The Ends of Warwick Road

In my younger days, I spent a lot of time at the other end of Warwick Road. Because of the nature of cricket, the players are less remote from the audience. There are large portions of any match when they are not actively involved and you are quite likely to come across them doing other things. At grounds other than Old Trafford (smaller opposition grounds, like Buxton and Chesterfield, or the out-grounds like Blackpool and Liverpool) this was even more true. And of course they didn't have a separate training ground.

The footballers by contrast seemed to sweep in for matches and then sweep out again. And the explosive nature of a football match is more like their being on a stage, apart from those watching. And of course the experience of watching football itself is shorter, more intense, whereas a cricket match, even a one-day game, unravels itself on a wholly different time-frame.

So I have never quite rid myself of this difference, that football is a performance, something that lifts you out of yourself, whereas cricket is part of the real world, entwined into its fabric. Maybe it is just the time a match lasts. After all, within the compass of a county championship match a man could be condemned, crucified and rise from the dead (and these days still have a day free to spend on the golf course).

Even before the amounts of money made footballers so separate, cricketers were much less remote as a species. Is is sad, perhaps, that it's no longer possible for players to pursue professional careers in both sports; Botham's little excusion with Scunthorpe was an eccentricity, no more. Even in my day, they were a dying breed. I saw Chris Balderstone play both games and Jim Cumbes.

Now we just wonder how good a cricketer Phil Neville might have been. He has, of course, had a successful football career and made himself a very rich man, but he has never really been the stuff of legend, even if he has been there whilst they we were being made.

I sometimes wonder if he might not have sacrificed a good part of his football career for one match winning performance in a Test match against Australia.

Although I doubt if he would have sacrificed any of it for the chance to bring the county championship back to Lancashire, much more important though that might be to an awful lot of people, who still hope to see it in their lifetimes.