Playing out the sounds of the summer

Jun 2 2008 by David Charters, Liverpool Daily Post

SSSCHLUPP! Experienced fingers have just slipped a pungent, hard-boiled egg from its shell. Slap! A damp sheet of bubble-gum-pink ham lands on a plate, causing a radish to seek shelter under a curled lettuce leaf. Bup, bup, bup! The old kettle is finally burping to the boil.

Ting, ting, ting! Those fingers are now slicing a tomato with the delicacy of a surgeon removing a cataract from an eyeball.

For people whose ears have not been initiated, we are now in the kitchen at the back of a cricket pavilion, any cricket pavilion in England. Agnes, Flo, Joyce and old Dolly are making the match tea for their men, as they have done since romance was high in their blood.

That was a long time ago, you have to admit, with a weary shake of the head.

Out on the field, beyond the inscribed benches on the pavilion’s verandah, where the old men and the batsmen shield their eyes from the sun, their husbands are standing in freshly creased white flannels, bent at the waist, no longer the coiled panthers of an imagined youth.

Clonk! Leather strikes willow. “Yes, come on Jack, run, quick.”

There is much commotion near the boundary, as a fielder picks up the ball and throws it with remarkable speed and accuracy.

“No, get back, Bill. GET BACK!” cries Jack.

“Howzat!” calls the wicket-keeper, lifting the bails.

These are the sounds of our summer, the sounds of our past, bottled and cherished. There is something familiar in the sights and sounds of all cricket pavilions – the squeak of the roller, the cough of the mower, the old photographs yellowing on the walls, the clock frozen at quarter to four, famous scorecards framed for eternity, the glass trophy cabinet; grassy mud gathered on the studs of boots, creaking on the ancient timbers; the smell of beer, men sitting on stools along the bar, which ends at the fruit machine, that one-armed bandit.

So it is that Stephen Shakeshaft, camera hanging from his shoulder, and David Charters stride across Birkenhead Park to St Mary’s Cricket Club.

We have spotted figures pottering about outside the pavilion, between the showers released from a grey, noon sky.

Across the field you can see the old brick and wood pavilion of Birkenhead Park Cricket Club, built in 1846, but now, sadly, dwarfed by tapering towers, covered in a synthetic fibre, which house the indoor nets.

There has always been an amicable rivalry between Park and “the Marys”, arising in part from class.

In the old days, Park tended to attract middle-class players from independent and grammar schools. However, these differences have diminished in recent times.

St Mary’s began in an old wooden pavilion in 1878, but they now meet in a deceptively spacious brick building, extensively modernised after a fire in 2003.

Sitting inside, brewing tea, are the present captain Bill McGenity and the president Bob Davies.

In his time here, Bob has captained the first, second and third elevens.

He is now the first team scorer. Such men embody the spirit of cricket, allowing its slow ways and charm to survive in an age of instant gratification.

“It’s a friendly club,” says Bob, 80, a retired civil servant with the Department of Employment. He joined St Mary’s in 1938, while still at Park High School.

“It has always been friendly. Anybody playing against us, or visiting, has always enjoyed it.

“I remember how during the war, I used to get the odd game, when they were expecting people home on leave. But I hoped that they wouldn’t be given leave, so that I could have a game.”

Bob‘s a rangy fellow with cricketer’s big hands. After the war, he did National Service with the Royal Air Force.

“Once I had finished playing football I would come down here on Saturday afternoons and get out from under the wife’s feet,” he recalls

As an all-rounder, Bob, a father of two, rose to captain St Mary’s in the 1950s.

“I have always helped around the club,” he says.

“I live two minutes away in the car. I used to hand-roll the pitch with two or three others, until we got the motorised one, which makes life a little easier.

“I was in the first team throughout the fifties, sixties and seventies, before dropping down to the second and then the third teams. Arthritis in the hips stopped me playing in 1994 and I had the operation two years later. So you could say I was playing in seven decades from the 1930s.”

This 226-acre park around him is the great pride of Birkenhead, along with the Cammell Laird shipyard and the ferries.

It brought the town to international attention when it opened in 1847.

Three years later Frederick Law Olmstead visited, incorporating many of his features in his design for Central Park, New York.

The park was designated a conservation area in 1977 and declared a Grade I listed landscape by English Heritage in 1995.

An £11.5m improvement programme has recently been completed. In addition to the restoration of most original features, it included the building of a visitor centre with a cafe and gallery.

But of at least equal importance to the club is a slice of bark.

It hangs from a pavilion wall with a plaque, saying: “The St Mary’s Elm, a feature of our outfield for 99 years, felled January 18, 1977, when 200 years old.”

“It was towards fine-leg within the boundary, so you would play around it, “says. Bill, 50, who works for a council youth scheme.

“Anyway, it was struck with Dutch Elm Disease, so we took it down.

“We had the piece of it in the store-room as a keepsake. A fire destroyed everything in 2003, except the piece of elm. I couldn’t believe it.

“This will be the 15th season I have skippered the first team with a few breaks long the way.

“That actually beats the Reverend J Dalton-Flood, the club’s first captain, who did it for 13 seasons. My son, Stephen, did it last year, but he has returned to normal playing.”

What does Bill offer to the team? You sense the modesty in his answer.

“I am the Mike Brearley (a former England captain, noted as a tactician rather than a player). Can’t bat, can’t bowl, never could. I just organise.

“I stand down at fine-leg and shout out the orders.

“Running a club like this isn’t about being a good cricketer, it is just about a lot of hard work, which I enjoy doing. It’s great.

“I go in at number 11 and only bowl when we need to give the opposition a lot of quick runs.

“Down the years, I have had a few good knocks, not very many I can assure you, but there have been a couple of fifties.

“As a young man I opened the batting and kept wicket.

“There aren’t many old fashioned, working-class sports clubs left on our parks.

“Most of the old works’ teams have disappeared.”

All over Wirral, there are little, unsung places, where men and women add more than they know to their communities. We need them.