A Beautiful Game

by Mark Nicholas

  Pops, or maybe me (who cared, except her?) had run a bath and forgotten about it. By the time the cops turned up, the landlady had lost the plot. Our bathwater was a steady flow into her living room. The cops found the car two days later, abandoned in a derelict part of town. The landlady charged us proper money for the fix-up. We were on £21.50 a week so, with a few caveats, Judge Popplewell and Mrs Nicholas agreed to pick up the tab.

  Stressed, we arrived by taxi at the St Cross ground in Winchester just before the lunch interval. The coach lost the plot too. He said it was our last chance, which seemed a little extreme, but it wasn’t the moment to point out that we had not been alerted to a first chance. The fact was, we were two public schoolboys, and the reasonable perception was that we had lived a life fed by the silver spoon.

  Actually, Sainsbury—or Sains (what imagination we had for nicknames!)—was a fabulous man. He had played for the county from 1954 to 1976 as an accurate left-arm spinner, brilliant close fielder and gutsy middle-order batsman. Then, in a jobs-for-the-boys appointment, he became coach. He had no qualification other than a long and worthy playing career but county second elevens were run by former professionals who simply passed on their stock in trade. Frankly, Sains was not very good at it but he was a top bloke and we all adored him.

  Popplewell didn’t make the end-of-term cut, sadly, but Somerset snapped him up, so somebody else lived off dried old chicken and stale cornflakes too. I was offered a two-year contract, starting 1 April 1978.

  These contract announcements were made early each September and filled most of the playing staff with dread. Young players dreamt of glory in the game they loved. Fellows in their mid- to late twenties needed the job. Those in their early 30s, many of whom had long fallen out of love—with the game and often their wives, too—prayed for the chance of a benefit year and a tax-free windfall in recognition of their long service.

  That autumn of 1976 had spelt the end for two splendid characters, Richard Lewis (Lew the Shag—though Lew went on to marry the daughter of the chairman of the club’s cricket committee and to become cricket coach at Charterhouse School, so not bad) and Pete Barrett (Pissy Pete, who loved a drink). Famously, when hit in the nuts by Michael Holding in Hampshire’s match against West Indies the previous summer, Pete lay writhing on the ground and looked up to see Clive Lloyd asking if everything was intact. ‘Think so, captain, but ’ere,’ said Pete, ‘would you mind asking yer fast bowler t’slow down a bit?’ Both were playing Minor Counties cricket in 1977 but hung around with us the rest of the time. Pete was a ripper bloke who tragically died in a motorcycle accident a year or two later. It took us a while to smile again.

  Hillers and Andy Murtagh (Murt) stayed on to become 2nd XI senior pros, an oxymoron if ever there was one. John Rice (Dicey Ricey) was playing more first-team cricket, which was better than living on the fringe, so he got a two-year deal too. Same for Nigel Cowley. Rice played another five years and Cowley twelve. Both were destined to leave Hampshire unhappily—there is no easy way to release a professional sportsman—though they, thankfully, found fulfilment in the game elsewhere. Rice got the bullet in 1982 but was soon appointed coach at Eton College, a job he held for 30 years. His wife, Sue, ran the school shop, and together they became a popular and integral part of Eton life. Cowley played in our team that won the Benson & Hedges (one-day) Cup in 1988 before a brief spell at Glamorgan led to the end of his playing career. He turned his mind and spinning-finger to umpiring, and is still at it now. Increasingly, cricket takes care of its own.

  The County Ground in Northlands Road, Southampton, was a quaint place. The pitch was good and the boundaries were shortish. I had first been there on a school trip to watch the 1975 Australians. Richards made runs in both innings, though Australia won the match with a convincing run chase in which Ian Chappell made a hundred. Absorbed and starstruck, I resolved to return one day and bloody well play out there myself.

  Now here I was, on a month’s trial for which I was paid expenses but would have come for nothing. I was beyond nervous on arrival at those Northlands Road gates. Most of the guys had come through the Hampshire youth system but, having grown up in London, I played for Middlesex Young Cricketers where one or two others were ahead of me in the pecking order of Under-19s county cricket. The trial at Hampshire was courtesy of Gilliat, who had been contacted by my housemaster at Bradfield, Chris Saunders, who knew Gilliat from Oxford University playing days. Sainsbury then called the school coach, John Harvey, once of Derbyshire, and heard Saunders’ view endorsed.

  I was shown to a small, cold, unglamorous changing room with pale-blue walls and a stark concrete floor in the basement of the pavilion, and told to change then report to the nets pronto. The first team were practising and I was sent to bowl in net 3. I looked up to see Richards on strike. Jeeesus. I ran in and bowled a gentle long hop, which, with a distracted air, the great man smashed off the back foot over my head. I ran to get the ball from the fence some 70 yards away. On return, I peeled off the long-sleeved Bradfield College jumper and tried again. Same ball, same result. Shit.

  Nine months earlier, I had opened the bowling for the Public Schools XI against the English Schools Cricket Association (ESCA). That event had nothing to do with bowling at Barry Richards. I tried again, this time fuller and quite straight. Richards blocked it. At this stage of my life, it was the single most exciting thing I had ever done: bowled a ball that one of the two or three best batsmen in the world had blocked. I walked back to my mark, turned to face my hero and take him on again, only to see him walking into the next-door net. Please no. But yes, Richards had gone. That was it. Three balls in paradise. Over.

  We bowled for a couple of hours in damp and chilly conditions before breaking for lunch, which, to my surprise, was at the pub down the road. I had chicken pie and chips. One or two of the lads introduced themselves properly. Tim Tremlett (Trooper) was kind and asked some questions about where I had come from and what cricket I had played previously. I think we drank pints of lager and lime or blackcurrant and lemonade. There were a lot of in-jokes to which I was not privy but I learnt that the 1st XI were done for the day and off to an away match at Lord’s. There was a whisper we would all have a bat later. Not so. I just kept bowling. Fun but not great for my lower back, which was iffy at best. Jim Ratchford (Jim the Fizz—physio, though not really, more a masseur with a good line in sweet talk) noticed me clutching the area of the sacroiliac joint. He offered Deep Heat and a rub. Christ, I thought, I can’t be seen on the physio’s bench on day one. ‘No thanks, Jim,’ which others told me was a wise move. Fancy that, some of the best players in the world and no qualified medical man in sight. Just Jim, who barely knew a calf muscle from a fetlock but gave a damn good rub when the aching soldiers presented themselves. Them were the days.

  I stayed in a bed and breakfast next to the pub, slept well after the day’s excitement and woke to find rain chucking it down. My worst nightmare. I wanted to play cricket every day—yes, that’s every damn day. In general, old pros loved the rain and young pros hated it.

  Thankfully, it relented by midmorning and we were back in those nets. I bowled better but was outplayed by David Rock (Jungle Rock, after the song), a young talent out of Portsmouth just a few months older than me. He had an easy upright stance and drove the ball through mid-on with authority. A few weeks later he was playing for the 1st XI at Portsmouth against Essex.

  I had a chat with him at lunch—more pie and chips, pint of lager and lime, I kid you not—about his bat, which had a black triangular motif over the splice. Rock had used Fearnley equipment from the start of his career and explained that Duncan Fearnley was a former Yorkshire and Worcestershire batsman who now made his own bats at a factory in Worcester. This was a revelation to me. I had no idea there actually was a man called Duncan Fearnley. A year later, Rock took me to the factory to meet him. Duncan made me a bat, for goodness’ sake, and gave it to me, along with pads and gloves—all free. Mum liked that. (From that p
oint on, every spring, I would spend a day with Duncan at the factory in Worcester. We got along famously and after mornings at the work-bench would break for long and alcoholic lunches before returning to sign off on bats and then load the car with gear. We are close mates to this day and often reminisce about Basil D’Oliveira and Alfred Jameson’s quirky little sports shop in Soho. In seventeen years as a professional cricketer, I never used any other make of bat.)

  After lunch we went back to the nets and I was told to pad up. With a beating heart, I took guard at Hampshire County Cricket Club for the first time. The net pitches were grassy and soft. ‘Herbie’ (Richard Elms, a left-arm quick who had just been signed from Kent) made a fool of me. In fact, in general, I made a fool of myself.

  Nerves have never served me well. I completely disagree with the theory that you need at least a sign of nervousness to perform at your best. This has not applied to me in any walk of life. Not at the wicket; not on the tee; not in front of the camera, on the stage or at the lectern; never at a party, nor in a meeting; and definitely not with women. Nerves are my enemy and surely were this day at Northlands Road. The surface was difficult. The ball moved around off the seam and refused to come onto the bat. I missed it, nicked it, slapped it in the air, shut the face on outswingers to lose my off stump and got bowled through the gate by inswingers. It might be the most excruciatingly embarrassing twenty minutes of my life.

  I could sense the disapproval. After the net session we were to drive to Dover and then play the Kent 2nd XI in a three-day match the next day: the biggest game of my life. Mike Hill told Sainsbury they couldn’t possibly leave a staff player behind and take me. Others whispered in corners with a similar sentiment. Andy Murtagh sensed the general unease, told everyone to pack their gear and that he would have the travel arrangements for the journey to Kent fixed in half an hour. Then he took me aside and told me to forget about the net session. Tomorrow was another day, he said. Murtagh’s brother, Paul, taught at Bradfield. Perhaps he had heard I was all right. Sainsbury came into the dressing room and confirmed I was playing. I suspect he was under orders from the Eagar–Gilliat corridor of power.

  In those days, we travelled to matches by car. Quite how any of us afforded a car, I don’t know. Popplewell wasn’t with us at this stage; he was still up at Cambridge bowling those medium pacers for top county players to batter around Fenner’s, the university ground. Murt drove Jungle Rock and me, in the back seat, to Dover.

  That week, the back of the passenger seat in Hillers’ car broke, so Freddie Ireland, the scorer, who always travelled with Hill, lay down all the way to Dover and back. Freddie couldn’t pronounce his Rs and, for that matter, wasn’t much good with Fs either. So he called himself ‘Pweddie’, which we all did, and it was bloody funny. We used to tick-tack en route, stopping at a pub or fish and chip place for supper. All these old bangers, bought on the cheap, in a peloton to far-flung parts of the land for cricket games that no one watched and of which few took notice. Pweddie liked fish and chips and told Hillers to stop near Canterbwe at a chippy he had known since god was a boy for pish, chips and mushy peas. Certainly, said Hillers, so that is what we all did, in town after town, month after month, during the summer of 1977.

  The following year, I shared a house with Hillers. He ironed his socks and underpants, and made sure his trousers had a perfect crease. He left his bathroom gear—toothbrush, paste, shaving kit and so on—in symmetrical lines. If you knocked something out of place, it would be realigned when you returned. He was always bathing or showering. Super bloke, ordinary cricketer. And he never got the seat fixed. Pweddie had to travel thousands of miles lying flat on his back.

  In August, Elvis Presley died. When Hillers came to pick up Pops and me to go to a game in Bournemouth (quite how we fitted in with Pweddie spread-eagled in the passenger seat I don’t know) I was on the staircase inside the front door doing ‘Blue Suede Shoes’—voice, knees, air guitar, the lot—and given my long dark hair and the pound or two of excess weight I was carrying, it was an easy call. I was Elvis for the rest of the summer.

  Elvis made a hundred at Dover. Kent were strong, as were we. The cricket was a good standard, much the best I had played. And I made a hundred, which was orgasmic. Chris Cowdrey got one for Kent, too. It was the first time we had met and we had a terrific night out, whizzing into town in his black Ford Capri. The girls loved him. Everybody loved Cow. There was a magic about him.

  My hundred shook the boys up. Nick Pocock (Pokers—as I say, we cricketers could sure cook up a storm with nicknames) was another of the public schoolboys flirting with cricket as a living. He was a good front-foot driver of the ball and a brilliant catcher anywhere close to the bat. He made a hundred too. We were out soon after one another, and as the others took us past 350, he walked me around the ground.

  ‘It’s pretty obvious you can play a bit. You’ll probably get offered a retainer for the rest of the summer,’ said Pocock. So far so good. ‘But be careful, the long-time pros think you’re cocky. Turning up and making runs doesn’t make life comfortable for any of them. Keep your head down and for god’s sake don’t sound like you know it all, even if you do. Though you don’t.’ Right. Blimey. Not how I had imagined life as a pro at all.

  Pocock was spot on. They sure thought I was cocky and they were right, though it wasn’t a conscious thing. I was enthusiastic and had spent most of my life in love with the game. I read every book and watched every televised ball. By the standards of most nineteen-year-olds, I knew a lot about cricket. The challenge was to not let anyone know. I was offered a retainer—£21.50 a week—for the rest of the summer.

  And that was pretty much how we rolled. Hours in the nets. Not enough fielding practice. Unhealthy food. Lots of beer. Long car journeys, often at night after matches. Stops in provincial English towns and villages. (Pokers refused to stop at motorway services for any reason except fuel. He said Ingleby wouldn’t dream of it—‘Ghastly places.’) Fines for just about any indiscretion that included dropped catches and not wearing the club tie after play, along with daft ones such as the failure to drink anything and everything with your opposite hand on a Friday.

  (After the offer of a retainer, I couldn’t afford the bed and breakfast full time, so Sains and his lovely wife, Joyce, put me up at their home. Every morning, he would bring me in a cuppa, with a ‘Wakey, wakey, rise and shine’. On Friday mornings, as I yawned and knocked back the tea, with the cup in my usual right hand, he would exclaim ‘Got ya, 50p!’ One day, Dougal threw his toys out of the cot when he was battling away to save us the game and at the tea-break slugged back a pint of orange squash only to be told it had cost him fifty pence. Believe me, enough little mistakes and £21.50 a week didn’t go far, especially if you couldn’t catch.)

  We won a few games and lost a few. It felt special to represent Hampshire, and a place in the 1st XI remained the Holy Grail. When Rock was picked to play at Portsmouth, we all went along to watch him. There were a few thousand spectators at the United Services ground and our boy briefly looked the goods. The sun shone that day and all was well with the world.

  The biggest thrill of the summer came in mid-June at Northlands Road, where Hampshire had a home semifinal tie against Gloucestershire in the Benson & Hedges Cup. A few of us watched the game from inside the scorebox, urging on those of our number—Ricey and Dougal most notably—who were playing.

  If Barry Richards was the cricketer on whom I most doted, Mike Procter was not far behind. His buccaneering style, both on and off the field, mesmerised opponent and spectator alike. He and Richards had grown up in Natal at the same time, and both played for the Gloucestershire 2nd XI after impressing on a South African schools tour to England in 1963. Procter is one of only three men—Sir Donald Bradman and C.B. Fry are the others—to have made six consecutive first-class hundreds. But it was as a fast bowler that he most caught the eye, sprinting in from near the sightscreen to bowl with an unusual, almost wrong-footed action and swinging the ba
ll prodigiously in to the right-handed batsmen.

  Procter won that semifinal almost before it had started. He took four wickets in five balls, including a hat-trick. And not any old four, if you don’t mind. He trapped Richards and Jesty lbw, and bowled Greenidge and Rice. He had Cowley stone dead lbw for five in six but dear old Tommy Spencer’s heart was pounding too much to get his right forefinger out of the holster for a third time in one over. As Cowley says to this day, he was the most out of the three of them. Watch it on YouTube: it is as captivating now as it was then. Imagine seeing and hearing this drama from the scorebox. We couldn’t change the tally fast enough. The chants of ‘Proctershire, Proctershire’ live with me to this day.

  Inspired, I took to bowling in the nets like Procter and batting with my chin tucked into my left shoulder like Richards. I imitated their voices too, having edged close enough to Procter in the bar that June night to hear every word. Neither playing method much worked as I recall but mimicry was to become a common theme over the months and years that followed, especially of John Arlott and Richie Benaud.

  Pops and I won Sains over, and Hillers began to enjoy our happy-go-lucky look at life. Paul Terry (PT—I know!) teamed up with us for the second half of the summer after finishing at Millfield and playing a lot of representative cricket for England at Under-19 level.

  It was an awful feeling when summer turned to autumn and we were sent on our way. In those days, and until fairly recently, county contracts applied to the period from April through to September. We said goodbye to friends and went out into the big wide world to find a job. I headed back to London, lived with Mum, and ended up in the City doing analyst work with the stockbroking firm Hoare Govett. As the days became shorter and the nights longer, I was overcome with the desire to return to the little downstairs dressing room at Northlands Road and the banter that had quickly become a soundtrack to my life. I missed bat and ball and I missed the people. I missed the way cricket had wrapped its arms around me. I knew there was no going back, no chance of a life in the City or anywhere else except Northlands Road. I had been offered a two-year contract and I was damned if I wouldn’t make it work.