Scarborough
John Fuller regrets that the followers of cricket’s best-supported festival had to settle for just two days of action last week
John Fuller on this year’s event at the best-supported festival
It’s the air of Scarborough and the beauty of the ground and all that goes with it – this ground is magnificent
The stream of Yorkshire fans winding their way through the centre of Scarborough replayed the chaos out loud: shaking heads at Mohammad Amir’s mastery and Yorkshire’s batting fragility.
After 18 wickets fell on a first day which ended with Division One leaders Essex notching a 75-run lead, those of a White Rose persuasion yearned for less heartache on the coast.
To pass through the gates at Scarborough CC is to feel the weight of the world slip off. Immediately in front of you is a bank of wooden benches right down to pitchside; allowing supporters to be close to county and international stars.
We all have our favourite place to sit at a cricket ground. There is a fabled Scarborough rush with Yorkshire members racing each other for the prized, unreserved seating in the Pavilion. I’m told it is a sporting migration to rival wildebeest on the Serengeti.
As seagulls soar up above, eyeing the chance of a stray chip, there is laughter, relaxed conversations and a holiday atmosphere that captures why county cricket at Scarborough remains such a highlight year after year.
Though attendances for first-class matches remain underwhelming, the Scarborough Cricket Festival bucks the trend with over 10,000 through the turnstiles in 48 hours last week of what transpired as the shortest Festival anyone could remember.
August is prime-time for tourism with ‘No Vacancies’ signs up in windows as badges of honour across the town.
One supplier, serving glorious ovenbaked pizza to cricket fans inside the ground had been quoted £1,000 a night by a hotel with only a couple of rooms left.
Indelible patronage hasn’t been earnt overnight; this was the 131st Festival and while it has been distilled down to a single four-day match, there is no less sense of occasion. So, what does staging the Festival at Scarborough mean to the host club? For that perspective, I sat up on the first-floor balcony with Scarborough CC board member Rob Richtering as Dickie Bird hunkered down a few seats away, subdued by the carnage unfolding on the pitch.
“It’s absolutely massive. Obviously, we could exist without it but 5,000 people every day say that it should stay, don’t they?”
Yorkshire CCC continue to embrace home games at Scarborough and consulted their membership when the Championship was reduced with the retention of two four-day matches and the loss of one-dayers instead.
What could not be foreseen was the speed at which this particular match unravelled at breakneck speed.
As we spoke, Harry Brook nicked off to make it 31-4 in Yorkshire’s second innings, still way off making Essex bat again.
Thoughts turned to the impact a crushing defeat in two days would have for Scarborough CC. Richtering was somewhere between appalled and open to gallows humour:
“It’s not wonderful, is it? We’ve lost two days from last year and now we’ve gone from eight to six but we’ll make the most of what we’ve got, that’s all you can do. I think we’ll have to sit in a dark room!”
While Yorkshire were left counting the cost in lost Championship points, Scarborough’s finances are likely to take a hammering to the tune of tens of thousands of pounds.
Scarbados, as some fans have christened the annual pilgrimage, is also no longer the fortress it once was with Somerset routing Yorkshire by 179 runs back in July.
Yet, despite a second batting slump that left Yorkshire fans muttering about relegation, there was still plenty to cherish on a sun-splashed afternoon. At
lunch and tea intervals, spectators filled the outfield, stretching their legs and inspecting the wicket that groundsman John Dodds replenished with a lick of paint for the crease marks.
Pop-up games took place everywhere as children bowled, batted and fielded in clusters around the circumference with advertising boards pressed into action as impromptu stumps.
Pints of beer in plastic glasses were ferried between the stands and the striped deckchairs outside the corporate hospitality marquee flapped like a catamaran sail.
If entertainment for the locals was arguably lacking on the field, soothing jazz from a live performance (to advertise the Scarborough Jazz Festival in late September) was a reminder of the traditional here.
Not a flamethrower or amped-up soundtrack in sight.
Former Yorkshire and England spinner Geoff Cope sat signing copies of a new book about his life, In Sunshine
And In Shadow, while his guide dog, Lester, snuffled for errant crumbs of fruit loaf.
When Cope began his county career in 1966, the Scarborough Festival was a two-week affair and the touring Test side would always play their final game there. According to Cope, its appeal endures:
“It’s the air of Scarborough and the beauty of the ground and all that goes with it. This ground is magnificent. It makes Scarborough a very, very special club. Because of the fixture, there are people who ring the hotel and leave a message which simply says, ‘when the fixtures come out, book us in!’”
Jeremy Lonsdale is a Yorkshire fan who has been coming to Scarborough since 1971 and once the thunderous applause died down as Ryan Sidebottom walked out to bat here for the last time, he summed up what it means to visit: “It’s just the best place to watch cricket, isn’t it? It’s not changed that much in a hundred years or more, there’s something timeless and informal about Scarborough.”
Before this begins to feel like an advert for the Scarborough Tourist Bureau, proceedings out in the middle brought a dose of unpalatable realism as Essex closed in on a crushing, eightwicket victory.
Long before the close of play, the autopsy had commenced in the stands.
Gale had to go. A clearout was overdue. Why wasn’t David Willey playing? The questions and selfappointed answers tumbled forth and after such an embarrassing loss, fans had every right to vent. There had been talk of Yorkshire being booed off but when the end came prematurely, applause for Sidebottom was all that was heard.
Time will tell if the record is extended that has seen the last four victors at Scarborough go on to win the Championship but Essex have built up a commanding lead. Conversely, Yorkshire’s season is in jeopardy of becoming a relegation dogfight. With Ballance, Liam Plunkett and Shaun Marsh to return, there is firepower that might freshen the ranks but brittle batting is a pressing concern.
Yorkshire’s T20 momentum is heartening but four-day cricket is the yardstick by which the county ultimately evaluates a season.
For those Yorkies in magnanimous mood, there was cause to reflect on the undiminished magic of Scarborough headlined by a world-class display of fast and furious swing bowling from Amir.