Happy 175th to Scarborough Cricket Club, the jewel in the crown
THE year was 1849 - long before shortenings to ‘Scarbados’ were in vogue.
In a meeting at The Queens Hotel on North Marine Road, later to become The Cricketers pub, and now retirement apartments, Scarborough Cricket Club came into being.
Then known as The Queens Club, it played on rough land opposite the hotel, and then at a ground on nearby Castle Hill.
Only when that rough land was developed in the early 1870s, when The Queens Club had evolved into Scarborough CC, did the North Marine Road site take off and transform into the magnificent amphitheatre that stands there now.
So, charge your glasses, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and raise them in the direction of England’s finest outground as Scarborough celebrates its 175th anniversary,
On Saturday, this will be marked with a special dinner at this most special of places, to which the great and good of Scarborough and Yorkshire cricket will descend in tribute, a delightful curtain-raiser to the County Championship game against Gloucestershire that starts there the following morning.
The dinner, which will be conducted by Caroline Hawley, of BBC Bargain Hunt fame, will feature an auction of items that “money can’t buy” - a win in the Championship, perhaps? - and after-dinner speakers Sir Geoffrey Boycott and Jonathan Agnew, dubbed in the promotional literature as “the Lennon and McCartney of cricket broadcasting”.
The legendary Beatles would no doubt be touched, and might modestly have referred to themselves as “the Boycott and Agnew of songwriting and performing” had the boot somehow been on the other foot. The long and winding road of life, however, had other ideas.
For Bill Mustoe, the Scarborough president, the 175th anniversary brings into sharp focus once more the je ne sais quoi of North Marine Road, that indefinable quality that defies all description.
Mustoe was struck by it - that certain “I don’t know what” - when he first walked through the gates in the early 1970s and looked down on the timeless arena on which all the greats have strode - from Rhodes and Verity to Hutton and Root, along with Grace, Bradman, Sobers, et al.
For Mustoe, it was, and remains, an almost otherworldly experience. You either get Scarborough or you don’t, and Mustoe gets it.
“I’ve been coming here for over 50 years,” he said. “When I first visited, I was playing for Harrogate and they said, ‘We’re playing at Scarborough’, and I said, ‘Where’s that?’. This is true. And they gave me directions.
“Anyway, I was coming down North Marine Road and I thought, ‘You’ve made a bit of a boo-boo of this because there’s the sea on the right-hand side and there’s all these tenement buildings on the left.’ And then I saw this entrance and I went down it, and this magnificent ground suddenly opened up in front of me.
“And do you know, I got a hell of a thrill. In fact, I do even now, over 50 years later, when I go through those front gates. I think - this is special. And I don’t know how you define that.
“Whether it’s because it’s an amphitheatre, hidden from view… I just don’t know. But people love coming here. The players like it because the crowd’s fairly close, and vice-versa. There’s the classic Victorian pavilion, the Tea Room, it just has an atmosphere all of its own.”
No one got Scarborough more than JM Kilburn, the former Yorkshire Post cricket correspondent. Some of his best writing was inspired by his visits there - most famously when he described its festival as “first-class cricket on holiday”.
That festival has shrunk since Kilburn’s day, a once two-week end-of-season celebration now effectively condensed to one Championship match in late summer. This year, it will be Sussex who are the visitors in August, when there will also be a dinner after the second day’s play.
By then, Yorkshire will hope to have their first Championship victories of the season on the board, with the Gloucestershire match followed by a trip to face Derbyshire at Chesterfield before Sussex swap one seaside resort for another.
“We’re obviously hoping, like every other Yorkshire cricket supporter, that Yorkshire gain promotion this year in the Championship because that will cement the number of people visiting Scarborough,” added Mustoe.
“We need that Yorkshire success in order to celebrate Yorkshire cricket at North Marine Road, so hopefully that will happen in this special year for Scarborough CC.
“It’s an important year to mark, the 175th anniversary, celebrating the great history, tradition and welcome that people receive when they come here.
“It’s just a classic seaside venue, but one steeped in history and a very rich history at that, and we should all be very proud of it.”
Quite.
Somehow, Scarborough encapsulates the essence of county cricket.
Happy birthday, old chum, and here’s to many more.