Maidstone week: 22 to 28 July 2017

Kent v Hampshire, Maidstone, 22 and 23 July 1967

Kent v Surrey, Maidstone, 26 to 28 July 1967

Maidstone week was always a highlight of the Kentish season.  I wrote about cricket at Mote Park a couple of years ago. It was at Maidstone that writers could bring out the thesaurus of high summer: shimmering…baking…sweltering, cricket played to the sound of eggs frying on the pavement. Much of this is nostalgia cleansing the memory of course; it was as likely to pour down there as anywhere else, but for many of us Maidstone week was the first element of the holy trinity of cricket watching in Kent, along with the weeks at Canterbury and Folkestone that followed, though in 1967 it would be another five years until I watched cricket at the Mote.

It was a cracker of a week, with an exploding pitch and a match-saving last-wicket stand. The week began with Kent making 296 in the first innings against Hampshire. John Shepherd was now established at No 3, and followed his semi-final 77 with 72 here. Shepherd remained at No 3 for the rest of the season, but never batted as high thereafter. He had the talent, but it was to be his lot to carry the seam attack for the next decade and more, so he usually found himself down at No 8, which was something of a waste.

On Sunday, 10,000 crammed into a ground that had reasonable seating for no more than a tenth of them; this just a few days after almost 17,000 had gone to Canterbury for the Gillette Cup semi-final. What a time, when everybody wanted to be at the cricket, and what a day they saw. There was a large worn patch at one end that Derek Underwood could use as a torturer uses a rack. He took seven for 35 in the first innings as Hampshire were skittled for 95. Their day got worse. The last six wickets in the second innings all fell at 31, the last five partnerships contributing not a single run. Nobody got into double figures. Underwood took five more, and Alan Dixon got four.

Hampshire captain Roy Marshall (six and one) fumed, describing the pitch as “an absolute disgrace to county cricket” saying that he had seen only three worse (oddly adding that they were all in the west country, as if in mitigation) in 15 years.

Charles Bray in The Times reports that Underwood made the ball “kick shoulder high”. It might be that these days the match would have been called off; anyway, the chances of a pitch being that bad are remote. We are worse off for this. It took a fine bowler to make the most of that rough patch and with 28 games in a Championship season the competition could indulge the odd piece of negligence by a groundsman here and there. 

Expecting more turn on another part of the square for the second part of the week, Kent brought in Graham Johnson for John Dye (Norman Graham and David Sayer were still injured). Against Hampshire, Underwood and Dixon between them had 17 for 73, not appearing in obvious need of assistance.

It was back to go-slow cricket on the first day as Surrey crept to 233 for five, finishing on day two with 354 from 155 overs, Underwood four for 100 from 63 overs. Yet it was not Underwood, but another young spinner, Pat Pocock, who had the better day, with six for 43 that made Kent follow on. Four of his victims (and two of Stuart Storey’s) were caught in the leg trap (do they still call it that?). 

Pocock was having as good a run as Underwood and was spoken of as the new Laker, an albatross to hang around anyone’s neck. It was him, not the Kent player, who was selected for the tour to the Caribbean the following winter, but in the long term Underwood  (297 wickets in 86 tests) did better than Pocock (67 wickets from 25 appearances). Given more opportunities, Pocock would have become a notable test bowler, but was not well treated by the selectors. Ray Illingworth’s tenure of the captaincy excluded him for four years, and later they favoured Geoff Miller and John Emburey, both inferior bowlers to Pocock but better batsmen.

At half past two on Friday afternoon Kent’s last pair, Alan Dixon and Alan Brown came together. No doubt some people were already making their way to the car park or to catch the earlier train. Yet, with the help of an hour’s rain break, they were still there at the end, having saved the draw and the two championship points that went with it. Dixon was having a brilliant season with bat and ball. Brown was a very capable batsman, but a hitter, so his restraint was all the more meritorious. The partnership was the stuff of legend, so I am surprised that I had never heard of it until excavating the archives this week.

With five weeks to go, Kent were top of the Championship and in the Gillette Cup final, and the word “double” was being whispered around the boundary.

The second test series of the summer began this week, against Pakistan at Lord’s. A better contest than that against India was hoped for, in vain it appeared at the end of the first day with Barrington and Graveney putting on 200. Kent people who so enjoyed Asif Iqbal’s batting over the following 15 years may be surprised to be reminded that his main role on that tour was as an opening bowler. On the second day he took three wickets, as did Mushtaq Mohammad and Salim Altaf. England lost eight for 86, but were back on top by the end of the day thanks to three wickets from the restored Ken Higgs. This was the last time England took the field in a test match, home or abroad, without a Kent player until the first test in Pakistan a decade later.

Elsewhere, the BBC announced that the reconstructed radio network would go by numbers: Radios 1, 2, 3 and 4, while solemnly promising that Radio 1 wouldn’t be too “mid-Atlantic”, which is precisely what had made the pirate stations so successful. They needn’t have worried. Needle time—the agreement with the musicians’ unions that restricted the number of records that could be played, thus guaranteeing work for their members—meant that in the early years the station was more perm than perfumed garden.  

Owen Delany Park, Taupo

My Khandallah correspondent and myself have just returned from our Christmas trip to the Waikato (for Christmas, she added the 1958 Wisden to the yellow-spined brotherhood on the library shelves at My Life in Cricket Scorecards Towers, regular readers will be pleased to hear).

There and back we passed by Owen Delany Park on the outskirts at Taupo, in the central North Island. Last year we stopped there to give the dog a run and had a walk round (the accompanying photos are from that visit).

Its location is spectacular, surrounded by forest and overlooked by the dormant volcano Mt Tauhara. On a clear day, the volcanic triplets Mt Ruapehu, Mt Ngarahoe and Mt Tongariro, snow-capped and ready to rumble, can be seen across Lake Taupo. The lake is the biggest volcano of the lot. When it last let loose, in 176 AD, writers in China and Rome commented on the curious colours of the skies, unaware that were looking at volcanic detritus from Taupo. There has been no bigger eruption anywhere on Earth since.

The ground itself is quintessential New Zealand, perfect for watching under blue skies from the roomy grass banks that form the arena.

What a shame then that it is not a cricket ground any more. The park is still a venue for King Country rugby and there was an athletics track marked out when we were there, but there is no longer a cricket block on the main ground. Bat and ball are relegated to the outer ovals behind the stand.

Not so long ago, Owen Delany Park was a regular host of Northern Districts matches, and an international venue too, staging ODIs over the holiday period from 1999 to 2001.



Owen Delany Park and its ineffective floodlights

It was the ground at which I first watched cricket under lights, and from where I first reported for CricInfo, so it has good associations for me besides being a pleasant place to watch cricket.

The floodlit game was played between Northern Districts and Otago in my first New Zealand summer, just after Christmas 1997. I say “lights”, though the pallid luminosity that emanated from the four towers stationed for that purpose around the ground barely warranted the term. The point when the power of the artificial light surpassed that of the natural light would never have been reached under a full moon.

The lack of effective lighting was the main reason for Owen Delany Park’s downfall. Seddon Park in Hamilton acquired state-of-the-art lights in 2002 and took over the day/night games that had previously gone to Taupo. In the last few years, Northern Districts has had an enhanced choice of venues, with new grounds, both with excellent facilities, at Mt Maunganui and Whangarei.

A little under two years later I was back at Owen Delany Park, this time with pen in hand. I had recently forsaken educating for the freelance life, and planned to send CricInfo daily reports on New Zealand A v the West Indians. These were the infant days of digital communication when “wireless” still meant the old wooden radio in your grandparents’ loft. I wrote the pieces at the ground then at the close of play drove back to Rotorua, an hour away, to key them in before dispatching them at (if I was lucky) 56 bytes per second. Yet we were happy then.

The results can be seen here.

The reader is invited to compare my reports with those of the Barbados Nation. I have yet to hear from Bridgetown regarding my pleasantly worded suggestion that they might pay me for my material.

Shiv Chanderpaul’s double century was the feature of the match. He was then what he is now: the Thomas the Tank Engine of batsmen, not much to look at, but reliable and steady, getting to the destination ahead of the bigger, flasher engines in the shed. Here’s the scorecard.

CricInfo liked this and other unsolicited pieces that I supplied for the daily newsletter that season, enough to give me regular work when a New Zealand operation was set up for the 2000/01 season. Until the money ran out three years later, my patch was pretty well everything south of Auckland and north of Wellington. Taupo was right in the middle of this area, so I returned there often.

The main stand (also the only stand). CricInfo used to operate from benches at the back of the stand.

 

Even by the congenially high standards of New Zealand’s cricket grounds, the hospitality at Owen Delany Park was particularly warm and welcoming. Interesting people passed through and were happy to chat (no doubt seeing my attempts to present myself as a hard-nosed journalist for the sham they were). They included Sir Richard Hadlee, John Bracewell, and John R Reid, who reminisced about the 1949 tour of England.

Our usual station was the radio commentary box where Radio Sport’s Phil Stevens was pleased to have the assistance of CricInfo’s live scorer, usually the excellent Gareth Bedford, and myself.

We reported on plenty of good cricket from Owen Delany Park, notably a couple of one-day games between the New Zealand and South Africa under-19 sides, including Hashim Amla and Johann Botha (then a tearaway quick rather than the bent-armed spinner who was to become South Africa’s one-day captain) for the visitors and Brendon McCullum, Ross Taylor and Jesse Ryder for the hosts. I am relieved that my reports show that, by and large, I could spot who the good players were.

The last ODI to be staged at Owen Delany Park was played between New Zealand and Zimbabwe, just after New Year 2001.  I was there as a spectator. Zimbabwe won the game convincingly, a brilliant display of reverse-sweeping by Andy Flower doing much to get them into a winning position. New Zealand won the second game only for Zimbabwe to take the series with a one-wicket win at Eden Park.

At that time, Zimbabwe were well on the way to establishing themselves in international cricket in a place similar to New Zealand’s: on the second level, but with the capability to surprise the best teams quite often. Mugabe’s tyranny put an end to that, reducing the country to also-rans with no prospect of improvement in the foreseeable future.

Owen Delany Park and Mote Park bear a passing resemblance to each other if the Photoshop of the mind replaces the chalk of the North Downs with Lake Taupo’s igneous outpourings. Both are places where the cricket has been good and the sun bright, but where I am unlikely to set up my folding chair on the grass bank again.

 

Mote Park, Maidstone

On our recent visit to the old country I treated my Khandallah correspondent to a trip to Mote Park in Maidstone. The park contains 450 acres of mature parkland, a 30 acre lake, a stately home and a rich history in which Elizabeth Woodville, Henry VIII, Ann Boleyn, Elizabeth I and William Pitt the Younger all feature.

All of this we ignored.

The sole interest of our visit was the north-west corner of the park, where one of the finest cricket grounds in Kent is to be found.

Maidstone Week, usually in the first week of July, sits in the memory as the best of summer. Sun baking a flat, fast pitch from a clear blue sky; the woods across the valley pulsing in a light breeze; Asif Iqbal shimmying down the pitch to send the ball rasping through the covers; the birdsong tempered only by the welcome purr of the ice cream van’s generator.

Of course, the memory tints the image. In 1980, for example, it began raining in the late afternoon on Sunday and there was not another ball bowled until five on Thursday.

The good news is that it is still a cricket ground, unlike the Crabble in Dover for one. It is home to the Mote CC, one of Kent’s most famous clubs, and staged two Kent Second XI Championship games last season. But there has been no county cricket there since 2005 when a dodgy pitch caused Kent to be docked eight Championship points.

Pitches can be put right. The expense of taking cricket to the outgrounds and the period-charm nature of the Mote’s facilities are why the county has not returned, and is not likely to.

So I was pleased to be able to introduce my correspondent the ground much as it was throughout the three decades that spans my watching cricket there.

Though located a walk away from the town centre (lunchtime food replenishment is possible—the Mote holds a three-egg rating*), the outlook from the ground is predominantly rural. From the bank on the southern side one looks across the valley to the scarp slope of the North Downs, on their way to Dover to form the white cliffs. So many shades of green.

The cricket field is located on the middle of three tiers. The top level is the home of Maidstone RFC and a car park. The grass slope down to boundary is the main spectator area. In this respect, the Mote is more like a New Zealand ground. Of course, in Kent we are not as outré as to come into actual contact with the grass. There must be seating. In the seventies, this was rusticity itself. Planks of four by two balanced precariously on upright logs. Most days were enlivened by a row of stout parties finding themselves on their backs, feet waving in the air.

The Northern End

For cricket week the marquees lined the boundary from the bank to the scoreboard at the Northern End. There’s a short expanse of concrete terracing, from which we would watch Sunday League games when the bank tended to get overfull.

The Pavilion

Square to the pitch is the mock Tudor pavilion, which I once saw Clive Lloyd clear with a six. Further along, the boundary bulges back into the field of play, making space for a square, terracotta-coloured building known as the Tabernacle. Originally the private pavilion of Viscount Bearsted, it was used as the club office on match days. Both buildings date from 1910.

The Tabernacle

I first went to the Mote in 1972, when I saw Alan Knott hit his second century of the match, against Surrey. I was last there in 2002, for a resounding defeat of Durham in the Sunday League.

From the end of school until a reluctant entry into the world of work I would be there throughout cricket week. After that, the Mote always drew me back to Kent for the weekend.

There was so much fine cricket, some of which was in my mind’s eye as I walked the boundary and rested on the bank in September:

·       The day in 1976 when a helicopter landed on the square with the Sunday League trophy, just as Colin Dredge was run out in Cardiff, meaning that Kent had won it.

·       Two wins in 1978, the last year Kent won the Championship, with 19 wickets for Derek Underwood.

·       Losing to Middlesex by one wicket in the rain in 1981.

·       A fluent double hundred by Graeme Fowler in 1984.

·       My reward for turning down tickets to Live Aid in 1985 to go to Mote Park instead: a run-a-ball century by Roger Harper.

·       Mark Ealham setting about Derbyshire in general and Dominic Cork in particular for a 44-ball century in 1995, the fastest ever in the Sunday League then.

I was surrounded by the ghosts of spectators long gone, on their backs, feet towards the sky.

*The My Life in Cricket Scorecards Scotch egg ratings rank cricket grounds according to ease with which food supplies can be replenished during the day.

Only Folkestone has ever held the prestigious five egg status, the only ground in my experience to have a supermarket close enough for the replenishment of Scotch eggs during a drinks interval without missing a ball. Challenging certainly, requiring speed, strategy, cunning and the ability to knock aside old people without feeling remorse, but it could, and has, been done.

Unfortunately, Folkestone was subsequently downgraded to four eggs after the supermarket was rebuilt with the entrance at the other end of the building. Why don’t these people stop and think?