A la Recherche du Stumps Perdue

Lords in the sixties seemed stuck in a Victorian timewarp. There were curious signs with curly painted lettering conveying officious messages from another era: ‘You are requested not move whilst the bowling is from this end.’ ‘All passes must be shewn’ (sic) and ‘Patrons are advised that scorecards may not show the fall of the last wicket’.

On major match days the public, usually in the form of a mob of small boys, was graciously permitted to sit on the hallowed turf in front of the stands. Amongst us, as the evening shadows lengthened, moved the white-coated newspaper seller, intoning his repeated dirge, ‘Evenin’ News, STANdard!’ One effect of allowing boys onto the grass was the constant succession of bits of rubbish that used to go blowing across the ground, sometimes interrupting play as fielders, accompanied by ironic cheers, chased after crisp packets. You never see this nowadays.

The only stands that remain today from that period are the Allen Stand (then the Q stand), The Pavilion, and the Warner Stand. This last edifice looks distinctly dated in the twenty-first century. Then, with its revolutionary cantilever roof, it was the last word in modern stadium architecture. Hardly anyone used the huge old Grandstand, mainly because it had been cunningly designed so that no one sitting in it had a half-decent view of the pitch. And of course there really was a Tavern in those days: a peeling, crumbling Victorian pub in smoked yellow brick with a concourse in front on which drinkers could stand while watching the cricket. Memory is selective on such matters, but I recall that the drinkers all wore tweed jackets with patched elbows or else ‘Gannex’ macs. As a species they were grey faced men with sad, lugubrious eyes and a generally negative view of life, the universe and cricket.

And the cricket in those days wasn’t particularly memorable. The sixties was by no means a golden age of Middlesex cricket. That was still to come. Three captains in a row (Drybrough, Titmus and Parfitt) did a less than satisfactory job. Titmus and Parfitt, of course, were fine cricketers, but as inspirational leaders and tacticians they were wanting, and in an era when the cry was for ‘brighter cricket’ they produced far too many draws. By all accounts the Middlesex Committee of that time was, too put it politely, less than effective as administrators.

Of course I never realised this at the time. I was fiercely loyal to Middlesex, which I firmly believed to be the best team in England, if not the World. I had been born in the county. I was thus qualified to play for them if required. I pitied my unfortunate friends who had first seen the light in Buckinghamshire or Berkshire or Bedfordshire and did not have a pukka first-class county as part of their heritage. Middlesex was MY team and, in that pre-Kolpak world, it was composed largely of men who had also been born in Middlesex.