Why calling time on the post-match pint’s a real problem for club game
Dan Whiting laments the demise of the post-match socialising in club cricket that was part of the fabric of the game of yesteryear
The cacophony of laughter, the smell of beer and even the odd cigar is how I remember my childhood growing up in cricket clubs as the two sides who had fought out a hard game during the day now mingled freely in the summer dusk.
But are these days a thing of the past? What has happened to the post-match pint between the two teams? Where has one of the important social traditions gone in club cricket?
As a youngster playing in adult cricket at the age of 14, it was drummed into you that you stayed after the game. In those days, sides would buy the other team two jugs – one lager and one bitter – and it would be down to the younger members of the side to go and take the jug around to the opposition. Needless to say that whatever was left tended to end up in our glass, bitter or lager, often both. ‘Ambidexterity’ at its best.
Older members of the side would often talk with other older members of the opposing team, people who they had played against for years.
Those who had scored a fifty or had taken five wickets would also buy a jug that they took around the clubhouse.
As a teenager it taught me social skills and it didn’t matter who was in the opposition. The beauty of cricket back then was that you had builders having a beer with doctors or judges. The barriers of social mobility were all broken down by our beautiful summer game.
I was taught that whatever ‘happened on the pitch, stayed on the pitch’ and many friendships were formed with people from other clubs.
Problems were sorted out between the two teams in the days before clubs went running to the league’s disciplinary committee for every indiscretion in the law book.
It was as much a law in cricket that you stayed in the opposition bar for two or three pints, and they did the same at yours the following season.
Valuable club funds were taken over the bar as eleven players plus an umpire and a scorer would add to the financial coffers of other clubs as they would to yours in response. It was fiscal responsibility to keep the cricketing economy of clubs in the black, back in the uncertain economic times of the early 90s.
So what has happened to those halcyon days?
Some sides now don’t even come and visit the opposition bar. Tea money and umpires fees are exchanged within the confines of the dressing room. Even those that do stay often have a swift one for the road and are in their cars within half an hour of the last wicket falling or the winning run being hit.
Is it a by-product of the worsening on-field behaviour in cricket these days? Quite possibly. Or then again, perhaps it is one of the reasons for it.
Sides definitely do not socialise together as much these days. Perhaps it is a product of not wishing to have a beer with someone who has been abusing you all day long. It is a moot point.
The younger members of the teams do not seem to know each other so well, often popping into the bar post-match for a quick energy drink, before they are off for their ice bath.
There is an argument that if these individuals had a beer with their opposition, there would be a marked improvement in the disciplinary standards in the game.
Players would understand these people as human beings and not just someone 22 yards away that abuse can be fired at on each Saturday afternoon.
Another reason is probably choice. As I wrote in The Cricket Paper a few weeks ago, this is definitely behind the slow strangulation of Sunday cricket in this country.
People have more choice in life and the difference in lifestyle between 30 years ago and today with everything from shopping habits to the amount of television channels offering us more choice as consumers. Sunday trading hours and licensing hours have definitely had an impact on the amount of people playing club cricket on a Sunday.
Back then, faced with an episode of The Thorn Birds or That’s Life, most people I knew would choose their cricket club bar. Esther Rantzen came a distant second.
Take in a game of Sunday cricket in the current era and you will find that many cricket clubhouses are shut by 9pm on a Sunday. Those that are open have a handful of club diehards.
The clampdown on drink-driving and the stiffer penalties rightly shown to those who break the law on this is also a reason.
The advent of Premier League cricket is another aspect to consider.
Take in a game of Sunday cricket in the current era and you will find that many clubhouses are shut by 9pm . Those that are open have a handful of club diehards
All-day cricket makes life difficult enough for the family man without him having four or five pints of beer after play.
Premier Leagues often mean travelling vast distances to the other end of a county. Throw in travelling time, warm-ups, all-day cricket and a wife with two young children and it’s hard for this type of player to stay and indulge in a vital part of the fabric of the game.
It isn’t just in club cricket either. In the current professional game, players
are often on coaches and away from the ground quickly after the game.
Back in the crazy scheduling of the seventies and eighties you’d often get sides playing a John Player League game in the middle of a Schweppes County Championship match. The parties thrown by Ian Botham on the Saturday night of a Test Match were legendary, in the days when players had the Sunday rest day the next day. Certain players were out every night.
So it seems that the post-match pint and ‘oppo speak’ might be confined to the pages of cricketing history.
Perhaps it belonged in the era of the Gray Nicolls scoops, the Duncan Fearnley Run Reaper, the St Peter mittens as endorsed by Tony Greig, or hedgehog gloves. It’s a shame because, for me, it is an integral part of the game and teaches you great life skills.
Then again, we could always try to change the culture of our younger players.