On the Singular Nature of Cricket Pavilions.

Over the past few weeks while I’ve been re-acquainting myself with the Shire after a year and a half in limbo, I’ve been struck by the changes which have taken place during my absence. Not the least of them is the sad disappearance of an old cricket pavilion which used to stand on the far side of a hedgerow in Mill Lane. It had its back to the lane because the front faced what was once a cricket pitch but is now an arable field.

Cricket pavilions have long been one of the icons of recreational life in Britain. Most of the bigger villages in England (and a few in Wales and Scotland) had a village cricket team at one time. Most of those teams had their own pitch, and where there was a pitch there was a pavilion of more or less standard design.

It was a simple wooden structure divided internally into three areas – two changing rooms and a reception area with a small kitchen where teas were prepared for the teams during the interval between innings. On the front, facing the playing area, there was a covered veranda to accommodate the scorer and one or two batsmen padded up and waiting for their turn to bat. It was a simple but functional design, and very much a part of the game.

I played cricket during the second half of my twenties and the first half of my thirties, and I have fond memories of being out there on the field on warm summer evenings, sniffing the air for the scent of new-mown hay, watching some lonely tractor ploughing or haymaking on the slope of a distant meadow, and hearing the ubiquitous crack of willow on leather. And the whole experience started and finished in the pavilion.

Those were the memories which came back to me every time I walked past the pavilion in Mill Lane. It was in a sorry state by the time I first encountered it. It seems that the gentlemanly game played out by twenty two keen, bucolic amateurs had become history by then in these parts, and the old pavilion was rotting away badly. I suppose it needed demolishing to make way for a few extra square yards of crop at the edge of the field. If the land had been mine I would have had it refurbished because I’m odd like that. To me, a cricket pavilion has an air about it which makes it special and therefore worth saving.

(And as a footnote, I might add that circumstances are currently making me increasingly aware of my oddnesses and my unconventional relationship with the world at large. But I suppose that can be the subject of another post if and when I can be bothered to put my mind to it.)