County Cricket Matters Issue 20

Martin Chandler | 8:42am BST 15 September 2024

Published: 2024
Pages: 38
Author: Chave, Annie (Editor)
Publisher: County Cricket Matters
Rating: 5 stars

With its September 2024 issue County Cricket Matters eases in to its twenties with an issue that might just be its best yet. That particular accolade is one which I’m not going to explore further, but I will say with every confidence that CCM20 does contain the best single contribution this splendid magazine has yet given us and, having devoted a fifth of the available space in CCM20 to her interview with Mike Brearley, I suspect the editor knew she was on to a winner as soon as her conversation with one of the game’s most respected figures began.

What makes the interview so impressive? It obviously helps that Annie asks the right questions, but  the real star is Brearley himself. There is no side with the man, and he doesn’t seek to duck any of the questions, even those that touch upon his one renowned ‘difficult’ relationship, with Phil Edmonds, something that he explains succinctly and with impressive clarity.

There is plenty in CCM20 for the bibliophile as well. Anyone who reads it and who hasn’t already invested in Jeremy Lonsdale’s biography of Bill Bowes and Matthew Appleby’s Lost Cricket Stickers will, I would venture to suggest, order copies of both books straight away. Lonsdale’s taster involves a look at the character of his man, whereas Appleby looks at the differences between the way First Class cricket operated in 1983, the year in which his book is set, and today.

But that isn’t all. There is also a rather special article from David Woodhouse, the man responsible for the magnificent Who Only Cricket Know. Not that his piece, Disappearing Worlds, has anything to do with his book whatsoever. What he is concerned with here is the work of Jim Kilburn and, more particularly, a book he published in 1937 titled In Search of Cricket.

Kilburn was a couple of decades younger than Neville Cardus, but the two were nonetheless contemporaries. Kilburn was only 28 when the book appeared, and his post war writing was definitely a step away from the Cardus influenced style he adopted in In Search of Cricket, but for anyone interested in that period Woodhouse’s words are fascinating. That said I will make one small criticism, that being the absence of an image of the book, as its dust jacket is a thing of genuine beauty, so the least I can do is remedy that.

History, and a sad and tragic aspect of it, features in John Taylor’s contribution. He takes us back to 1939 and a road accident which claimed the life of one Worcestershire cricketer, Charlie Bull, and seriously injured another, the Yorkshire born wicket keeper and future Test umpire Sid Buller. The roads have never been the safest place to be, but the story is a sobering reminder of just how much safer they are now than they were in those days.

To return to the present day Robert Fleming’s piece is titled The Summer Juggler and it is an examination of how, since 1963, English cricket has managed, or perhaps mismanaged, the available competitions and formats. It contains one observation that, for me, sums up the current state of the game perfectly; if it takes changing the whole nature of the game to attract new audiences, those are not the audiences of the game

Someone who is an integral party of the audience of the county game is Sharmila Meadows, and her contribution to CCM 20 makes a very valid but little explored point about the benefit of county cricket to those of us are in thrall to it.

And it is an aspect of the county game that features in Chris Fauske’s contribution and, more specifically, a celebration of of the skills and contributions of a county cricketer. The man in question is Essex’s Nick Browne. It is not exactly a pen portrait, nor a celebration of Browne’s talents, but it has elements of both and, most importantly, is a reminder of how important men like Browne are to every aspect of our game.

Andrew Ryan’s essay deals with another aspect of the county game, and puts forward his rationale for becoming a member of his county, Middlesex. There is much that makes sense in Ryan’s words, which will resonate with many. Even followers of my county, Lancashire, will understand his point of view and hope that, perhaps, they will one day be able to take the same view.

Any piece of writing that contains the line to me there has always been something magical about a second hand book shop is going to strike a chord with me, and that is one of the best themes of Tim Godden’s splendid and original piece; Rain Stopped Play: The Joys of a Cricket Ground on a Rainy Day.

Cricket is not, of course, all about the professional game and there is also a very good albeit sad look at the club game in CCM 20, from Roger Morgan-Grenville. His contribution is an account of the end of a club he formed almost forty years ago and which, in simple terms, had been overtaken by Anno Domini. He is by no means alone in that experience, the wandering club in Reading that in years gone by I would occasionally make up the numbers for folded a couple of years ago, and earlier this year a wake was held in an Indian restaurant in the town.

And finally, who knows what a clerihew is? I have to admit I didn’t until I got to the end of CCM 20, but I do now. Google tells me that it is a short comic or nonsensical verse, typically in two rhyming couplets with lines of unequal length and referring to a famous person. Personally that is not really my thing, but even I was able to enjoy Peter Thomson’s Yorkshire Clerihews, such is the skill with which he has put them together, from Lorde Hawke to Harry Brook

And that, bar Princely Entry’s crossword, which is just as fiendish as ever (even if I did get 24 across in a matter of minutes) is that. Another top effort from Annie and her team, and no chance of this failing to get a five star rating from me.