Cricket is a curious sport. Try to explain to anyone not brought up in a cricketing nation just how it works will almost certainly lead to blank stares and incredulity. On the surface a player throws a ball at three sticks 22 yards away and an opposing player uses a lump of wood to try and prevent that ball from hitting them. There is an old joke which explains the rules of cricket as one team out in the field, the other is in, each man that’s in the side that’s in goes out and when he’s out he comes in etc etc. It is not too far from the truth. Despite shorter forms of the game proving more popular in most cricket playing nations, the ultimate test in cricket is, aptly, the Test Match. The most revered series of Test Matches is The Ashes. Only two nations compete for The Ashes, England and Australia. It happens every couple of years, alternately in each country, and the trophy is a tiny urn said to contain the ashes of some burnt cricket bails. Look it up if you want to know why. To win this most innocuous of trophies, the two teams play each other five times. Each of these games can last up to five days. Win more games than the opposition and you claim The Ashes. Despite lasting up to five days, games can still end in a draw (or a tie, but that’s a different thing altogether and has only ever happened twice in the history of Test cricket, over 2,000 games) so a series of five games might end up even in which case the country that had The Ashes going in to a series retains it. Going into this summer’s Ashes series, Australia were the current holders of the urn. England needed to win the series to claim it back.
I recently went to the fourth game of the series which was standing at one game apiece and one game drawn. Don’t worry, I’m not going to do a full report on what happened. If you like cricket you will know already and if you don’t you will probably leave the page quicker than a Jofra Archer bouncer. The game was played at Old Trafford, Manchester, the home of Lancashire County Cricket Club. I’d bought the tickets a year ago in the closing overs of my career when I thought I’d better ensure I had stuff to do post retirement. In a fit of madness I bought two tickets for each of the five days. Those ten tickets alone cost me £600 but I was sure I’d get some takers for the second seat as it is The Ashes after all. I did. My sister Jill took days one and two, Malcolm, an old work friend, took days three and four and Jill promised to take day five should the game last that long. Jill and I had been to Antigua earlier this year to watch a Test Match which only lasted three days before England suffered a rather dismal defeat so we were hoping for a bit more of a contest this time. As it was, the game had less than an hour remaining when it concluded so I feel we had got our money’s worth.
Cricket is a summer sport. It requires dry conditions and mild temperatures, not only to play but to watch too. September is a month where summer can linger or autumn can get a head start, especially ‘up north’ in a place like Manchester. On Day One of the Test it was cold and grey. We had had to wait an age for a tram to the ground and as it approached the tram stop we heard a roar that indicated not only had play got underway, England had got a wicket. Not long after we found our seats, they got another. This could be a good day we thought. It wasn’t. The play was interrupted by squally showers that whipped the covers on the Old Trafford pitch into a mad frenzy and soaked the poor saps whose job it was to stand on them in an effort to prevent them blowing into the Manchester Ship Canal. We got less than half a day’s play in total and after that good start, England were toiling in the face of the Australian batsmen. In particular, one Australian batsman called Steve Smith. A rather strange chap, he fidgets and faffs around between balls (stop sniggering right now) and is the number one rated batsman in the world. He was also banned for cheating a year or so ago when, as Australian captain, he encouraged his players to use sandpaper to roughen up the ball, a heinous crime in cricket. Much of the Old Trafford crowd were in no mood to let bygones be bygones and gave him a lot of stick. He responded by scratching his nuts, tapping his pads, waving his bat in the air as if swatting flies and dispatching deliveries to the boundary with monotonous regularity.
Day Two was more of the same, only without the breaks for rain. Smith went on to score a double century and if you don’t know what that is, it will suffice to say that you don’t witness them very often. Even some of those who booed him were applauding when he finally was out. Not that I saw that as I was in the lavatory at the time recycling the beer that inevitably comes with watching the cricket. By the end of the day Australia had declared – another cricket oddity – and England’s innings had got off to a modest start. Australia were on top, not a place you’d expect a land Downunder. Day Three dawned with grey skies and rain. It wasn’t nice. Play was delayed until half past one when the frontal system finally cleared over the Pennines. England did well for a while but stuttered a bit towards the end of the day. Unlike the other days, our tickets for Day Three had us in the Fosters Party Stand. This is a very large structure made of scaffolding and is of a temporary nature. It’s been there for several years – temporary must have a slightly different meaning in Lancashire – and is, as its name suggests, where the rowdier elements of cricket support congregate. Several thousand of them. Lots make the effort to come in fancy dress, inflatable objects such as giant watermelons and dinosaurs get bounced around, industrial quantities of beer gets drunk and the occasional fight breaks out. It’s an experience watching cricket in this location. Quite an amusing for a while, though after several hours it was getting just a bit tiresome for this observer. The ‘He’s got a pineapple, on his head’ song was quite funny at first, when it got to the fiftieth rendition of it I was kind of praying for the prickly fruit in question to be crushed into oblivion on the bonce of the latest subject.
Day four saw us back in the Lightning Stand. It seemed to be a location where some of the visiting Australian fans were congregated. They were easily identifiable, not only by their identical green and gold shell suits but by the fact they were all well into their dotage and absolutely frozen stiff. The weather was fine enough but there was a distinct autumnal chill in the air that seemed to be quite a shock to those antipodean folk. Meanwhile, over in the Party Stand, several rotund gentlemen from northern England had removed their shirts to much cheering. Steve Smith made another load of runs in Australia’s second innings and by the end of the day England chances of regaining the little urn were receding rapidly. We were, however, going in to a fifth day which meant we’d get our money’s worth.
And so to that fifth and final day. Australia were hot favourites to win the game. They had 588 balls to get eight English batsmen out. England were way too many runs behind to win the game itself but there was just the merest glimmer of hope that they could bat all day without the Aussies getting all of those eight wickets. That would have meant the game ending in a draw and the dream of winning back the Ashes staying alive until the final game of the series. The smart money was on the Aussies finishing the game by the lunch break though. However, the remaining England batsmen put up some good resistance. It’s one of the oddities of the game of cricket that at time you can cheer when, basically, nothing happens. And cheer we did when the batsmen blocked the ball or avoided it altogether. Each time it meant one more of those 588 deliveries was ticked off. A few runs were scored but they were not important. Not getting out was the only thing that mattered to England fans. The Australians kept plugging away though and wickets fell. A couple in the first session. Another two in the second. The last hour arrived with England’s last batsmen at the crease, just one wicket remaining. Fifteen overs or ninety balls left. It had been quite an effort to drag things out that far. Nine balls later England’s final wicket fell and Australia had won the game, retaining the Ashes in the process.
So despite the result and the disappointment of Australia retaining the Ashes, how was the experience? Well, there were interruptions due to the weather and even when the rain stopped the mercury only occasionally popped above the 15 degree celsius graticule. A lot of bland lager was consumed at £5-50 per pint which meant many trips to a crowded lavatory with a suspiciously sticky floor which frequently coincided with a wicket falling. On three of the five days around ninety steps had to be negotiated up and down each time a lager or a wee was required. There are numerous food concessions on the concourse behind the stands and the aromas they generated raised an expectation of quality that taste suggested they rarely managed to achieve. The journey to and from the ground in the crowded trams could be uncomfortable though we did find a way round that involving a ten minute walk to and from a different tram stop. Some of the other spectators were annoying, especially in the Party Stand later on in the day after their twentieth pint. Oh, and did I mention, Australia dominated and won the bloody game. Despite all that I really enjoyed the experience and am pleased I was there from (almost) the first ball to the last. It was a long old slog of course, a Test in fact, but I’m glad I had the staying power. Will I be doing it again? I’ve already got tickets for next year’s Test Match at Old Trafford, against Pakistan. Not for the five days, however, just two. I think that’s more than enough for my bladder to cope with.
Glad to be Grey 