I first went to the Crabble Ground in
Dover 44 years ago, for the second (and, as it turned out, final) day
of the Championship match between Kent and Essex. It was the first time I had watched
cricket anywhere other than at the St Lawrence Ground.
Kent wrapped up a victory that took
them to the top of the table, though everybody knew that it was too
late; Yorkshire were in a strong position in a game in progress and
had another fixture to come, wheras Kent's programme was now
concluded, and Yorkshire duly became champions the next week. By that
time, Kent held the Gillette Cup having defeated Somerset in the
final on the Saturday following this game.
I still have the autograph book in
which I collected signatures after the game had ended. Among
compliant signers that day were Peter West, for four decades the face
of BBC TV's cricket coverage but reporting for The Times that
day, and Kent's match winner Norman Graham.
1967 was Graham's breakthrough season. A fringe player up to that point, his pinpoint medium-fast bowling, making full use of his six feet seven inches, took him to third place in the national bowling averages (Derek Underwood was top) with 104 wickets at 13.90. He remained a key member of the Kent attack for a further decade, his accuracy and extra bounce contributing significantly to the one-day glory years, even if his batting and fielding did not; he challenges Kevin Jarvis for the title of worst batsman that I have seen, but Jarvis takes it out.
Norman Graham was hugely popular with
Kent supporters and was richly rewarded in his benefit season.
Benefits have fallen into deserved disrepute now that county
cricketers are well paid, but in the seventies they were justified
reward for long-serving professionals. Graham, who was said to have
visited a thousand pubs during his year, earned enough to buy several
houses and, I hope, a nice car. He left the Crabble that day folded
into a Triumph Herald, adopting a driving position not usually seen
outside a dodgem track, but he had taken 12 for 80, so was smiling.
Of course, the Crabble pitch was not so
much helpful to Graham and his colleagues as enslaved to them. There
have not been too many unabbreviated matches which one team has one
won
comfortably having scored fewer than
200, as was the case in 1967. Pitch quality remained an issue there.
Things came to a head in 1976 when Charles Rowe, batsman and
occasional off spinner, took 11 for 71 against Derbyshire, almost a
fifth of his total career haul for Kent. That was that. It was the
last time county cricket was played at the ground, a shame because it
was the most attractive of all the Kent grounds, though supporters of
the Nevill at Tunbridge Wells will disagree.
Accompanied by my Blean correspondent,
I went back there last week (I am in the old country for a month).
The ground was hard to find, though this was more because of
navigational issues than anything to do with the ground itself. I am
always confused as to where the sun is when I change hemispheres and,
except when I resume duties as his chauffeur, my correspondent relies
on public transport to get him where he wants to go, so is untroubled
by such concerns. We hit upon the idea of following a bus, as my
correspondent had passed the ground while on such a conveyance at
some unspecified point in the past. I recommend this as an aid to
navigation, though we added the refinement of establishing where the
bus was going later than we might have done. But Dover is on the
coast, so we reasoned that we could only explore half the compass,
and came upon the ground well before nightfall, a success by our own
standards.
We were pleased with what we found. The
Crabble is no longer a cricket ground, but has escaped the
developers' grasp. It is home to Dover Rugby Club and instantly
recognisable as the splendid venue it once was.
It is situated in a valley at River
(not all Kentish names are imaginative), with tall trees marking the
extremity of the ground on three sides. Cut into the hill is a series
of terraces, which used to accommodate seating, covered on the higher
levels, with more trees above them. This is slightly reminiscent of
the majestic Pukekura Park in New Plymouth, though on a much smaller
scale. In the middle is the stone pavilion, run down and boarded up
now, but stately in its day, brightly painted and decorated with
flower baskets.
I have watched cricket from few better
places than the higher terraces at the Crabble. It is to hoped that
cricket can return to the ground one day; there is room enough,
despite the floodlights around one of the two rugby pitches. New
Zealand expertise in using the same piece of turf for a rugby pitch
and cricket square would be useful.
We took a couple of turns around the
ground and thought of the players who had batted and bowled with
grace and style to match the surroundings. Ames and Leyland scored
double hundreds here; Ames seven more centuries, Woolley the same
number. Sobers scored a quickfire, match-winning hundred in 1968
described with awe by those who saw it, and he'd taken seven for 69
earlier in the same game. Yorkshiremen liked bowling here.
Illingworth took 14 in a game in 1964, Verity nine in an innings in
1933, Trueman eight for 28 in 1954. And Kent's Freeman took seven or
more on ten occasions.
The rustling of the trees is leftover
applause for them all.
