Page 4 - Bray Celebrity Cricket Programme Final

MICHAEL PARKINSON
MAIDENHEAD & BRAY CRICKET CLUB
The article below was written by Sir Michael for the Sunday Times in 1974. Alongside his success as a broadcaster Sir Michael was also a much admired and award-winning sports Journalist who, throughout his life, wrote regular columns for the Daily Express, the Sunday Times and the Daily Telegraph.
The articles were a mixture of his strong views on the big sporting issues of the day with pen portraits of heroes and villains alongside treasured memories form his past told with humour and not a little artistic licence.
The following article is prime example of the latter and goes someway to explain why today would’ve been so important to him.
MY cricket garden is looking lovely. The
Geoffrey Boycott rose is blooming beautifully, the strip
of Bramall Lane turf is doing as well as can be expected under an alien sun, and the two willow trees – named Gunn and Moore – weep gently for English cricket.
Ever since I was small I have wanted my own cricket pitch. My formative years were spent with lamp-posts as wickets and highways as pitches. Absolute power rested not with the best bat or the most skilful bowler, but with the child fortunate enough to own a bat or a ball.
For instance, Percy Bailey, a youth possessing no charm and little skill at cricket, was the most popular lad on our street because his dad, being a chip-shop owner, could afford to buy him all the gear. Every game depended on Percy Bailey. If he played, we all played. If he didn’t, we went round breaking windows. When he did play we had to be careful not to upset him.
It was like fighting a man with a weak
heart. Percy Bailey had to score 200
or he would take his bat home. He
had to open the bowling and we had
to make him look good, otherwise
the ball disappeared. He once scored to an end when his old man became 267 and took eight for 21 in the same unemployed due to a fire in the chip afternoon, and I want you to know he pan, which gave the village its couldn’t play cricket. biggest spectacle since Sam the
We buttered up Percy something rotten. The first season we played on his pitch he scored a thousand runs and took 180 wickets and he still couldn’t play cricket. His career came
MICH
Bookie’s funeral.
A