It meant so much to get my cap at Scarborough

THE place closest to my dad’s heart, unequivocally his favourite, was Scarborough. To him it was the epitome of the English coast, postcard perfect.

I first went there as a child, taking a bat and ball so that at lunch and tea I was able like everyone else to claim my own small patch of it. There were no stern ‘Keep off the grass’ signs there. You were encouraged to revel in the club’s hospitality.

After arriving for my first Championship match there, I let my eyes wander around the ground, stopping on those swathes of it so familiar from my boyhood, and I thought nostalgically of past times.

It was another reminder of how far I’d travelled.

We were playing Notts, the game beginning bizarrely.

Somehow, through a quirk of wireless technology that is beyond me, the tannoy system picked up and broadcast the eulogies that were being made during a funeral service held nearby. We were in trouble when I went in but I hung about for four hours, hitting 10 fours and a six. A century was in the offing until I ran out of partners, finishing 84 not out.

I wished I could have scored one for my dad. He was capped for Yorkshire in 1973 at Chesterfield. It was a steaming hot day, but he insisted on wearing it and his new sweater, the perspiration waterfalling off him. His new cap was stiff and too small, making him look like Just William. At the end of play, he didn’t stuff the sweater or cap among the rest of his kit, but placed them in a polythene bag as though both were sacred. He said he kept looking at them and wondering ‘whether they were really mine’.

Yorkshire knew how important Scarborough was for me. So I was awarded my county cap there in 2011. That first cap is one of the most precious things I own. The club didn’t tell me that I’d be receiving it, but instead tipped off my mum, making sure she saw the presentation.

There are two moments I’ve always wished my dad had been alive to see. That was the first.