Youth is to all the glad season of life

PAUL EDWARDS: To see a young player make his debut in September, as we might in the final round of the Bob Willis, is to be reassured about the return of spring even before autumn has flamed its first farewell

The term ‘Lammas’, denoting August 1st, was common throughout the Middle Ages. By etymology it derives from ‘loaf’ and ‘mass’, and in the early English Church it was customary to consecrate bread made from the first ripe corn at Mass on this day, probably in thanksgiving for the harvest.

None of which, let us risk a punt, will have occurred to Henry Crocombe, Jack Carson or Ajeet Dale when they pitched up at Hove on the first morning in August to make their debuts in first-class cricket. Nearly three days later Crocombe and Carson knew what it was to play in a victorious Sussex side whereas Dale, a Hampshire seamer, had experienced defeat.

Yet that match might always prompt a few rich memories for the trio, even if the days themselves were tinged with unreality. Moments of personal achievement are frequently like that. You hope for something, plan for it, work for it; in the dark times you doubt it will ever come. Then it arrives and you’re not quite sure how to deal with it. You wonder what comes next.

Supporters, by contrast, were in no such quandary. Although deprived of any opportunity to watch county games, except on their clubs’ live streams, they remained thankful for the return of first-class cricket.

And it was not fanciful to regard the 25 players who made their debuts in the first four rounds of the Bob Willis Trophy as a rich harvest for the age-group coaches who had tended them since they were barely taller than the stumps. If you ever feel cynical about cricket, go and watch an Under-11s match; it will remind you of the game with which you first fell in love.

John Arlott once made the point that good luck is often nothing more than opportunity; if so, there has been fortune in abundance this August. With two England squads in bio-secure bubbles and many overseas or Kolpak cricketers unable to travel, counties have called on players who otherwise would have spent long days in the nets bemoaning the absence of second-team games.

So Tom Lammonby has made his first hundred for Somerset, slow left-armer Thilan Wallalawita has taken six wickets for Middlesex and George Balderson has looked like a proper player with every over he bowls for Lancashire.

^{George Balderson made his first-class debut for Lancashire}

“Youth is to all the glad season of life,” wrote Thomas Carlyle, a maxim that Ray Robinson used as the epigraph for his superb 1956 book about the freshmen cricketers making their way in that distant age. Carlyle’s words still hold good.

To see a young player make his debut in September, as we might in the final round of the Bob Willis, is to be reassured about the return of spring even before autumn has flamed its first farewell.

We have received other blessings this misshapen season. A week last Tuesday I joined the millions of others who marvelled at the skills and dedication of Jimmy Anderson as he took his 600th Test wicket.

One of the greatest thrills of my career has been to see Anderson and Glen Chapple bowling in tandem for Lancashire; one takes leave to doubt whether any other county has produced two greater craftsmen in the same era.

Fred Trueman and Tony Nicholson, perhaps? George Hirst and Wilfred Rhodes? Alec Bedser and Jim Laker? Debate on. All I would add, with no claim for originality, is that while Anderson has played 156 Tests, Chapple played none at all. It still strains belief.

But there were two other lovely pieces of news that Tuesday afternoon. The first was that Darren Stevens had been awarded a one-year contract by Kent and will therefore be a first-class cricketer at the age of 45.

Some three summers ago, although the memory is so vivid it could be yesterday, I saw ‘Stevo’ take five for 40 against Sussex at Tunbridge Wells. Visiting batsmen put their bats where they thought the ball might be but they rarely located the queen in one of English cricket’s finest three-card tricks. I duly wrote it up and gave Stevens the praise due to him.

Most correspondents were as delighted as I was but some dissented in spades. Stevo was too old, they said. Stevo was too slow. Stevo shouldn’t be allowed to bowl at his pace, as if there was a lower speed limit for medium-pacers.

^{Tom Lammonby struck his maiden first-class hundred}

I wonder what those folk thought when the player they criticised made 237 and took five for 20 against Yorkshire last September, thus earning himself a contract for this summer when Kent had previously announced his release. And now the daft beggar will be playing in 2021.

I’ll wager he’s still as much in love with the game as he was when he made his debut for Leicestershire against Cambridge University in 1997.

I imagine Josh de Caires’ emotions also ran deep on that lovely Tuesday in late August. The 18-year-old Radlett batsman had been awarded what we may hope will be his first contract with Middlesex, a three-year deal which will see him stay with the county while reading for his university degree.

Inevitably the news was yoked in print by the headline writers to the fact that de Caires is the son of a former England batsman who played 115 Tests and remains one of the most recognisable faces in the game. (There was rather less notice paid to the fact that de Caires is also the great grandson of Frank de Caires, who played three Tests for the West Indies against England in 1930, making his debut alongside George Headley and taking two fifties of an attack that included Bill Voce and Wilfred Rhodes.)

It is only natural that we are linked to our parents’ achievements. One way or another, we are chips off old blocks. But it was not mulish perversity that caused me to omit the name of de Caires’ father in the previous paragraph.

This is Josh’s go at it; it is his first springtime gallop in the professional game. The going will sometimes be heavy and he will find many tough fences rising up to greet him. He is going to find out a helluva lot about himself.

All we can wish for him is that he derives something of the fulfilment Darren Stevens has found in the game. And that on one blessed morning he finds his name on Middlesex’s team sheet for a first-class county match. Stevo would no doubt assure him that it is one of the better days in one’s life.

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