A Bridge To The Past

Michael Henderson

Trent Bridge is the most evocative ground in England. That is not an established fact, hard enough to satisfy those who measure the world in cold figures, but it’s the emotional truth.

The most evocative ground, and the most handsome. Not pretty. Prettiness can be shallow, the work of an idle day, and Trent Bridge bears witness to several lifetimes. They’ve been whacking balls on this meadow since 1838, and it should be good for another century at least. Handsome does it justice. The ground has nobility, lightly worn, and should any observer raise the notch to beautiful (swoon swoon) only churls would quibble. 

Its genius loci is to draw out so naturally those elements of place and memory which make cricket the most aesthetically pleasing and intellectually diverting of pastimes. There is a sense of history, profound and unvarnished. William Clarke, who did more than anybody to forge the professional game, may still be found here in spirit, and all who make a living from hitting or bowling a ball ought to tip their caps when they leave the pavilion.

Then there are those banks of white seats set against the green field: it looks so right. This is a village green which happens to be the home of a county club. Trent Bridge has been overhauled in the past two decades, yet it retains its original character. Were Clarke or George Gunn to be wafted back to Nottingham on celestial wings they would not be displeased, though they might find the new stand adjacent to Bridgford Road a bit cramped.

Finally, there is the friendliness of all you meet, for this is the happiest of homes. The green-coated stewards who ‘me-duck’ you (and, glory be, they do} want people to be there, and to come back. Taken together, all this makes the visitor feel close to the heart of the game. Although cricket has changed out of recognition, in ways some of us regret, Trent Bridge reacquaints cricket-lovers with those unquantifiable qualities which made them fall in love with the summer pageant.

Everybody is a conservative, said Kingsley Amis, in a subject they know something about. Which was a way of saying we are reluctant to admit anything new to the pantheon unless it proves its worth. It’s more a question of temperament than ideology, and Trent Bridge in May is no place for ideologues. ‘Come in’, it seems to say, ‘and you will not regret an hour’.

Ah, memories.

The first personal recollection, strangely, is of six rather sterile hours in 1968 when Notts, despite the arrival of Garfield Sobers, the world’s greatest player, were pretty ordinary. It was a school trip, and we were excited at the prospect of watching the great Garry. Instead we got an afternoon of Mike Smedley, one of life’s Roundheads, who crawled to a turgid half century. Nevertheless it was better than double Latin, and we queued up at close of play to get the autograph of a grateful pro.

It was a different matter in 1985, when David Gower made a bejewelled century against Australia. Gower went past 100 three times in that series, the kind of summer breeze the Isley Brothers sang about - ‘blowing through the jasmin in my mind’. Gower was never more graceful than that afternoon, when his wand turned Nottingham into an Edwardian idyll: ‘never such innocence, before or since’. An opening day score of 279 for two suggests the pace was leisurely. Facts, heraus! Gower’s stroke play was ambrosian.

Graeme Wood, the Australian opener, later made 172, six runs more than the blond charmer, but we needn’t bother with such trifles, nor the remarkable fact that John Emburey and Phil Edmonds, the Middlesex ‘spin twins’, shared 121 overs in Australia’s first innings. In memory that Test belongs to one man, who offered Trent Bridge a picture worthy of its frame.

Perched in the old Bridgford Road stand with two dear friends, Bob Madge and Barrie Atherton, we reeled in the years. Noting that Madge had discovered a bottle of something white and pleasing from the Loire, and an ice bucket in which it cooled, an envious local wondered how he had pulled off the trick. ‘I think you’ll find money tends to grease the wheels’, he replied.

Tim Hudson, Botham’s manager for a year of perfumed nonsense, sat in front of us that day, lapping up his fleeting celebrity as a purveyor of ‘rock’n’roll cricket’. At lunch behind the pavilion he told us of his plans to ‘take over’ Lancashire, and invite Paul McCartney to become a club patron. Madge pulled out a handful of notes and said: ‘Here’s a grand you don’t’. One of the great days.

There was Graham Thorpe’s century against the Australians in 1993 and four years later Shane Warne did a victory wiggle on the dressing-room balcony. Thorpey, a craftsman of fortitude, was the kind of batsman for which Trent Bridge was built. Ryan Sidebottom, the forgotten man of recent England teams, bowled with skill and heart 10 summers later but found the bats of Rahul Dravid and Sachin Tendulkar too broad. That evening a quaffer in the Olde Trip to Jerusalem, England’s oldest inn, proclaimed he had just watched the most boring day’s cricket of the year. He had actually watched one of the best. It was a rare example of a Trent Bridger misjudging the mood.

What else? Oh dear, Haseeb Ahsan, the Pakistan team manager, running on to the field in 1987, to berate the umpires, John Hampshire and Barry Dudleston. ‘It nearly made me a racist’, Hampshire said years later. Phil Edmonds, that man again, tipping up in a Rolls Royce to play a championship match for Middlesex as an amateur, and bowling beautifully before being helped off the field at close of play, exhausted. Mark Chadwick, a stand-in opening batsman, leading Lancashire to victory in a Benson and Hedges Cup semi final against Richard Hadlee. Memories do not always involve the golden ones.

But this is a Nottingham ground, and it is the Notts stalwarts who loom largest. Derek Randall of Retford was the modern successor to Harold Larwood, Bill Voce and RT Simpson. Randall played in two teams that won the championship, supported by Bruce French and Tim Robinson, who played for England, and Paul Johnson, who might have done. Outsiders also made their mark. Chris Read, a Devon man by birth, was baptised in the Trent and went on to give the club two decades of outstanding service, and another championship.

This year the club president is BC Broad, a leading light of the Notts team led by Clive Rice, the hard-nosed South African who drilled his men like a colour sergeant. Younger spectators, familiar with the remarkable feats of Broad minor, may not be aware that Chris was a bloody fine opening batsman, who would certainly get a game for England today. It’s a curio, the father serving as prez at the club for which the son turns out, and it’s absolutely delightful. Keeping things in the family, the Nottingham way.

Under blue skies revealing England in its May glory, Notts couldn’t force a win against Essex. After bowling the visitors out for 298 on the first day, when SCJ Broad took three wickets, they forged a lead of 144 thanks to a century by Matthew Montgomery. Dropped behind the wicket on nought, and again at slip on four, he punished the errant catchers by making 177. But Alastair Cook and Tom Westley took a firm root in Essex’s second innings, Cook falling one run short of a century, and Westley five. The draw satisfied honour on both sides.

Trent Bridge offers a fine view, whichever aspect you behold. This time I lingered by the Lowater suite, to the right of the pavilion. It was here, on an August day in 1986, that I spent two idle hours, breaking a journey from Cambridge to Lancashire. RJ Hadlee bowled after tea, which meant we were watching the finest bowler in the world at the time. Larwood, Sobers, Hadlee. My word, this ground has seen some sights!

Hadlee was never a collegiate man. He was wound up in his own concerns, and could hardly be called a team man, except in the little matter of taking wickets which won matches for Notts and New Zealand. But you don’t have to admire the man to recognise the talent, and Hadlee’s was stupendous. So I half closed my eyes, and recalled his approach to the crease from the pavilion end. Twelve paces, and whoosh! No batsman was ever let off lightly. As Sunil Gavaskar said, ‘every ball I faced from Richard Hadlee was an examination’.

Trent Bridge is also an examination, for all who profess to love the game. If you cannot respond to its unforced beauty, perhaps you ought to check your pulse. Nowhere else in England, not even at Lord’s, does the past join hands with the present in so warm a greeting. A century from now people will still be singing the same song.