Ties that bind: Around the north of England in nine objects

Many young fanatics have had one thrust into their hands: a box of cricket bric-a-brac from an elderly relative. My grandfather started giving me books when I was small, but only books; when he died, a decade ago, the floodgates opened. Because my father has little interest in memorabilia, and even less in cricket, everything went straight to me – or the recycling. I still wear grandpa’s Somerset blazer at Taunton; his Maurice Bishop prints of the County Ground are on my walls.

Not all the hand-me-downs have seen the light of day. Two dozen benefit-year ties, from 1977 onwards, have gone unworn. I rarely have cause to wear a tie, and I doubt I could find any takers; the grey, autographed Colin Dredge polyester of 1987 may well be offensive to modern tastes.

Also read: Around the south in nine objects – Almanack

They know what to do with ties at Chester-le-Street. Don Robson, who died in 2016, is still referred to as “Mr Durham”. He was the leading campaigner in the county’s fundraising for first-class status and a permanent ground. He was also key in finding the millions – and Riverside, where the pavilion bears his name. “If it weren’t for Don, there wouldn’t be county cricket in Durham,” says Grahame Maddinson, the club archivist.

Riverside is a fully fledged Test venue, without Test matches. Also missing is a cricket museum, but then Durham have less first-class history to exhibit, and much of what has been preserved by Maddinson – for many years the club scorer too – consists of statistics on paper. A drawer suffices.

Robson’s ties are an exception. His widow, Jenny, not knowing what to do with them, brought them to the ground, where the Durham Cricket Foundation run a weekly community event called Crafty Needles: sewing for well-being. The group produced a collage, displayed on the wall of the Graveney Lounge (named after former Durham spinner David Graveney). It was put up in 2023, just in time for Jenny to see it; she died the following March.

They don’t have a cricket museum at Derbyshire, either. They are one of eight counties who go without, cramming their treasures into unobtrusive display cabinets, or consigning them to the stores. Money is tight; it always was. Until the 1930s, they were perennially in the bottom half of the Championship. But a nursery of local youngsters turned things round: tenth in 1932, then sixth, third, and second. In 1936, a full XI of Derbyshire-born players could be fielded. Harry Elliott, Tommy Mitchell, Denis Smith and Les Townsend had appeared for England; Stan Worthington still did; Bill Copson soon would.

They won the title, with 13 victories – three more than any other team. Even the more obscure players had their moment of fame. Reporting from The Oval, Wisden said of Albert Alderman: “Barling swept a ball round to fine leg and the stroke seemed certain to yield six, but Alderman, sprinting hard for 30 yards, held the ball in wonderful style with his right hand close to the palings.”

The committee could not afford a silver cigarette box or crystal decanter, but scraped together what they could, and bought each a small monogrammed suitcase. “It was a heartfelt thank you,” says David Griffin, the county’s archivist. “The players must have been touched, because 18 of the 20 who appeared that season stayed at Derby until they retired.”

Derbyshire are still waiting for a second Championship. In a locked room, behind the indoor nets, Griffin has carefully preserved Alderman’s case – the only known survivor. Inside are his club cap, tie and sweater, and the brochure from his 1948 benefit, which raised £1,659 (nearly £100,000 today). It was his last season as a professional.

Rummaging in county cupboards brings all sorts of curiosities to light. It’s best not to get too excited about cricket balls, since they are ubiquitous – but a visit to Trent Bridge throws up an unexpected find, born of a seafaring tale.

The SS Lusitania, like her descendant HMS Lusitania (sunk in the First World War with the loss of more than 1,000 lives), was a British ocean liner. On August 12, 1894, she was anchored off Spitsbergen, during a sightseeing tour of the north Atlantic. Among the passengers was Henry Holroyd, 3rd Earl of Sheffield, a cricket entrepreneur who lent his name to Australia’s Sheffield Shield. One of his guests was Nottinghamshire bowler Alfred Shaw, who had opened the bowling (and taken eight wickets) for England in the first Test match, in 1877.

On a calm sea, Sheffield proposed a midnight game of deck cricket. “The light was equal to noonday at an English cricket match,” recalled Shaw. “Indeed, it was much superior to the average light at one or two famous cricket grounds in the north of England.” A ball was improvised, and Sheffield tossed it to Shaw: His Lordship would bat first.

“Between a quarter to twelve and half past twelve I had bowled out practically all the gentlemen passengers and officers, certainly forty persons all told,” wrote Shaw, no stranger to prodigious feats: less than a month earlier, at the age of 51, he had taken his 2,000th first-class wicket.

The ball has survived, and is kept in a cardboard box in the Nottinghamshire archives. It is made from ship’s rope – unwound, then tightly knotted. It is a little larger than a cricket ball, and feels heavy, but it would probably float. Shaw, though, was unhittable, so there was little chance of it ending up in the icy water.

A year later, in 1895, he retired, joined the county umpires list, and started selling sporting goods; he died in 1907. The earl, ten years older, died in 1909. But they both outlasted the SS Lusitania, which ran aground in thick fog off Newfoundland in 1901. The passengers panicked, fought and stampeded, but all of them – more than 350 – were saved.

Herbert John “Jack” Knutton was another turn-of-the-century cricketer and salesman, though with little of Shaw’s success, and a good deal of infamy besides. Born in Coventry in 1867, he gained a reputation as a promising fast bowler in the Lancashire League. At 26, he was given a first-class match by Warwickshire, but went wicketless.

Controversy dogged him. The 1890s were preoccupied with throwing, and many were were thrust under the microscope of public scrutiny – including CB Fry, whose action was queried by Wisden editor Sydney Pardon, and even by his own captain at Sussex, KS Ranjitsinhji.

After his Warwickshire trial, Knutton moved to Bradford, opening a sports shop and joining the local club, where he racked up more than 1,000 wickets, including WG Grace: on being bowled for a duck, he insisted Knutton’s action was illegal. One account says the umpire was later persuaded to no-ball him for throwing.

After Grace had voiced his doubts, there was no shortage of comment. Knutton vowed to clear his name: he ordered a special arm brace, fashioned from leather and bone, and fastened with straps from a batting pad. He would wear it while bowling whenever he heard murmurs. It is the strangest thing in the Warwickshire cricket museum.

More than a century later, the great Sri Lankan spinner Muttiah Muralitharan appeared on television, bowling with an arm brace to prove he was not a chucker. It was made from resin and steel, but otherwise resembled Knutton’s – and it proved the “throw” was an optical illusion. Knutton’s action, like Murali’s, was reportedly due to an unusual wrist joint, and he used it to impressive effect in his only other first-class match, in 1902, for an England XI against the touring Australians at Bradford. He took ten wickets, including nine in the first innings. Perhaps he was ahead of his time.

There is a trophy in the Lancashire archives that certainly was. Every sport has its white elephants, often in the form of ill-conceived, short-lived tournaments. County cricket had the Refuge Assurance Cup and the Benson and Hedges Super Cup, sideshows intended to bring a younger audience – forerunners of The Hundred, some might say. But for misguided pep and pizzazz, nothing trumps the Lambert & Butler Floodlit Competition, sponsored by Imperial Tobacco, and won by Lancashire in 1981. They still proudly display the trophy, but then they were the only team to win it.

The TCCB’s inspiration was Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket: there can and must be floodlights. The county grounds had none, so the event was held at league football clubs over two evenings in September: four regional qualifiers (at Bristol City, Crystal Palace, Manchester United and West Bromwich Albion) on a Thursday, then the semis and final at Chelsea the following night. Seven a side, ten overs an innings.

Experimental floodlit games at Ashton Gate and Stamford Bridge in 1980 had brought in over 8,000 spectators – but they watched West Indies or Rest of the World sides, packed with famous names. County teams in autumnal chill proved a lesser attraction, though there were some stars: Gordon Greenidge, Peter Kirsten and Andy Roberts each scored a fifty; Ian Botham and Clive Lloyd hit three.

The bowlers were cannon fodder: the bouncy carpet pitches and short square boundaries prevented any sort of contest. Surrey’s Alan Butcher smashed a 28-ball century against Kent at Selhurst Park, finishing on 130 out of 185-2. The final, attended by 2,564, pitted Lancashire against Leicestershire – the teams who had played the first official one-day match in England, 18 years earlier. Lloyd set up victory with an unbeaten 83. Before the year was out, the TCCB announced the competition would be discontinued: “Although the sponsors remain willing, the weather tends to be against it, and the cricket played has lacked conviction.” A bit harsh on Butcher.

The cup itself is unremarkable – which cannot be said of an item of silverware on the other side of the Pennines. The Yorkshire cricket museum exhibits what it opaquely calls the “William Bates ‘Ostrich’ Emu Trophy”. Bates played 202 times for Yorkshire in the late-19th century, and 15 times for England, all in Australia – no one without a home Test has played more. His Tests Down Under were eventful, to say the least.

In 1881/82, he toured under Shaw – so there was presumably no shortage of practice on the voyage. A canny off-spinner, Bates topped the averages for the tour and the Tests, so it was a surprise when he was not picked at home in 1882 – the series that spawned the Ashes.

That winter, he was among the party, led by Ivo Bligh, that set sail for Australia to bring the Ashes back. He took only one wicket as Australia won the first Test, but made spectacular amends in the Second: match figures of 14-102, including England’s first hat-trick, helped level the series. The peculiar emu-egg trophy was presented in honour of his performance, though for some time the egg was believed to have come from an ostrich. This seems unlikely: ostriches are native to Africa, and their eggs are white, while Bates’s trophy is an intense green, like an emu’s. And emus are indigenous to Australia – they appear on the national coat of arms, and the Baggy Green – so in all likelihood there was confusion somewhere.

Mistakes are easily made, after all. Despite what the interpretation board says, Bates was not William, but Willie (and known as Billy). It also tells us that, on his final trip to Australia, he lost an eye, and never played first-class cricket again. He was bowling in the Melbourne nets in 1887/88, his fifth tour, when a drive by Billy Newham, in an adjacent net, struck him in the face. Adelaide’s Evening Journal reported that he was expected to recover his sight – he did not in fact lose the eye – but he could not continue professionally. He attempted suicide on the
voyage home.

In early 1965, Worcestershire enjoyed a happier tour. Having won their maiden Championship, they went on a celebratory round-the-world trip. According to Wisden, it was the first time a county had undertaken an “extensive” overseas tour. Kent had gone to New York and Philadelphia in 1903, Yorkshire to Jamaica in 1935/36, and Surrey to Rhodesia in 1959/60. But Worcestershire travelled 34,000 miles, playing 14 matches. They visited Kenya, Rhodesia, India, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong and the USA – countries which, cooed Wisden, “had never seen an English county XI, let alone the Championship pennant”.

Twelve players travelled, accompanied by two club members, KR Gardener and RP Watkin, with Joe Lister as manager. They lost only once, in the second of their first-class games against Rhodesia, for whom Bulawayo-born Colin Bland – a fixture in the South Africa team – scored four and 62. Between the Rhodesia games, Worcestershire beat a Country Districts XI at Que Que (now Kwekwe), and stayed at the Sebakwe Hotel. After the match, they were given a special dinner. The menu, on display at New Road, playfully incorporates the names of the entire party. The items ranged from the obvious (Spaghetti Italienne in D’Oliviera [sic] Oil) via the snappy (Tea or Coffee OR Booth) to the desperate (Vegetables from The Gifford Gardener, Flavel [sic], Lister & Watkin Potatoes). “Although the home officials were disappointed with the attendances,” reported Wisden, “the brand of attacking cricket was warmly applauded.” The tour evidently did the players good: after wrapping up their journey with fixtures in Hawaii and Hollywood (a washout), they defended their title in 1965. Then, like rock stars, they jetted off to Jamaica.

But if any cricketer lived a rock-star life in those days, it was Colin Milburn: he ate (a lot), he drank (gin and coke), and he hit sixes. Nicknamed Ollie because of his likeness to Oliver Hardy, not just in face but in (19-stone) frame, he signed for Northamptonshire in 1960, and caused an occasional sensation for county and country. He bashed 94 in his second Test innings, against West Indies in 1966, and a hundred in his fourth.

His finest moment came in Karachi in March 1969. He was not in England’s original squad, but flew out as reinforcement for a struggling side; his teammates formed a guard of honour as he descended from the plane. He made 139 on a nasty pitch, and in a frightening atmosphere: the Test was abandoned because of political riots. Milburn reached his century from 163 balls, the quickest in any Test that year. It won him the Walter Lawrence Trophy, awarded for the fastest international hundred (it reverted to a domestic England prize the following year). Until Karachi, Milburn had been in and out of the side, but his Test future now seemed secure.

He never played for England again. On May 23, he was returning home from the first day of a Championship match against Leicestershire, when his car crashed. He was thrown into the windscreen, and lost the sight in his left eye. A photo in the Daily Mirror showed him leaving Northampton Hospital with an eye patch and two nurses; he seemed cheerful enough, but he was a swashbuckler no more. Though he tried to resume his career, he was a shadow of his former self; there was just one more century, for Northamptonshire Seconds in 1974.

Milburn’s England blazer, worn in Pakistan, has pride of place in a presentation case at Wantage Road. Next to it is the 1969 Walter Lawrence Trophy, all four inches of it. They look comical side by side – but, with Milburn, bathos was never far away.

At Leicester, an hour up the M1, another local character is immortalised behind glass. His name is Joey, and he is a fox. Leicestershire is synonymous with hunting – and the fox with the county.

Foxes are frequent visitors to cricket fields, and their digging is a nuisance. In December 1899, while a Leicestershire committee meeting was in progress, the Billesdon Hunt killed a fox on the outfield. The master, CWB Fernie, mounted the head and presented it to the chairman: the first of many stuffed foxes to end up at the club. When the pavilion was built in 1966, a fox’s head – possibly the one given by Fernie – was placed over the players’ entrance.

Joey, whose manner of demise is unknown, is preserved intact in the aptly named Meet, a stand converted to a two-storey building in 1965. He presides over the long bar on the second floor, a chicken in his mouth and a daub of blood-red paint on the backboard. “We do get comments about how horrible it is to have stuffed foxes on display,” says Richard Holdridge, Leicestershire’s archivist. “One or two have been sold, and another was destroyed because it was mangy. Certainly, the marketing department have always disliked them.”

Professional museum curators are familiar with such dilemmas. Should they display dead animals? Should Kent put Colin Blythe’s bullet-holed wallet on show? Should Lord’s return their Aboriginal leangle? My qualms over the tastefulness of grandpa’s Colin Dredge tie pale into insignificance. I’d donate it to the Somerset museum, but they’ve already got one.