Essex- cricket's county champions of 2017 and the genius of Neville Cardus.

Essex- cricket's county champions of 2017 and the genius of Neville Cardus.

I'm reading a book by the great cricket writer Neville Cardus at the moment. I have to tell you it is quite the most brilliantly absorbing book on the timeless graces of the summer game. In the book Cardus captures the flavour, essence, savour and lovely fragrances that ooze from the tents and marquees that decorate every single cricket ground both in England and the rest of the world.

 He tells us all about the marvellous Yorkshire and Lancashire rivalries, the Roses battles and that fundamental needle between both sides. But it's all written with a loving tenderness and poetic simplicity. For that  was the literary brilliance of Cardus, a man of wit, description and beautiful lyricism in his bones and blood.

Over the weekend I began to wonder what Cardus would have made of Essex winning the county championship. He would have been sorely disappointed that his native Lancashire had not wrapped up the county championship because in his day Lancashire were one of the greatest, most unstoppable and unplayable team in the land. Nobody could touch Lancashire since the mid 1920s and 1930s onwards because they had everything; the players, the batsmen and bowlers, the whole complement of cricket's most destructive weapons without physically hurting anybody.

But on a personal note I have to admit to taking an unrestrained delight in Essex's notable achievements over the weekend. During a brief and glorious period during the 1980s Essex, rather like the Lancashire side of the 1920s and 1930s, gobbled up the county championship on a number of occasions. As a former Essex resident and growing up within a cricket strip of the Essex beauty spot of Valentines Park, it could be said that Essex were my team although I'm slightly ashamed to say that I've never set foot inside this picture book ground.

Still Essex are the county champions of England and that is one sentence that brings an emotional lump to the throat. Over the years the county of Essex has been cruelly ridiculed for its so called dodgy nightclubs, its graphic reality TV depiction and alleged daftness. But this is an outrageous slur, a foul calumny on a wonderful county with picturesque country lanes, plentiful potato and egg farms and mouth watering strawberry picking spots. How can you possibly criticise this idyllic corner of rural England without singing its praises and eulogising over its epic cricketing days?

For those whose memories can be isolated most specifically and almost perfectly Essex had several players whose talents and skills can now be remembered with a good deal of pleasure. There was the bushy moustache of Graham Gooch, a dashing and cavalier cricketer full of those fierce drives, cuts and magical pulls off the back and front foot that flashed past mid wicket like a missile. Gooch was the complete cricketer, a man with a level headed temperament and a full armoury of cricket's finest strokes. When Gooch once scored 333 against India none were remotely surprised because Gooch loved the big occasion.

Then there was the Australian Ken Mcewan, who, certainly at club level for Essex, devised some of the biggest of scores, many a hundred and who will forget his hunger for savage batting? He elevated Essex to such towering heights that at times the game came to him almost naturally. Mcewan was strong, properly aggressive in the best sense of the word because he would never have hurt a fly and just admirably adventurous. Sometimes a cricketer comes along who dominates a match superbly and doesn't apologise for doing so. Mcewan was no exception to the rule.

Now is not the time to overlook that supreme leader of men Keith Fletcher, a man with cricket and Essex in his veins and sinews. For some time Fletcher was the sparking plug that electrified Essex cricket club. He was captain of Essex and led by shining example. He organised, egged on, drove forward, inspired and energised his team with an almost school boyish enthusiasm and most youthful exuberance. It seems certain that Fletcher both ate, drunk and slept Essex but always in moderation of course.

Finally there was John Lever, the man who I can still see between the prettily clipped hedges and privets that fringed Valentines Park in Ilford, Essex so decoratively.  Lever was just a force of nature, wandering carefully back to the pavilion and then measuring his coolly calculated run up to the wicket before racing into the bowling crease with a ferocious menace. He now hurled down the fastest bowling in the world like a school playground catapult. It was thrilling to watch and you wondered if the crown green bowlers next to the Valentines Park cricket ground were secretly enthralled by their cricketing friends next door.

And so we come to the present day and Alistair Cook's all conquering Essex team who have done their country so excessively proud. We didn't think it would ever happen again because we knew that Essex used to be dreadful underachievers and never recognised for who they were. Essex are the cricketing virtuosos, top of the class and so deservedly the county champions. It is time to fly the county banner in a rich outpouring of celebration.

It is at times like this that I think of Neville Cardus, the man who transformed cricket writing into the purest of literary forms. For Cardus cricket was not so much a summer sport it was a delicate piece of pottery, that stunning sculpture, a Shakespearean play or comedy, a classical piece of music, a soulful sonata or overture, a loud and noisy drama, a quiet interlude, a gentle, balletic dance, an art installation, a flowing paragraph in a book and an operatic masterpiece.

I feel sure that Cardus would have seen and deeply appreciated this Essex coronation and their county championship victory. As a man of Lancashire this cricketing wordsmith would have been both gracious and very gentlemanly about the boys from Essex. As one whose childhood and teenage years were spent in this exquisite suburb it is time to extend my heartiest congratulations to the super and superlative Essex.

  We must have known that one day cricket and Essex would be re-united in the most moving of reunions. County cricket champions once again.  We could easily get used to that winning feeling again.  Maybe it's long overdue. Take your lap of honour gents.