Why I just had to make the trip to Scarborough CC despite no Roses encounter

Instead, North Marine Road was deserted yesterday save for a few inquisitive seagulls clearly oblivious to the fact that Yorkshire versus Lancashire had fallen foul of the pandemic, and no doubt wondering why they were unable to peck away at the usual scraps of food left behind by a deluge of visitors to England’s greatest outground.

“Squawk, squawk, squawk, where are all the spectators?” you could almost hear them saying as they circled the skies or congregated on the outfield.

“Why, Scarborough is normally heaving at this time of year, squawk, squawk, squawk.”

Your correspondent – and part-time interpreter of the seagull language in his spare time – was, of course, fully aware that the first Championship Roses game at Scarborough since 1991, no less, was not going ahead, with county cricket suspended until at least August 1.

But rather like the hopeless drunk who simply has to open another bottle, or the inveterate gambler who simply has to place another bet, impulses which I can also interpret on request, I just had to come anyway – even if it meant a round trip of some 130 miles from Leeds.

For a summer without Scarborough is like a summer without sunshine, an unthinkable concept to an addict like me.

If one cannot physically watch a game of Yorkshire cricket at North Marine Road this season, one can at least walk the surrounding streets, breathe in the air and peer through the main gates at the magnificent amphitheatre in which all the greats have performed – W.G. Grace, Don Bradman, Sir Garfield Sobers, and so on.

As J.M. Kilburn, the former cricket correspondent of this newspaper put it in his book In Search of Cricket, “Once visited, Scarborough takes hold of you inexorably; one visit leads to another, until the succession has turned to ritual and the spell is laid never to be broken.”

For Scarborough, much like music, landscape, literature and love, gets into the soul and never lets go. The cricket, indeed, is just part of a spell strengthened by the pull of surroundings and sea.

I rather brought this home to myself yesterday when I unconsciously headed firstly not to the ground after parking nearby but to gaze out across the magnificent North Bay from the towering vantage point of Queen’s Parade, normally heaving with Yorkshire supporters before play and during the lunch and tea intervals.

If there is a finer, more evocative vista in England I have yet to see it (although the South Bay runs it close), with the ruined castle away in the distance above a rugged landscape battered by the storms of long-lost centuries.

Yesterday morning, around what would have been tossing-up time at the cricket, that castle looked more eerie than usual as sea-fret rolled across the North Yorkshire coast, eventually clearing by around 11am to be replaced by tentative, almost apologetic sunshine.

The morning seas were rough and the wind was up, making one instantly regret not bringing a coat after being deceived by the much warmer temperatures inland.

There was only one thing for it in an effort to get warm – a bracing walk down to the seafront along the snaking, narrow pathway and back up again along the calf-killing gradient of Albert Road.

It’s a climb that invariably leaves me puffing and panting and vowing that I need to cut down on beer, junk food and take more exercise, the repeat promise of which betrays the fact it has yet to be kept.

There weren’t too many people about this Scarborough Sunday – a few dog walkers, of course, some of them pulling along the sort of ferocious breeds that you only see in your worst nightmares (this is still an English seaside town, after all), while some of the dog owners looked more ferocious than their pride and joys.

The town centre was pretty quiet on the day before non-essential shops can open again, but who should I bump into as I walked on up to the ground than Bill Mustoe, the former Scarborough CC chairman and still a vice-president, who lives locally.

Together we wandered up to the main gates through which the great amphitheatre stretches out below.

Bill – one of the nicest men in cricket – recalled first walking through those gates around half-a-century earlier and being smitten by the unfolding majesty that suddenly confronted him.

Yesterday those gates were locked but the ground itself had never looked finer; the grass was freshly manicured, a lick or two of duck-egg blue paint in the stands offset the gleaming white seats, and the Coronation Street-esque sight of house rooftops beyond the West Stand provided a somehow comforting vision of England itself in this time of national distress.

Comfort, in fact, was what Scarborough afforded this visitor amid the poignant reality of closed guesthouses, restaurants and, of course, no cricket.

For if the soul is not soothed and spirits lifted by Scarborough’s timeless splendour, it can only be deduced that the visitor has no soul/concept of the transcendent.

As J.M. Kilburn wrote: “Always you leave Scarborough with something still to be seen or done; always you return to rejoice in familiar sights and repeat fond achievements.

“Scarborough is always new yet never changes. The daily business insists upon constant variety, yet the years have brought a stable mellowness … Scarborough, as much as any town in the world, has personality, and it is that personality which brings you again and again to her lovely and precious scenes.”

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