did.

Cricket did – and still does, but in reduced numbers – attract its share of what some might call colourful characters, but others might dub spooky weirdos.

Hampshire’s home before they moved to the Ageas Bowl was the County Ground at Northlands Road, a typically quaint and quirky old cricket ground which attracted fruitloops and window-lickers like a candle draws moths.

One of each season’s first requirements was checking off the tick-list to see which regulars had returned, or who might have been a victim of the winter cull.

It was reassuring to see on the first home day of the season that the seat right by the players’ entrance gate on to the outfield were occupied by Divine. We never knew her real name. Apparently she was a guest house owner from Bournemouth but was dubbed Divine by us pressbox wits as she looked like the old drag artiste.

We’d scan the horizon anxiously to see if Stinky the Postman had survived the winter. It was rumoured he was a former postie from Newbury, but you only had to stand downwind of him to understand why he got his nickname and to give credence to the stories that he was happy to bed down for the night under a hedge on Southampton Common if he missed his train back to Berkshire.

He never wore socks under trainers that resembled a kayak strapped to each foot and were strapped on to his feet by a variety of devices ranging from odd coloured shoe laces, butchers’s string, and those strange pink elastic bands discarded by postman and which gave further credence to assertions on his former occupation.

The highlight of the interval entertainment was watching a trio of siblings we rather cruelly dubbed the Tefal Brothers after the nerdy, oversize-brained mock scientists from an old TV advert.

This trio were to athletic power and hand-eye co-ordination what Adolf Hitler was to house painting.

As they took to the outfield armed with their comedy prop of a tennis ball, their first task was to stake out a bit of territory to indulge in a spot of Catch.

This was not as easy task as the necessity to form a loose triangle seemed a task beyond their compass, All three would assemble in one spot, and when the oldest (who we dubbed Dave Tefal) told the other two to spread out, they would both scatter to the same spot, and stare bemusedly at each other.

Their attempts to play Catch were hampered by their inability to be able to carry out two important elements of the game, they being a) to throw a ball, and b) to catch a ball.

The middle Tefal (Colin) would wind-up and hurl his arm forward to propel the ball to the youngest Tefal (who we dubbed Janet) only to find it had fallen out of his hand on the backswing and he was throwing fresh air.

Their catching was equally calamitous and comedic. With his own eyes, Fifty Shades once witnessed Dave Tefal against all the laws of nature, somehow launch the ball upwards. Colin Tefal shoved Janet Tefal aside and planted his legs to take the catch.

His cry of “I’ve got it, I’ve got it” was cruelly stifled to “I’ve got…” as the ball passed completely through his hands and plugged in his gaping maw.

Hampshire’s old Northlands Road ground was home to a good old fashioned scoreboard. Not one of your all-singing, all-dancing electronic numbers which can display adverts telling you which is the best house insurance to buy or what Graeme Swann’s favourite album is, but one which displayed numbers and gave you the information you wanted, like how many runs had been scored and wickets taken.

It was operated from inside by a strange collection of stunted humanoids we called The Time Bandits (Google the film to see why).

They were hugely efficient, never got the score wrong, and it was our desire to one day get an invite into the hidden world inside the scorebox.

We imagined it to be a magical secret world like Frodo Baggins’ Hobbiton burrow, with a kettle always on the boil on a Calor Gas ring, packets of Hobnobs opened invitingly, copies of Razzle Readers’ Wives Special for those long rain breaks and car seats and armchairs retrieved from the local tip, complete with stuffing leaking out and springs poking into the sensitive parts.

Alas, the call never came, and all this disappeared when Hampshire moved to the Rose Bowl, as it was.

The first victim of the move was the interval outfield invasion. It was like a house-proud housewife ordering guests to take their shoes off before they were allowed in the living room.

It may be that old-style county grounds such as Worcester’s New Road or Kent’s St Lawrence allow the tradition to continue, and welcome youngsters on to the outfield.

But certainly at those grounds with international cricket aspirations – including the Ageas Bowl – playtime has stopped.

Of course, the wet blanket thrown over outfield play is the suffocating one of Health & Safety, but that’s just a limp excuse.

It’s cricket aping football and deciding that fans are now customers and as such, must have a customer experience.

That means instead of finding a spot you fancy halfway back on the seats at mid-wicket, or turning up early to blag a seat on the front by the advertising hoardings, customers are now escorted to their allocated seat.

The customer experience means that instead of watching the action in the middle while taking a leisurely stroll around the boundary, stewards will glower at you if so much as fidget in your seat and hint you might get up to stretch your legs.

A customer experience means watching cricket is becoming a homogenized, sterilised, pasteurised trial.

And those tennis balls and plastic cricket bats that were once eagerly packed into bags by youngsters excited at the thought of playing on the same outfield trodden by their heroes, are now mouldering in the cupboard under the stairs.

Their young owners now sit long-faced and stare longingly at the huge areas of grassland that remain as empty as the arctic tundra during the natural breaks in play.

Either that, or the young owners don’t turn up to cricket at all.

There are numerous reasons why England faces a bleak international football feature, many sourced from English football’s ability to load up the pistol and plug itself in the foot.

Cricket has the chance to disarm itself, empty the bullets from the chamber and put the gun back in the drawer.

England’s shabby performance in the European Under-21 championships could well mean Stuart Pearce will soon have plenty of time on his hands.

Being a fan, he might well take in a cricket match or two. But if you see him on the way to a game, tell him not to bother taking a bat and tennis ball with him.

By John May

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