The Sad Swansong Of Harold Turner

It was the most one-sided match in cricket history and I was on the wrong side. However, I don’t remember that day because we nearly pulled off the world's most ill-deserved draw, I remember it because it was the last time I ever saw Harold Turner.

Harold was nearly seventy-five years old when we gathered that day at a gas board sports ground in the depths of Surrey in the depths of the 1980s. He’d played for Totterdown since before the Second World War and was still turning out every week, arriving on his moped wearing his open-face peaked helmet; his ancient brown leather cricket bag strapped across the back of the bike. His bat, circled with thick bands of yellowed tape to protect cracks and splits from long ago, was so old it was stamped with the endorsement signature of Patsy Hendren, a cricketer who’d retired in 1937.

Harold would park himself in the slips - where he’d take the odd catch as long as it came straight at him - and bat at number eleven, where he would block what he could with an effective defensive dab shot of his own devising that dispensed with the need for any footwork at all. He never took a run but nobody minded: Harold Turner's place in the team was there for as long as he wanted it because he was a lovely, lovely man.

On this particular day we fielded first and it was soon clear the opposition were far too good for us. Every shot seemed to find both the middle of the bat and the gaps in the field and by the time the innings closed at tea the gas board had rattled up 275 for the loss of one wicket. Even the wicket was a fluke: a fizzing, arcing, low-trajectory cover drive that was about to fly over the boundary for six when our captain Sid half-heartedly waved his hand at it only to find the ball smacking into his palm and sticking there.

After tea, I opened the batting and watched as wickets fell at the other end with crushing regularity. Just as the last twenty overs were signalled we lost our eighth.

By this time we’d scored ten. Ten. We were 10 for 8 and I was top scorer with two thanks to a streaky edge through the slips. Actually I was second top scorer - there'd been four byes.

My dad walked out to bat and we resolved to leave any ball that would miss the stumps and play only the straight ones in an effort to achieve the most unfair draw in the history of the game. Twenty overs between outright humiliation and, well, outright humiliation combined with daylight robbery.

Time passed slowly and the number of remaining overs on the scoreboard gradually, almost glacially clicked down into single figures. Dad and I shouldered arms at anything we didn’t actually have to play and blocked the rest - as an exercise in concentration and patience it would have been pretty impressive were it not at the arse end of the most humiliating performance in Totterdown’s (and possibly cricket's) history.

We added no runs to the total but runs were irrelevant: we just had to bat out those last overs.

As the setting sun turned the Surrey sky a deep orange and the trees turned into dark silhouettes there were two overs left: we just had to survive twelve balls. Dad faced the first. The bowler thundered in and sent down a delivery on a good length homing in on dad’s middle and off stumps. He didn’t get forward quite enough, the ball struck the bat higher than he’d intended and lobbed in a gentle arc back into the hands of the bowler. There were delighted yells from the gas board team: eighteen overs of stonewalled frustration and now they just needed one more wicket.

As dad headed back into the pavilion, in the fading light I saw a familiar portly figure begin making his way slowly towards the middle. Harold appeared out of the gloaming - his cricket clothes yellowed with age, that ancient bat in his hand - like a ghost from cricket's golden age. I met him at the corner of the square as the fielders resumed their places.

“We can do this, H,” I said, my mouth dry with the tension. Harold brushed back a thin strand of white hair from his forehead and looked at me through eyes that had more than half a century of experience behind them. He’d been in closer finishes than this; he’d made more runs in his lifetime than I ever would.

“I’ll try not to let you down, son,” he said.

I patted him on the back and went back to the non-striker’s end. Harold walked to the wicket, planted his feet either side of the crease and looked up as the tall gangly fast bowler pounded in, whirled his arms and arrowed a good length ball at Harold’s stumps. The old stager performed his trademark dab shot and killed the ball stone dead in front of him. It wasn’t a textbook shot but it was one that Harold had developed as the years advanced and his mobility declined. It served him well.

Just four more balls for Harold to survive and then it would be down to me to see out the last over.

The next two deliveries were wide of the off stump and Harold stood motionless as they passed. Each was greeted with a mass exhale by the fielders. The third ball was straighter and given the Harold Dab.

The bowler thundered in for the last ball of the over, whirled his arms and sent the ball pinging towards Harold’s off stump. To this day I don’t know whether it moved off the seam or a crack in the pitch or what, but instead of meeting Harold’s ancient taped willow in the middle there was an audible snick as the ball flicked its edge. The slips were already leaping into the air when the ball thwacked into the wicket-keeper’s gloves.

All out for 10, we’d lost by 265 runs. Some kind of record for Sunday afternoon cricket surely.

As the umpires removed the bails and the opposition skipped towards the pavilion in a flurry of back-slapping and the throwing of sweaters around shoulders I walked along the pitch to where Harold still stood, leaning on his bat, just staring down at the crease.

“Never mind H,” I said, resting my hand lightly on his shoulder, “that last one moved a long way. Anyone would have snicked it. It was unplayable.” He didn’t say anything, just turned and commenced the long, slow walk back to the pavilion. As septuganerians go Harold was a sprightly one, but on that walk back from the wicket he was suddenly an old man. Something in his gait had changed; something was different. I walked with him, and by the time we reached the dressing room the rest of the team were already changed, in the bar and commencing the submerging of sorrrows in golden fizzy liquid.

I showered and dressed as Harold piled his kit slowly and thoughtfully into his ancient cricket bag. I started collecting the assorted items of club equipment strewn around the room into the big canvas bag in the middle of the floor while Harold sat there looking utterly crestfallen. His eyes were red around the rims.

“I let you down today, son,” he said eventually, looking at the floor.

“Don’t be daft H,” I said, “it wasn’t down to you. They were too good for us and we were rubbish. It’s not your fault, we didn’t deserve anything.”

He said nothing; the only sound was the slow, echoing drip of the shower.

Eventually we walked out of the pavilion together and headed towards the clubhouse. Harold put his bag across the back of his scooter, lashed the bat to it and put his helmet on, looking out at the dark empty field we’d left half an hour or so earlier.

“Not coming for a drink, H?” I said.

“Not today son, no.”

“Sure?”

He paused, still looking out at the field.

“I just played my last game for Totterdown.” he said.

“Don’t be daft, H.”

He eased himself onto the scooter and started the engine.

“No, I let you down and I let everyone down. It’s time for me to call it a day.”

Before I could protest further he kicked the scooter off its stand and accelerated across the car park into the gathering darkness. I saw the indicator light winking as he turned out of the gate, illuminating that faithful old bat, and then he was gone.

None of us ever saw Harold again.