FSOM: Forget the professional game, Proper Cricket is back! Here is you wouldn’t change it for the world

Cricket is back!

FSOM is not talking about the grandeur of Test matches or the pyjama-clad clown show that is the IPL, which seems to lurk around for most of the year like a bad smell in a phone box (for those who remember phone boxes).

FSOM is talking Proper Cricket.

The game first given to us by shepherd boys on the South Downs in the 1700s who whacked sun-dried sheep turds with their crooks.

Proper Cricket is played at hundreds – probably thousands – of venues up and down the country; from Ducal estates to council estates, from village greens to inner city parks.

It’s the game which spawns tales and stories longer than Michael Holding’s run-up.

Proper Cricket is being invited to play at Goodwood House, in the grounds of the estate with the stately home of the Duke of Richmond looming over the square, where to be sent out to patrol the boundary is to have a flock of sheep for company. Where tea is taken in the thatched pavilion which contains a framed facsimile of the first set of the laws of cricket. Back in Regency times, cricket was a vehicle for the landed gentry to bet huge sums of money and it was in the interest of the Duke of Richmond to ensure there was no room for skullduggery or shenanigans from the neighbouring lord of the manor. So, they agreed on a set of rules which formed the basis of the current laws of the game.

Proper Cricket is when you play in an Evening League match in the middle of one of the largest council estates in Europe, where the changing room is a smouldering pile of rubble, having been torched the previous night by the same feral teenagers who will interrupt your match by holding a scramble bike race across the pitch.

Proper Cricket is fielding under a huge oak at the same ground and watching the ball sail over your head into the upper foliage, sending the rooks scattering, six times in the same over. The ball was despatched for six sixes in an over by a tattooed neanderthal who, on being asked how he possessed the muscle-power to smash the ball high and far enough to serve an in-flight meal and watch a movie on it, casually said: ‘I only got out of prison yesterday. I did nine months for assault and had nothing else to do but work out in the prison gym!’

Proper Cricket is a county league game, at a painfully picturesque English postcard scene at a remote village just yards inside the Hampshire-Berkshire border. The village consisted of a dozen houses of the desirable type bought by city brokers for a weekend crash-pad, the sort of people who inflate the housing market and freeze locals out to buy a dream typical English village cottage overlooking the village green, only to moan and hire a barrister to kick the club off a pitch they have occupied for 150 years the first time a cricket ball lands among the lobelias in their garden.

The village doesn’t have enough male adults to form a team, so outsiders are brought in. It keeps the team alive but there is no mistaking who the team is for.

You turn up to find the opposition consists of five older gentlemen, all over the age of 55, and six (seven if you count the 12th man) fresh, eager teenagers.

The batting order from one to five is the older players, all of whom have the stubbornness of goose barnacles in a rock pool and who work, nudge and nurdle the ball around for ones and twos and, almost by stealth, post a competitive score for the loss of only four wickets.

When it’s their turn to bowl, one of the old sweats will don the keeper’s gauntlets, and the other four will share the bowling workload between them. The young bloods will be despatched to the far regions of the outfield, where their young limbs can chase any ball that has the sheer nerve to be hit to the boundary off the bowling which is a devilish, cunning mix of medium-pace dob on a nagging length or flighted filth, from a four-pronged attack with more than a century of guile between them.

The old codgers hog the game, and the youngsters are little more than fielding serfs. It keeps the team going but you wonder how much longer the young’uns are going to turn up if they are not allowed sight of bat or ball.

Proper Cricket was wagging a midweek afternoon off work to go and play against a touring team. This was generally a team composed of former private schoolboys, now earning millions as city brokers, A week away from the office, with cricket matches in the afternoons, was a perfect way to teach the yokels and plebs a lesson, and even better if the game is at a pretty ground with a pub next door, preferably with a pretty barmaid or two to be obnoxious to by flashing a heavily-padded wallet at.

As the car park filled with Porsches and, for those who had had a particularly profitable year, a Lambo or Ferrari, the braying and guffawing peculiar to the upper classes rang out among the Ruperts, Johnnies, Henrys and even the odd Jasper!

The Jazz Hats, caps denoting their former public school, contained more colours than Salvador Dali’s paintbox and the gleaming bats cost a couple of months wages to most of our team.

The signs of top of the line coaching from former pros at their expensive private school was evident as they reeled off classic cover drives with the left elbow raised high to despatch on any over-pitched delivery through the covers.

But they weren’t too hot when our quicks fizzed the ball around their ears and there was always a delicious pleasure sending them back to the ‘Big Smoke’ with their tails between their Savile Row clad legs.

Proper Cricket was Hoglands Park.

Hoglands was smack bang in the middle of Southampton, the only cricket ground in a city centre in the country. It had three pitches and hosted games in the Southampton Parks League on Saturdays, and the Evening League in midweek.

On a given Saturday, the benches surrounding the pitches were full of men, fed up with being dragged around Debenhams, C&A, M&S, BHS, Owen Owens and other shopping delights of Southampton and served as a convenient dumping ground for an hour or two.

Midweek, Hoglands was one of the venues for the Southampton Evening Cricket League and you never knew who was going to pitch up.

A local hairdresser, self-styled coiffeuse to the stars, was a sportsman who liked to win. His salon-named team contained players who turned out for him, presumably on the promise of a free wash and cut.

So, you might go out to the middle to bat to find former Hampshire quick and England fast-bowling coach Kevin Shine about to stampede in off a run-up which, because of the small boundaries, involved him kick-starting off the sight screens.

Your skipper might set the field with you at point when you see Robin Smith striding out to the middle. In his first year in England before making his name with Hampshire, Smith was desperate to play as much cricket in English conditions as possible, and that included the 16 overs-a-side thrash of the Southampton Evening Cricket League. Woe betide the poor sap sent into the firing line like a funfair shooting range duck to field where Smith cut the ball most ferociously and where to attempt to field the ball might well result in loss of a limb.

And as for the danger posed to the passing traffic, we won’t even go there.

On occasions, the, man pulling the gauntlets on behind the stumps was Kevin Keegan, whose curly coif hinted at more than a free short-back-and-sides, while Matthew Le Tissier showed he was no mug with bat in hand.

The Evening Cricket League was cast-iron evidence that Proper Cricket is a game for everyone, played by everyone.

Alongside those traditionalists who were always festooned in pristine white, guys would turn up straight from the office for a 6.30pm start and simply remove their jacket and tie and bowl first change from the Pavilion end.

The white-clad traditionalists would sneer at the lads in khaki chinos and black trainers, until the middle pole was sent spinning.

Proper Cricket is another venture into the deepest Hampshire countryside on the hottest afternoon of the year to turn out for the third XI of a prestigious club.

The team was captained by a feckless twerp who rejoiced in the nickname, Pat Heddery. He was given this title not because he rode winners on the flat but because of his habit of patting his noggin while talking in an attempt to smooth down his hair.

Pat won the toss and to everyone’s astonishment, put the opposition in and a track that resembled a freshly-ironed shirt front. When asked to explain his decision by a team ready for the sort of torture by sunlight where Native Americans staked cowboys out on anthills – minus the honey, Pat said: ‘We haven’t got a very strong side out today, and I didn’t want the risk of us being bowled out cheaply and the game being over in a flash.’

No, we’ll just run around in the field with or tongues lolling out for three hours and then be blown away inside 40 minutes.

As he surveyed the strip with the knowing wisdom of Indiana Jones eyeing a treasure map, Pat whispered out of the side of his mouth to FSOM: ‘It’s very dry and I think it will turn, so we’ll get you on to bowl pretty soon,’ knowing the potential potency of FSOM’s slow left-arm that bamboozled batsmen who were confused by the second or third bounce and often got themselves out not knowing whether to smash the cherry for four or six.

We knew we were going to be in trouble when the opposition openers came out. Both were of the farming community, and one was completely bare-knuckled, claiming that batting gloves made his palms sweaty and loosening his grip of his bat, which looked as though he had been up at sparrow fart to fell a willow tree earlier and spent Saturday morning whittling it down to bat-sized proportions.

His hands were that size of Serrano hams and you knew a sharp rap on the knuckles from a ball rising sharply off a length would probably rebound off his horny mitts for four.

Pat set his field with the precision and thought of Bobby Fischer attacking Boris Spassky’s Sicilian defence, apart from leaving FSOM out of his carefully concocted plans.

When he realised, he sent FSOM down to the third man boundary, a journey so far, FSOM took out a bus timetable. Not only was there no shade from the relentless heat, just over the boundary fence was a herd of cows who produced that unique country odour that could not be botted, and attracted horse flies the size of sparrows.

At the end of the first over, Pat proceeded to set his field. making the same error. Signalling frantically like the boy on the burning deck from the boundary. FSOM was politely asked to fill in the gap on the third man boundary at the other end.

After the opening bowlers had been trollied into the cow pastures by Iron Hands and his agricultural partner in crime for eight overs, Pat decided to make his first bowling change. Despite subtly swinging his arm in mock warm-up like Mick Channon’s windmill goal celebration, FSOM’s twirly skills were not required at this juncture.

Nor at any juncture. FSOM trekked the length of the ground from Third Man at one end, to Third Man at the other in the baking heat and not bowling a single ball and at the end of three hours of that FSOM felt like Beau Geste patrolling the ramparts of Fort Zanderneuf.

Pat’s words at the tea interval as we faced a run chase in excess of 300 were inspiring; ‘We’re not going to win this game,’ he sharply observed.

‘But we’ll get something out of this,’ he defiantly declared. He was right about the team not being the strongest. Most of the team were from the colts XI and their collection of spots and acne would have been a dermatologist’s dream. Several of them were regarded as prodigies, mostly by their adoring parents and on no other basis than knowing which end of their expensively purchased bat to grab hold of.

‘We need to gain the experience of batting for long periods and building an innings,’ Pat told the toddlers, which was Pat-speak for ‘We’re going to cling on by our fingernails by trying to block the crap out of it for three hours.’

That suited FSOM who while not known for a flashing blade, could certainly doggedly hold up an end when required and stick around like something nasty trodden into a cricket boot.

Pat wet around the dressing room, dishing out the batting order. FSOM was expecting six or seven, depending on the state of the scoreboard, and was crestfallen to hear ’10!’

Again, the explanation was that the young’uns had to be given a chance, presumably in the knowledge he risked a stern finger-wagging telling off from mums who had spent good money on bats for their little darlings.

As it happened, the wicket proved to be just too flat and the toddlers too stubborn for the opposition bowers and we survived having made just over half the target with eight wickets down.

FSOM sat in the corner of the pavilion, sweat-soaked and seeing spots in front of his eyes in the air-fryer heat, despite not bowling a ball or swinging a bat in anger. Pat sidled up and sat next to him.

‘Sorry I couldn’t get you into the game, but as skipper of the third XI I have a responsibility to develop the youngsters. Hope you understand.

‘By the way, match fees are a fiver. And would it be going too far out of your way to drop a couple of the lads back at our clubhouse? I normally do it but I’m going out for dinner.’

That’s Proper Cricket. When you don’t even take part ad have to pay for the privilege of not doing so.

But you wouldn’t change it for the world.