Diary of a day in the West Country where the survival of county cricket is under threat: Gloucestershire by bankruptcy, after announcing an even bigger-than-normal loss of £1.19m, and Worcestershire by climate change. Flooding have left their headquarters on New Road in Worcester inoperable for the first two months of this six-month season, forcing them to play their first two Championship matches in a friendly but less iconic Kidderminster.
8:09 AM: Depart Bristol Parkway
A train to Cheltenham is required before transferring to Worcester. Please note rail replacement buses: this line will be closed next week. Is this an omen? It is fashionable to exaggerate existential threats, but cricket in these parts is fragile. The only county to ever withdraw from the Championship was Worcestershire in 1919 when they could not afford to field a team, a fate that Worcester Warriors rugby suffered last year. The two-car train stops at Ashchurch outside Tewkesbury station: it sounds just as nice as Adlestrop, but is much more functional.
To bide the time, I grab my copy of Wisden, not the last edition published this week, but the one from 1915 (okay, it’s a reprint). Sir Neville Cardus gave the impression that the Golden Age of English cricket predated the Great War by about a decade (not that he would have seen more than a single game). However, Wisden’s review of the 1914 season pertinently said: “For many seasons, cricket in the West Country has suffered as much from a lack of good players as from public support.”
“Worcestershire, like Gloucestershire, had a dismal season, with failures on the pitch going hand in hand with financial problems. At some point during the summer it was openly stated that the club should be dissolved, and at a special membership meeting on August 8, a committee recommendation to that effect was put forward.
9.47am: Departure from Worcester Shrub Hill
A few gamblers board the train. One says he went to the Worcestershire club office the day before to ask about tickets for the Kidderminster match and it was completely closed. Moving the lock, stock and barrel is a huge hassle, not in the old days when Essex, Kent and Glamorgan used up to eight outdoor areas per season, but it is in the age of health and safety regulations: plastic bucket seats (Kidderminster CC has just a few rows of permanent benches in front of the pavilion), toilets, refreshment tents, a medical facility, an electronic scoreboard etc. It’s going to be a long four days for those catching this show on the road or at the Chester Road grounds to be precise.
These days the River Severn no longer floods New Road, as it did seven times last winter, but part of the outfield is still muddy; the square doesn’t look bad at all after the grass has grown under a marquee. It is still uncertain whether Worcestershire will be able to play their first, relatively lucrative T20 match on May 31. I watched idly as one of the groundsmen, in boots and rubber gloves, had to hose down every inch of the brick walls, the car park and the space beneath the Graeme Hick Pavilion – but to do that seven times a winter! And it must be cleaned every time, otherwise no income from events and meetings in the club rooms. Where is the bride who wants to smell mud, and dirty mud at that, not like in the good old days when Fred Hunt was not just the groundsman, but lord of all he surveyed (he earned more than the players because of the natural challenges) and netted a salmon on the outfield. A plaque on a row of cottages near the cathedral says that until the twentieth century they were occupied by fishermen who earned their living from salmon in the Severn. But the chemicals in fertilizers are now polluting the longest river in England and Wales.
Before the First World War, composer and librettist Ivor Gurney walked the banks of the Severn further downriver towards Gloucester, gathering inspiration until he marched into the trenches and madness. In his asylum he was enthusiastic about county cricket. To some it means so much.
10.40am: Queue for a ticket on Chester Road
Kidderminster Cricket Club is located in the center of the red brick town. Each ticket, which costs £19 for an adult, lasts a few minutes. Then the strong wind lets the sun break through and the start is postponed by only half an hour to 11.30 am. And nothing, rain or shine, can quell the very English, self-deprecating humor that Championship cricket produces, among supporters or in the media, on and off the ground.
11:30 am: The game starts
Durham has opted to bat first, even though a Dukes ball will be used for the first time this season. Stout Joe Leach and New Zealander Nathan Smith, a good signing, throw up the new ball and find movement, taking two quick wickets. Alex Lees, the former England Test opener, shifts low to second slip where former West Indies captain Jason Holder dives low to his right. This is a good standard: Worcestershire, having so little money, spend it wisely when signing.
The beginning of a crowd gathering in bucket seats and their own loungers. After showering twice, the day becomes fresh and warm. The club’s nets are good. Ivor Gurney would like to be here. And the solution presents itself, with an English sense of humour: that Worcestershire should move its headquarters to Kidderminster, while Gloucestershire should sell up in Bristol and buy New Road. Sorted, at least financially.
2:40 PM: After lunch
After lunch and a Durham collapse their Ollie Robinson batted as if he had already been told he would be England’s next Test wicketkeeper/batsman. He is more proactive with the bat than Ben Foakes, a better keeper than Jonny Bairstow since his leg injury, and older than James Rew.
Robinson hit with a swashbuckle that will please this English management, hitting everything straight to the leg and driving powerfully off the front foot, not just specializing in square shots like an old goalkeeper. He reached his 50 off 41 balls before running off for another drive, but he was left with the tail.