I’ve just realised with the dismay of mortality that this summer it will be exactly thirty years since I first went to a Test match.
Prior to that I’d only ever seen cricket on television, introduced by a perennially windswept gantry-borne Peter West and narrated by the granite Yorkshire tones of Jim Laker. So when my dad announced that he’d secured tickets for the first day of the sixth Test between England and Australia for my eleventh birthday I was beside myself with excitement. For one thing it had been one of the most exciting series in history, lit up by the magnificence of Ian Botham. For another, I was actually going to be there, at the match, a matter of feet away from Botham, Bob Willis, Dennis Lillee, Rodney Marsh and Geoffrey Boycott.
The day couldn’t come around quick enough: when it did I’m pretty sure my dad emerged for breakfast to find me already standing by the front door ready to go, like a dog with a lead in its mouth.
When we got there The Oval, familiar from television, had with the addition of a third dimension been transformed into somewhere utterly magical. The quiet hubbub of conversation as people took their seats in the morning sunshine, the famous gasometers overlooking the ground, the scoreboards set at zero: there was a perspective and a depth I’d never imagined. The colours and sounds, gentle though they were, washed over and around me in way they never had on television.
We found our seats: front row near the pavilion, white plastic tip-ups from which my sandalled feet barely reached the ground. Somewhere a bell rang and umpires Dickie Bird and Barry Meyer strolled onto the field just a few yards from where we sat. So overwhelming was this proximity and so familiar their figures that I had to stop myself waving and calling out, ‘Dickie!’
The England team trotted down the pavilion steps and emerged into the sunshine. There were Bob Willis, Ian Botham and the captain Mike Brearley, his tufty grey hair visible beneath his cap: all my heroes, all so close. Finally the Australian openers Graeme Wood and Martin Kent made their way to the middle, wheeling their arms to loosen the muscles, their baggy green caps vibrant in the south London sunshine.
Willis paced out his run-up ready to deliver the first ball of the match as Wood took guard. From just beyond the mid-on boundary I watched these preliminaries utterly spellbound: it was almost like I’d been let in on a secret ceremony; you were never this intimate with the rhythms of a Test match at home in front of the television.
Dickie Bird held his out his arm as Willis stood at the end of his run, rubbing the new ball lightly against his trousers. The arm dropped, the word ‘play’ drifted to me across the outfield and Willis began his run, legs going like pistons, the ball in his right hand as it trailed behind him, hair streaming back from his forehead as he reached full pace. The crowd was with him, a few cries of ‘come on Bob’ merging and growing into a guttural unified roar as he approached the wicket. A whirl of arms and the dark red ball fizzed out of his hand, Wood offered no stroke and the ball whacked into the gloves of Alan Knott far behind the stumps. The entire ground seemed to exhale.
As it turned out this would be arguably the dullest day’s play of the only dull match of the entire series: the following year’s Wisden would describe it as “more an occasion for the Test match statistician”. There aren’t many people who will remember much about that first day, but for me it will always be far more than the tedious entrée to a long-forgotten draw at the end of a series already won. It was my first day of Test cricket, with its rhythms and rituals and its gentle pace.
I was fascinated by how you’d see the swish of the bat but the woody ‘pock’ of contact would reach you half a second later, I was captivated by the shrinking circle of fielders as they walked in like stalking predators as the bowler ran up, and I was entertained by the banter in the crowd even though I didn’t understand some of the fruitier jokes.
Most of all I was astounded by the unprecedented proximity to greatness, something that midway through the afternoon provided one of the most memorable moments of my childhood.
Geoffrey Boycott came over to field just a few yards from where I sat. Geoffrey Boycott, the closest thing that England team had to a legend if you counted Botham as merely a superhero. Geoffrey Boycott, arguably England’s greatest ever opening batsman. Geoffrey Boycott, in immaculate whites and dark blue England cap, standing there, hands on hips, right in front of me.
It was a once-in-a-lifetime chance. Summoning a courage I never knew I possessed, I cupped my hands and called out, “we need a hundred from you tomorrow, Geoffrey”.
As my words died in the air I was instantly mortified. Had I broken a taboo? It wasn’t for the likes of me, a greenhorn, a jabbernowl, a nobody, to address Geoffrey Boycott unbidden, especially during a match. Not only that, addressing him by his first name too. What on earth had I done? Who did I think I was?
The great man slowly turned his head in the direction of this pre-pubescent chirrup. He looked straight at me with the same steely sharpness that faced down the terrifying likes of Dennis Lillee and Michael Holding. I swallowed hard. And then Geoffrey Boycott broke into a gum-chewing grin and winked at me.
When it was eventually England’s turn to bat the following day Boycott would make a flawless 137. At home, watching his innings unfold on the television, it felt as though every run he scored was honouring a promise he’d made to a skinny kid with a squeaky voice and wonky National Health glasses sitting just behind the boundary fence and thinking this was the greatest birthday ever.
