Cricket bringing the world together in Bradford
After Manchester suicide bombing, Scyld Berry sees a project showing mankind can move forward as well as back
‘Answer lies on the field, with everybody from every background playing together’
It was a beautiful day – sunny, warm, yet still springfresh. And it was as appropriate an occasion as any on which to begin to come to terms with the most sickening massacre.
“We know that some of the children in Manchester were from Bradford,” said Kersten England, the chief executive of Bradford Council, at the official opening of the Bradford Park Avenue Nets and Changing Room Facility.
“The answer lies on the field today, with everybody from every background playing together,” Lord Patel of Bradford declared, before England Test captain Joe Root cut the tape.
Dozens of primary schoolchildren, innocent and undaunted, ran around playing cricket on what was one of our most famous cricket grounds.
Bradford Park Avenue lies in the poorest part of the city, close to the centre. Now, even if the old terraces remain derelict, new pitches and nets have been installed.
It was here in 1950 that England’s most famous off-spinner, Jim Laker, took eight wickets for two runs – perhaps the most astounding bowling analysis in first-class cricket, ahead of his 19 for 90 against Australia at Old Trafford in 1956.
Richard Hutton, the son of Sir Leonard, was at the ground yesterday to reminisce. It was a match between England and the Rest – a Test trial – and he was an eight-year-old watching from the end where the pavilion was before its demolition.
The funny thing is, Laker conceded a single. One of the Rest’s batsmen was Eric Bedser, his Surrey team-mate, so Laker pushed mid-on back and gave him one. He should have taken eight wickets for one run. That would have been economical.
Yorkshire played their last first-class game at Park Avenue in 1996. Leicestershire scored 681 for seven, the highest total Yorkshire ever conceded, and won by an innings. James Whitaker, the visiting captain and now England’s chairman of selectors, scored a double century.
This marked the end of an era, if not an error. Not a single Asian represented Yorkshire in 1996 – not in the first XI, and not in the second XI either, among the Hoggards and Sidebottoms. It was oil and water: the indigenous and Asian communities played their cricket separately, and the county club did not want to know. A couple of miles down the road, however, a Mr Rashid had built a cricket net of sorts in the basement of his house to coach his sons about batting. The ceiling was too low for spin bowling though, so he took his son Adil to Manningham Park to teach him about leg-spin – as the player recalled when he attended this opening ceremony with another Bradford-born England player, Jonny Bairstow, and Root, and David Willey and Moeen Ali – and Rashid’s talent could not be denied.
The new nets are where Bradford Park Avenue once played football. Across the road is the Jamia Masjid, the Grand Mosque of Bradford, built stone by stone with local subscriptions. The changing rooms have been sensitively designed – not communal showers – with the aim of hosting the England women’s and disability teams, and with a multi-faith prayer room.
If this regeneration was the work of one man, it was that of Mark Arthur, the chief executive of Yorkshire, now transformed into perhaps the most progressive county: he raised the £5.5 million from the England and Wales Cricket Board, Sport England and the Yorkshire Foundation. He saw the derelict ground for the first time only a few years ago, but immediately sensed its history. “I smelt it,” Arthur said.
“It was a rubbish dump,” said Bradford’s Lord Patel, who used to play there. Not any more it isn’t. Mankind does take steps forward as well as back.