PLUS CA CHANGE .....

By Contestant No. 1
April 9 2007

This is entry number 1 in this years Writing Competition. The other entries will follow over the next fortnight. After all entries have been displayed for your entertainment on the site you will get a chance to vote for your favourite and our overall winner...

PLUS CA CHANGE .....

It was Michael Vaughan who put my memory into gear. He has made some quite brilliant catches, including the blinder I saw at Lords to get rid of a very dangerous looking Tresco in the 2002 C&G final, but he is capable of dropping more than his share of sitters as well. When he was asked about this in a television interview, he said something like "I usually catch the very difficult chances, but I have problems sometimes with the dollies; I think maybe I just have too much time to think about them." And his words sent my mind spinning back to a game at Cowling over half a century ago ............

I was playing for Cobbydale (Silsden to you perhaps) Under 14's, and I really wasn't very good. I wasn't a bad defensive batsman, though all my runs came from deflections rather than the wonderful flowing drives that I practiced endlessly in front of my Mum's dressing table mirror, while my bowling consisted of a series of long-hops; but it was as a fielder that I failed most miserably. Anyway, perhaps because I was very very keen, but more likely because even in a fairly large village there weren't all that many kids in any one age group, I was in the team that was going to play at Cowling.

We set off just after tea, catching the bus to Steeton Top where we could get the bus to Colne that stopped at Cowling (or Cowing 'Eead as we called it). Getting on the bus heading to Colne was itself a bit of an adventure. It wasn't painted the proper colour because it was a Lanky bus, and we expected to see at least some Lankies on board. Somewhat to my surprise, if there were any to be seen they didn't look any different to normal people, so we couldn't recognise them.

The bus dropped us off right next to the Cowling ground, which sloped steeply up towards the edge of the moor. It was also covered more thickly than usual with cow-claps, which the local lads were doing their best to clear before the game started. The wicket itself was dug into the side of the hill, but still sloped considerably; later in life I saw the supposed slope at Lords, and I couldn't understand what all the fuss was about. It meant that every ball was either an off-break or a leg break, depending on which end you happened to be batting; even the spinners couldn't get enough turn to get a ball to go straight on, but we got used to that quite quickly. Of course, since the field was used for cow pasture most of the time, the pitch itself had a number of bumps and hollows that produced what I later learned to call 'uneven bounce'; but for us in those days it was what we expected. Our home pitch was a lot better, but being on the flood plain of the River Aire the wicket was always soft and the bounce was never predictable. Some years later I played for the first time at a ground in the Home Counties, and was amazed at the even bounce and the speed the ball came onto the bat.

We were never going to get a big score on that pitch, but our captain Barrie was a class or six above the rest of us as a batsman and he held us together. Later he had the almost unbelievable honour of getting to the Yorkshire nets, and into the Colts; he never made the first team, but after he moved to Notts he had a decent career and scored a couple of Championship centuries for them. I think I made six (all singles of course) before I tried to pull what turned out to be a fast leg cutter (coming down the slope) that kept low and bowled me round my legs; well, that was my story when I got back to the boundary. We had a number of decent players as well as Barrie, who was a respectable offie as well as a brilliant batsman; 'Spud' was a very good stumper, my mate Len was a decent pacey bowler and a classy batsman (in spite of having lost an eye when a ball hit him in the face), and Cully was a big hitter who could also bowl fast. So we thought we were in with a chance when the home side went out to bat, particularly since it was by then getting quite late and the light was going.

Of course the rest of the lads knew that I couldn't field for toffee, so I had to be hidden at cow corner among several cow-pats that there hadn't been time to clear. Barrie and Spud reckoned that with the slope of the ground in my favour (I would be standing a good ten foot higher than the wicket), and with the help of the cow-pats to slow the ball down, I might be able to save a few runs. They still had vivid memories (and so did I) of our last match at home, when I had been fielding at Point; the batsman had shaped to turn the ball to square leg but had completely mistimed his shot and the ball had ballooned into the air. I was convinced that it was going towards square leg right up to the moment when it landed a couple of yards in front of me; then I realised why Spud had been looking at me and not where I thought the ball was going. The silence was deafening.

Mind you, I did have some sort of excuse for my poor showing. I had a pair of real leather cricket boots - very heavy and stiff, with metal studs hammered into the thick leather sole. Unfortunately, one of the spikes had driven right through the sole, and stuck up into the inside of the right boot. I had hammered the thing down several times, but I could never get it completely flush with the insole and consequently I always finished a game with my right sock coloured a dark shade of red. On top of that my cricket whites were a bit too big for me. "You'll grow into them" my Mum had said, and she was eventually proved right; but unfortunately at the time my attention was constantly diverted by the tendency of my trousers to end up round my ankles. Taken together, these distractions would I am sure have reduced even a Jonty Rhodes to hapless ineffectiveness, and I was no Jonty Rhodes to start with.

As the Cowling innings progressed, it became obvious that their danger man was a hefty farmer's son who could hit the ball many a mile, and who was entirely used to the vagaries of his home pitch. Most of his shots went down the hill, and the ball was far too often hitting the dry-stone wall that separated the ground from the main road. However, in light that would have been too poor for even a 20/20 game these days he eventually so forgot himself as to pull a ball from Len UP the hill. It was a bloody good shot as well; on a level ground it would certainly have gone well over the boundary. When I saw the ball coming out of the murk in my general direction I had no doubt that it was six all the way, but I thought I had better make some show of an effort to get to the point where the ball would pass at uncatchable height over my head so I started to hare round the boundary scattering dried cow-claps as I did so. After ten yards or so I realised to my horror that the extra ten feet of height that was supposedly to my advantage was bringing the ball just about within reach; so I put on a final burst and stuck my right hand up towards where the ball seemed to be going, while hanging on to the waist band of my trousers with my left. The ball hit my hand perfectly, and it stuck. My own absolute amazement was more than matched by my team mates; disbelief was written in capital letters on every face. Spud was the first to bring himself to speak, and he asked why on earth I didn't field like that all the time. "Ah!" I said. "I usually catch the difficult chances, but I always seem to have problems with the dollies; I think maybe I just have too much time to think about it sometimes."

So that was why Vaughan's words made my eyes glaze over, and I was back in the half light on that bleak hillside close to the Lancashire border, surrounded by the astounded but happy faces of mates most of whom I haven't seen for 50 years. Sometimes 1953 can seem like yesterday.....