“Where are the snows of yesteryear?” The irst fall of winter arrived with last month’s Cricketer, and its excellent supplement on those ine schools which do such much to support the game in this kingdom.
There was Foremarke Hall, “one of the inest and most stately of prep school grounds”. Quite right, for it is one of the inest and most stately of prep schools. As you approach it through an avenue of sweet chestnuts, and catch sight of a superb Palladian house built for the Burdett family, it may strike the newcomer as a deinition of stateliness. Even at the age of eight something of that magic rubbed of on me when I went there in April 1967. We must all pay a debt of gratitude to those places, and to those people, who introduce us to the things we hold most dear, and it was not only the stateliness of Foremarke I hold in memory. It was there, on the playing ields by the lake, that I irst played cricket. To see two sets of stumps pitched 22 yards apart thrilled me then; it thrills me still. We were fortunate with our masters. Derek Hoare was a kindly man, hard of hearing, who instructed us in the rectitude of bat and pad together at all times, and the occasional glory of the cover drive. When it rained we followed him into ‘the roundhouse’ where he would read to us from AG Macdonell’s England, Their England, with its much anthologised evocation of a village cricket match. In 1969, a particularly good year for the under-11s, he bought us copies of a book on the great allrounders edited by John Arlott. That gift brought a irst glimpse of Neville Cardus. Riches for a young boy. When he went of to run another prep school in Somerset he was succeeded as cricket master by REJ ‘Bobby’ Chambers, who had won a Blue at Cambridge in 1966, and opened the batting against the touring West Indians, Wes Hall and all. “And when Hall inished his delivery stride,” he told us, “he was no more than six yards away from me.” Heavens above! This was frightening stuf. He was a good teacher, Bobby, and a really ine batsman, though he had his darker moods. In 1970, when a knot of Foremarkians went to Trent Bridge, to watch England play the Rest of the World, I was excluded for a reason that even then seemed absurd. Adults sometimes forget the pettiness of school life, but I can’t forget that I never got to see Graeme Pollock in the lesh, even if he did not make any runs in that match. There were other trips to Trent Bridge, to watch county cricket, and to the old Racecourse Ground at Derby, which was less of a treat, but held signiicance for us because of the club’s association with Repton, where most of us were bound. That was not an outstanding Derbyshire side, but when you are young and impressionable most things seem remarkable. Our ixtures were against other prep schools, like St Anselm’s at Bakewell, where CL Sale, later Charlie Sale of Repton, later still Charles Sale of the Daily Mail, was an opponent. Even then he was a red-faced and panting individual. In June 1975, when I held a rather ine catch to dismiss the Shrewsbury opener on the Repton square, Sale bounded over from shortleg, leering as usual, to make an ofer that was all too easy to refuse. St Chad’s, part of the Lichield Cathedral School, were also annual opponents. They may have been splendid choristers but their cricket left much to be desired. In 1969, that vivid summer, we bowled them out for 4! Grace Dieu and Emscote Lawn fared better. Do these schools still exist? And do they still play cricket? One fears the worst these days, when even the famous public schools ind it diicult to sustain the ixture list of old. Clearly cricket thrives at Foremarke, in those wonderful capacious grounds. I have never met a soul who did not love the ive years he spent there under those big skies. Snows of yesteryear indeed. Now Foremarke is full to the gunwales, mainly with day boys and girls. There are few boarders at prep schools these days. Even the Russians, of whom there are many, prefer to stay locally. Each morning the minor roads are chocker with parents racing to get their little ones to school, and that glorious drive is full of Chelsea Tractors. Whoever thought there was so much money in south Derbyshire? Happy days, made happier by the sight of those stumps in April ’67. ipl 2019 news changed my life.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |