That afternoon at The Oval...

Written by Mark Smith

Sunday, 12 August 2007

(HW Classics is a section where we relive articles written in the past which are timeless. These are the articles which grow on you with each reading (well, that's what we feel anyway) and therefore, probably shouldn't be relegated to the back pages of the site.)

I was born and brought up in South London, and still live there, so any talk of favourite test match grounds has to centre about The Oval in Kennington, London SE11. I’ve spent more days there than I’d care to recall, including at least one day at almost every test match played there in the past 35 years

To give an idea of what it’s like, and what it means to me personally, here’s an account of my first visit there – July 26^th 1973.

Although only ten years old at the time I was already steeped in cricket history – it’s worth remembering though, that most of this was stemmed from the written word and photographs. In those far off, pre Sky Sports, days the only cricket games on TV were home test matches and the Sunday 40 over League.

The phone call to summon me to The Oval was generational – Grandad calling Dad suggesting that it might be time for a family rite of passage and Mark’s first day at a test match.

Grandad lived in Clapham, so it was a short trip on the on the Northern Line up to the Oval tube station - the ‘Northern Line’ even though we’re talking South London here… go figure! Out of the station, turn left and The Oval is there in front of you.

A very short walk to the ground past the council flats over the road – whose residents I envy to this day! Running the gauntlet of newspaper and souvenir sellers pushing their wares. These days it’s ticket touts who outnumber everyone else, but there were no pre-sold tickets in those days so the streets were empty of anyone offering to ‘buy or sell’.

Outside the ground the queues snaking round towards The Cricketers pub round by the famous gasometers looked daunting –and I worried that ground would be full before we ever got our chance to click through the old rickety old turnstiles, the width of which must prove challenging to anyone over fifteen stone. The same turnstiles are still there to this day. Grandad, however, had a plan to beat the queues. As a policeman (retired) himself he went up to one of the uniformed figures standing in front of the Hobbs Gate – pointed to me and showed the policeman something in his wallet (his old warrant card?) and, amazingly, we were shepherded into the ground with a cheery grin and a ‘enjoy the day gents’.

Inside the ground it looked even then as though little had changed since the aforementioned Hobbs was in his pomp over 50 years before. In some ways it still looks the same in 2007. There are more concession stands these days, plus a new Executive block and new stand at the Vauxhall End, but overall the Oval still reflects it’s surroundings – down to earth, unpretentious, occasionally raucous and rather rough around the edges – compare and contrast that to the stately, effete surroundings at Lords.

We turned right through the gate and went round the narrow passageway behind the stands towards the seating near the newer of the two scoreboards. For reference, these days it’s called the ‘Peter May Enclosure’. The seating was tatty old wooden benches rather than individual plastic seats. The benches looked as though they hadn’t seen a lick of paint since May was strutting his elegant stuff out in the middle.

The ground layout was very similar then to what it is today. Simple single tier seating all the way round apart from the pavilion. The old Vauxhall End looking very odd painted white with a line of seemingly disembodied heads sticking out above white panels along each row. No corporate boxes in those days, and even when they did arrive in SE11 in the late 80’s, they were rather ludicrously stuck on legs above the Vauxhall Stand, inviting much ridicule from those seated below.

Shoehorned in around the ground were hoards of West Indians – a riot of noise, colour and laughter. It’s only a short bus ride from Brixton so this was effectively their ‘home from home’ game and the diaspora were out in force to welcome their Caribbean heroes.

My hours of swotting through cricket history books meant that the name on my lips and in the forefront of my mind was Gary Sobers. Even my limited knowledge of the game had told me that Sobers was a legend. He held the record for highest test score of 365, a record made over fifteen years before. It was common knowledge that this would be his last tour of England.

The loudspeakers came to life and told us rather indistinctly that the West Indies had won the toss and would bat. Even in this age of modern technology they sounded no clearer on my last visit earlier this season.

I glanced at the old-fashioned ‘typed’ scorecard saw that Sobers was down to bat at six.

Would I see him bat? I worried aloud.

Grandad reassured me - very likely.

The morning session was played out under cloudy, seamer friendly skies. It was slow going and the West Indies had only got to 47-1 at lunch.

I tucked hungrily into corned beef sandwiches, wagonwheels (remember them?!) and orange squash. Around us the Windies supporters were drinking from huge bottles of what I took to be Coca Cola but which was, I discovered years later, in fact rum and coke mixed 50/50. I’d never seen cigarettes that looked like that before either…

During the lunch break there was the chance for a wander round the ground – a personal tradition I’ve kept at every test I’ve been too. The scene was exactly the same as it is now, narrow walkways behind each side of the ground and a mass of human activity behind the pavilion,. The steep sloping wall behind the seats on the Harleyford Road side – now replaced by a wide concourse, and a big space behind the Vauxhall End, room for many ad hoc games of cricket.

An hour after lunch the batsmen were still struggling and the inevitable boredom of a ten year old had set in. There was no food left and I’d long since waded through the comic and ‘Cricketer’ magazine that Dad had given me, and memorised all the names on the scorecard. Then a shout – Greig had bowled Kanhai and it was 64-3. Grandad turned to me – ‘One more wicket and then Sobers is in ’

So it came to pass that over the next three hours, on a by now hot sunny day at the Oval, cricket grabbed me by the throat, and still hasn’t let go…

Up until that point my cricket spectating experience had been watching Dad play club cricket. TV pictures were still black and white in our household and the earlier series in that summer of ‘73 was against New Zealand for whom Bevan Congdon had defined the word ‘dour’. What two West Indian batsman then demonstrated to me was that cricket could be a magical mixture of colour, entertainment and skill – in equal measures.

The two batsmen responsible for my epiphany were Clive Lloyd and Alvin Kalicharran exhibiting a contrast in styles and techniques. Lloyd, languid and liquid, strolling around the crease like a panther playing majestic, seemingly effortless drives on both sides of the wicket. Kalicharran – almost foot shorter, all wristy flicks, pulling and cutting to distraction. Two years later he would launch a blistering attack on Dennis Lillee hitting 35 off 11 balls in World Cup match at the very same ground – the innings that effectively proved that One Day International cricket could be a viable proposition..

I forgot Sobers, padded up in the old Oval pavilion – this was enthralling – I didn’t want it to end.

The England attack that day was none too shabby. Geoff Arnold on his home turf, John Snow – probably the best fast bowler in the world, the economic Underwood, Tony Greig, and skipper Illingworth with his workmanlike off-spin – all backed up by the perky Alan Knott behind the stumps – but none of them had any answers to the flow of runs that were coming from the bats of the two Guyanans.

The early cloud had cleared and by now it was blazing hot. Presumably under orders from my mother, Grandad worried about sunburn – there was no shaded area apart from the pavilion. But I could have burnt to a cinder for all I cared.

The euphoria of the West Indies supporters manifested itself through sound in an endless cacophony of noise – a hubbub of excited talk of past heroes such as Wes Hall and Seymour Nurse, mixed with the sounds of horns, drums and the banging together of tin cans. Then there were the repeated pitch invasions. One when Lloyd reached 99 and then another when he reached a glorious hundred. South London’s finest had just cleared yet another unofficial incursion for the 200 partnership when, just before the close Kalicharran was out for 80. In just two hours and forty minutes the pair had added 208

At last, I’d see Sobers. But wait; the figure emerging from the old pavilion isn’t Sobers. And why is there a number ‘7’ up on the scoreboard? I looked at my scorecard, by now a mess of juvenile biro scribbles and crossings out. 7. D.L Murray (wkt) Surely not a night watchman! In retrospect Sobers had obviously probably done some rank pulling to compare with Grandad’s earlier at the Hobbs gate and decided that a dodgy ten-minute period wasn’t for him – or maybe he had a bet on and his ear glued to a portable radio… or possibly even a drink on the go! By 1973 he deserved the privilege.

Murray and the magnificent Lloyd saw out the day and West Indies closed on 275-4. We joined the long queue at the station for the tube home – no pulling ‘rank’ for Grandad this time. Tired, but supremely satisfied I looked over my shoulder at the old ground that had been my wonderland for the past seven hours. Tatty and ever so slightly intimidating, but still a wonderland nevertheless.

‘Can we come back tomorrow?’ I asked. ‘Sobers will be batting… won’t he?’

(Click here to know more about Mark Smith)