Have you not ever felt the urge to write
Of all the cricket that blessed your sight?
Is there no inspiration in the names
Of those that play our best of summer games? (Blunden, 1945)
1993 seems to have been a big year for me, it was the year that the sporting teams I would support for the rest of my life were firmly marked. I remember the day that I became a Norwich City supporter, I remember that feeling of finally having a team I could call my own. A team that whenever people I know hear them mentioned, it was me they were thinking about. I had dabbled with a number of different clubs, like Sheffield Wednesday but they never felt right. I mention this because it is rather more difficult to pinpoint when I started to support Sussex.
I was at one stage just happy to watch what was ever on T.V., which for the major part was England. There was one game from every round of the Nat West Trophy. This meant that it was down to good fortune who I would get to see. I remember teams like Northamptonshire and Worcestershire; who had an early favourite player of mine Graeme Hick.
There was a time when I would have associated myself with Hampshire, it is where I had spent most of my early life, before moving back for a second spell in the town I was born. Hampshire had players like David Gower, Robin Smith, Mark Nicholas, and Malcolm Marshall; It was an exciting possibility. I lived in the county borders, but Southampton was a world away from Havant, with its connections to Portsmouth it was never an easy alliance to make.
That isn’t to say I didn’t have some form of link with Sussex, I had lived in Crawley. It was a stop gap on the way back to Havant. In that year and a half or so, cricket had gone from something that I had a keen interest into a full blown obsession.
I was aware of Imran Khan, who had been a Sussex player. I wasn’t to know that he was never to play for them again. What I did know was that he was one of the world’s leading players. A rapidly quick bowler and hard hitter with the bat. He had just helped Pakistan win the world cup. I had been given a coaching book he had written one Christmas, it had photos of him in many text book poses, and I would look through it over and over again. I took it everywhere, even using it to show American tourists on a train from Gatwick Airport just how amazing this game was. I still have it and the curled up corners, and indentations of writings long forgotten about mark the front cover.
We eventually moved back across the Hampshire border, leaving friends behind. I know why we moved but I guess by becoming a Sussex fan I was clinging onto a sense of belonging, a sense of identity. I left with tears in my eyes as, fearing I would never come back.
Like most people with a passion for sport, it all started with a family member. My great-grandad was a cricketer and umpire, who died a long time before I came on the scene. My great-grandma lived on the bottom floor of a block of flats, surrounded by a huge garden and a park at the top.
It was the focal point for the family. We would visit most days; initially on holidays and then when we lived in Mansfield. It was strangely at a time when most sports were on free to air television. Sky sports had yet to corner every market. Most days on the t.v. that was only being half watched was some sporting event or another, snooker, athletics, horse racing, football and cricket.
It was the room I watched my first F.A. Cup final; Manchester United versus Crystal Palace. It was a place where the family would meet for tea on a Saturday afternoon. The living room would fill up with aunties, uncles and smoke. It would get too hot. The kids, consisting of me my sister and a cousin, would play in the bedroom, bathroom, or the big field outside. We would play our own games of football and cricket. Or go to the park and play on the playground.
It was at this park that I met kids slightly older than me who actually liked cricket. They were two brothers, both at the middle school, while I was at the first school. They were surprised to see me when I went on a school trip to see the school we would move up to. Apart from the fact I knew, I wasn’t going to that school and we were moving back down south.
It was over the course of these days at my great-grandmas that cricket became part of the consciousness. It took a while to pick up the rules; it took even longer to be certain of the fielding positions. My great-grandma watched keenly, most of the time. A selection of England players would come out to bat and soon disappear, to the disapproval of my grandma. On more than one occasion this would lead to an ‘oh you bugger’ slipping form her mouth, only to turn around and see me, much to the amusement of my mum.
It was difficult to get my school friends to show any interest in cricket. I took a bat and ball to play in the playground, although it was soon stopped by teachers who saw it as dangerous; more to do with a swinging bat than a rouge tennis ball. So it was back to being pinned to the floor and having my pants pulled down, in front of the girl everyone had a crush on. She did get that one boy to stop doing it, as she wasn’t impressed by it.
I started to collect any articles I could find on the sport. Unburdened by any affiliations I could read without bias. However, it was limited to copies of The Sun which my granddads bought. It wasn’t long until I moved on to The Times and The Daily Telegraph with their coverage of the county game in some detail. I would even rummage through the newspapers at school that had been donated for painting time. Fellow students would bring me anything with a cricketer on. I had started to get a bit snobbish, they are only ‘club cricketers’.
I started to read about Worcestershire who had Graeme Hick and an ageing Ian Botham. Even players such as Steve Rhodes, Stuart Lampitt, Tim Curtis, David Leatherdale and Tom Moody. They were a good one-day side and must have been on television a fair bit. Worcester seemed to be so far away. It is a decent journey even now.
I got to see these players close up in my second ever game. A Sunday League game at Portsmouth, on a gloomy day I followed Hick around the boundary edge, eager but silent hoping for his autograph. One of the supporters, gave me an encouraging ‘go on ask him’ at the fall of a wicket; to which I could only whimper a ‘Hick’. It was in a shy reluctant way in which he turned and signed my autograph book.
They were in a number of one-day semi-finals and finals, as were Northamptonshire. When Northants beat Hampshire in the semi-final of the 1990 NatWest Trophy by 1 run I cried. Not that I would cry at a Hampshire defeat now-a-days.
Another NatWest Semi-final that sticks in the memory was the following year when, Northants again played Surrey. It had gone into a second day, and Surrey defending 208. It was the first time I was aware of Waqar Younis, he ran in with such venom and it was thrilling to watch as he dismissed five of the Northants line-up, every close chance he would clench his fists and grind his teeth so often, he was soon nicknamed Gnasher in our house.
