There is no greater pride than coming together to host outground cricket

PAUL EDWARDS: The people of Southport and Birkdale Sports Club are proud Lancashire are returning to Trafalgar Road after four tough years. They want the place to look its best, even though they are aware things will happen they hadn't anticipated

For an hour or so I thought about apologising for the subject of this week's column. Then I realised that rather than being sorry, I should be proud. It's another piece about club cricket, my club as it happens. But my hope is that it's really about your club, too.

First though, I'd like to look back two years, to early July, 2020. No cricket had been played anywhere in England for four months and we were almost saddened to see our squares in perfect condition. We were staying away from our friends and discovering that Zoom could not make up for the loss of human warmth, the simple pleasure of company.

I still find it difficult to recall the families whose last meeting with elderly relatives took place through the closed windows of care homes. A few rather silly comparisons were made with wartime during the pandemic but it remains true that it was one of our society's most significant tests. We found things out about ourselves. Some who governed us met the challenge; others betrayed our trust.

I wrote my first column in the spring of 2020. The original plan was that it should be a chronicle of my travels around the country, covering mainly county cricket; instead it became a chronicle of staying put. Like most other people, I hunkered down and didn’t move more than a couple of miles from home.

The columns became reflective and I joined the very large band of cricket writers who made lists of the best Test matches, batsmen, bowlers, innings, etbloodycetera I had seen. Then on July 10 I travelled to Chorley where the home side were playing Littleborough in a 40-over pre-season game. It was the start of the long road home. I wrote about that game here, too…

And now we come through, back to the present…

It is half past ten on Wednesday morning. In five days and 30 minutes Lancashire's LV= Insurance Division One County Championship match against Somerset will begin at Trafalgar Road, the home of Southport and Birkdale Sports Club.

^{Lancashire return to Trafalgar Road to face Somerset (Chris Brunskill/Getty Images)}

Lindsey Bridge staggers into the Southport Lounge carrying five bottles of strong liquor. In the area normally occupied by the nets, a marquee is being constructed for corporate hospitality and the area echoes with the clang of hammers and the occasional oath. Tom and Peter Crew and Henry Eccles, who spend so much time at the club I suspect they might actually be homeless, are carrying chairs or sorting out the patio or lugging boxes or doing whatever tasks need doing.

The industrial quantities of alcohol don't arrive until Thursday, but the club's manager David Britton (right-arm, over the wicket) is already sorting out the beer pumps in the Late Cut bar or the marquee. Club chairman Tony Elwood drives three other members to a local church where they collect the tables that will support laptops, coffee cups and clueless gossip in the press tent.

Cricket chairman Andrew Carney drafts an article for the match programme and his syntax is corrected by the secretary Claire Crew; as a result, Claire will be teased mercilessly for the next 48 hours, and she will resign from everything at least twice. New units arrive to replace faulty ones in the electric scoreboard but the electrician points out that the trouble was being caused by fluff in the gubbins. (Sorry for the technical language.)

Traumatised by having his prose corrected, Andrew decides a small act of libation to Bacchus is in order and orders a pint of Irish wine. But alas, his timing is not perfect. His wife, Celine, arrives, paint-spattered having spent the previous two hours titivating the changing rooms. So we are treated to two minutes of Hibernian invective about masculine idleness.

Ground chairman Paul Parker avoid this cabaret; he spends most of his time outside, either ensuring chairs, ropes and sightscreens and God knows what other things are where they should be or else discussing the square with the head groundsman, Colin Maxwell.

Next week will be bigger for Max than anyone; he has been in post for less than three years and this is his first county match. People will stare at his pitch as though it contains some profound truth about human existence but Max has a great relationship with Matt Merchant, his counterpart at Emirates Old Trafford, and he knows he has done all he can.

^{Lancashire are still in the County Championship title running (Michael Steele/Getty Images)}

Almost all the people I've mentioned are volunteers. They've worked this week because they like the challenge of putting on a first-class match and they are proud Lancashire are returning to Trafalgar Road after four tough years. They want the place to look its best, even though they are aware things will happen they hadn't anticipated. And as it happens, I'm with them all the way.

But please recall what I wrote at the beginning of this column. This is about your club, too. You have your festivals, your big matches, your once-a-year occasions. Please be assured that everyone at S&B hopes they go well. When I covered an Ashes Test at Lord's a few years ago I discovered that MCC officials do a tour of the ground on the evening before the game to make sure everything is tickety-boo. To that extent, the most famous cricket club in the world shares a bond with the rest.

And of course, it doesn't have to be any particular sport. When I wrote about Lancashire's match against Middlesex in 2017, I mused for the umpteenth time about outground cricket and said that it remains, as Philip Larkin wrote of the Bellingham show in 1958, "something people do, / Not noticing how time's rolling smithy-smoke / Shadows much greater gestures; something they share / That breaks ancestrally each year into / Regenerate union. Let it always be there."

If anything, time has only deepened these attachments. In part, that is because I now understand what summer is like when no cricket at all is possible; in part, it is because Covid did its worst at S&B, too. Included in its victims was my first captain at the club in 1981. So, I suppose that if we can put on a helluva show next week, we will be honouring the memory of all those who staged previous county matches going back to 1959 in the era of dark suits, short-back-and-sides and deference.

We will also be placing a wager on the future and sharing a quiet hope that future generations will think occasions like this worth preserving. And yes, we will also have a lot of fun. There are worse ways to spend precious time.

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