Tales & treasures from cricket’s glorious past
1975
HARRY PEARSON
My Golden Summer
The award-winning author remembers receiving his cricketing education at Harrogate, Headingley and Scarborough
Tony Greig scored 96 at Lord’s in his first innings as England Test captain
This was my first proper cricket season. I came onto the green early-summer grass wide-eyed and tottering on too-long-for-me-to-control pipecleaner legs (I don’t mean metaphorically, that was literally what I looked like), ready to absorb everything from the traditional sounds of Yorkshire’s cricket grounds – the hiss made by the unsealing of ancient Tupperware, the vendors cries of “Eee-arkshaar Porrrrst!” and “Yum-mee, Yum-mee chhhhhoc ices!”, the strangled duck quack of Arthur Robinson’s appeals – to the wisdom of the ancients, which in this case was my dad.
Shortly after my 14th birthday my first Wisden arrived in the post. Within a week my mother flinched whenever I looked up from its pages to announce some piece of fresh and startling information. “It’s even worse than when we gave him that Guinness Book of Records when he was 10,” I heard her tell my dad. “I swear to God, if I hear one more fact about the Shell Shield, I’ll chuck it in the bloody fire.”