Young Gentlemen v Players

ANYONE WHO GOES TO FENNER'S BEFORE APRIL IS OUT DOES so at some risk to his health. They can be enjoying an early heat wave at Lord's, and even old Trafford, Buxton and Headingley may be basking in sunny days. But Cambridge in the spring is likely to be scoured by winds from the east that have swept unhindered across the Hundred Foot Drain, the Bedford Level and the Great North Fen. I have chosen to be here so early in the season because I have wished to be sure of seeing Procter at least once again. It is true that Gloucestershire have made him captain for another year after his winter's work in Mr Packer's camp, but that is no longer the insurance policy it used to be before this wretched turning point in the allegiances of the game. Already, Nottinghamshire have ejected Rice from both captaincy and club, with the county championship not yet begun, and the only surety there seems to be the wholly miserable one of litigation yet to come. Better risk catching cold at Fenner's, then, for a certain sight of the South African's all-round skills: but what a reason for going to watch a cricket match!

It is deeply ironic that I have come to a stronghold of the old amateur game on this occasion, largely because professional cricket has got itself into such a mess. Not that we should delude ourselves about the texture of university cricket these days, with several of the young gentlemen in this Cambridge side already on county books and therefore able to anticipate paid playing careers the moment their studies are done. And to hark back nostalgically to the grand old amateur days, with disparaging sniffs about professionalism in sport, usually means begging a lot of questions about bread and butter, and the way some lucky lads never had to rely on their cricket to provide it. All the same, there was something I esteem embedded in the amateur's game, a nonchalance that no professional can ever really afford. More often than not, perhaps, this was an irritating bore, especially to the professionals who played in the same teams. Richard Barlow must sometimes have got pretty fed up with his carefree Hornby long ago, particularly when that fox-hunting gent caused the old pro to be run out (as often happened) with consequent damage to his batting average and therefore to his prospects of trade. But from time to time the nonchalance of the amateur included such a modesty about his own worth that it was a genuinely noble thing.

As I tack through the undergraduate flow of bicycles on my way to the ground, I catch myself wondering what on earth Charles Studd would have thought of cricket's present plight. He made a century and took 5 wickets in one innings when Cambridge defeated the Australians in 1882, subsequently captained the university and played five times for England against our greatest cricketing foe. Twice, in those years, he did the double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets. And then he turned his back on it all. Having been roused by the Evangelical fervour of Moody and Sankey's student crusade, he became a missionary when he went down, spent the rest of his life in Africa and the East, and never played cricket again. What, indeed, would a more recent Cambridge ghost have reckoned about our present obsession with the financial rewards of the game? When I started watching first-class cricket a balding man in specs, who used to crouch behind the Fenner's stumps, was wicket-keeping for England. He toured Australia in Hammond's post-war side, with Godfrey Evans chosen as his Number Two. He was noted in the scorecards of his county, Yorkshire, as P. A. Gibb, to distinguish him from the paid cricketers in the side (like Hutton, L. and Coxon, A.) and many years later he was to coach the young Mike Procter at his school in Durban. But Paul Gibb's old and precious amateur status never served him as well in the world as it did others of the teaching, the landowning and the stockbrocking clan. When he died, last December, he was working as a bus driver down Guildford way, and he was completely overlooked by Wisden in its otherwise all-embracing obituaries of 1977.

Some things change very little, though. It is something of a relief to find that they are still setting up type for the scorecards in the printery behind the Scoreboard some time after play has begun (and when these appear, Procter's name is spelt with a penultimate "o", the compositor perhaps being too well disciplined in university ways). It has turned out not such a bad day after all, with no great wind blasting down from The Wash. Nippy enough, though, to make Procter decide to bat, so that his men can spend as much time as possible in the pavilion warmth. Some of them defer that pleasure, taking to the nets as soon as Stovold and Tait start their day's work in the middle, though it is not at once obvious that those are Gloucestershire players practising in the far corner of the ground, for they have been camouflaged and I suspect some sponsor's gaudy brand. They wear uniform trousers of dark blue, and strange-looking tops that seem to have been designed by the man who thought up the tailplane livery for British Airways. This may improve the appearance of a Trident, but it makes county cricketers look like the chorus line from an economy-class production of "The Student Prince". I do not like it, and I hope our new patronising masters will soon know where to stop.

Out in the middle, where the cricketers are properly dressed, the difference between the established professionals and the up and coming lads is at once apparent. Stovold, as thickly muffled as a polar bear, has several seasons behind him now and it shows in the ease with which he is playing this Cambridge attack. He is soon hooking and driving without difficulty and, when Greig just once raps him on the pads and tries an appeal, it is distinctly an event. But at the other end Tait, a young newcomer to the side, looks as if life is exceedingly hard. He gropes forward a lot, seems uncertain how the ball is coming off the pitch, misses several times and enjoys one great slice of luck. He swings defiantly at Howat and snicks the ball head-high just wide of the stumps; but Littlewood's goalkeeping dive has taken off a fraction too late and the ball is almost at the boundary before it is stopped.

In the first hour 52 runs are scored, and Stovold is ahead by well over 2 to 1. By this time, though, Tait has discovered that there is little to worry about in the pitch itself. Cambridge wickets are not quite the blissful batting strips Cyril Coote prepared once upon a time, when young May and young Sheppard and young Doggart and their peers each got a bucketful of runs almost every time he went in: it is nearly thirty years since the university and West Indies between them scored 1,324 runs for only 7 wickets in the course of three days. The bowler who opens at Fenner's now need not feel hopeless before he even starts, though against class batsmen he may well be footsore and very thirsty by the end of a day. Tait, realising that the ball almost invariably comes through at a predictable height, settles more confidently into his play and, just before lunch, Stovold is the first to go. Having muddied several Cambridge flannels by causing outfielders to slide frantically across the grass, he pulls one more delivery high towards the long leg boundary. But this time Peck gets there before the ball complete its arc and he takes it low, on yet another blackened knee. That blow might have made Stovold's 50 and he ambles very slowly back. The pavilion's warmth is not quite so tempting now; the sun has found a way through the fenny mists overhead so that, when Zaheer comes out, the rims of his glasses glint and the gold charm around his neck twinkles as he walks.

Tait keeps going steadily for some time after the break until he mis-hits Allbrook's off-spin and Hignell catches him smartly at silly mid-on. The stage is thus set for a classic batting display with Zaheer at one end, Procter at the other, against bowling that has been steady but lacking in guile. The play will now also embody every conceivable irony that has been built into cricket today. Pakistani and South African, brown man and white, standing together, defying all the rest. Not just professionals against amateurs, but two Packer employees facing a team who are here (nominally at least) mostly for the fun. Two highly paid men who, in their Packer season, will have become accustomed to playing on almost empty grounds, which is not much different from Fenner's today except that Mr Packer's games were rather expensive to watch, whereas nobody in Cambridge has had to pay a penny to get in. Yet the ironies do not matter this afternoon, being reduced to their proper scale by the latent skills of those two batsmen out there. I am not the only person who becomes more intent at the prospect of drama about to begin. The old fellows sharing my bench along the wall stop talking, drift into monosyllables, are finally quiet as Procter walks out to bat. The man who hangs the numbers on the Scoreboard bends to pick up a fresh square of tin, knowing that he will surely need it before this over is out. It is not that Zaheer alone hasn't already been hitting the ball; he has. But with the two of them there, harder work is at hand. A young man who has been walking his Labrador round the ground stops in front of the vacant seats by the tennis courts and bids the dog...