The Twelfth Man 2020

I ’m a diligent sort of cricket-lover. The sort who goes to Test Matches whenever I can. Back in 1981 and working full-time I’d managed to get to three days at Headingley, steadfastly sitting through cricket of variable quality to say the least, but then missed out on the denouement. Exactly the same happened in 2019. How can this be? 1981. The year we were married. We’d moved into our first house in May and bought a Royal Wedding special edition vacuum cleaner. The Hoover was embellished with a royal crest which doubtless put a tenner on the price. We’d re- solved to do without a television, not through any financial imperative, but to do with a new way of living in which we would find other ways to fill our leisure time. That resolve didn’t survive the first Test Match at Trent Bridge in June. By Saturday morning I was at the TV rental shop (didn’t we all rent then?) signing up for a new 21-inch push-button Phillips model - in colour of course. Imploring the shop for an early installation it was delivered and working by lunch-time, giv- ing an afternoon in front of the BBC’s Grandstand coverage. Cricket interspersed with horse-racing and athletics, as was the norm then. By the time the Ashes reached Leeds a month later, England was already one down and a draw at Lord’s was Ian Botham’s last match as captain. They sent for Brearley who’d led the side in the Ashes four years earlier. In 1981, attending a Test Match at Headingley was a vastly different experience to the modern day. For a start, there were no tickets. Yorkshire Members were admitted free on production of a tear-off coupon from their membership cards. Furthermore, a lady guest (in this case, my wife) was also admitted by a pass contained within the membership card. Taking leave from work, we turned up for the first three days. Seating was unreserved and through the three days we’d moved about, variously sitting in the lower tier of the main (football) stand, on top of the winter shed and in the stand in front of the old pavilion. By the end of Saturday, after England followed on, they had reached 6 for 1 when bad light intervened. Then followed one of those situations where cricket contrives to shoot itself in the foot. An extra hour (until 7pm) had been added for earlier loss of time but because the light was still not good enough at 6pm, umpires Meyer and Evans called play off. By 6.02 Headingley was bathed in sunshine and we scurried to the Kirkstall Lane gates under a volley of seat cushions being hurled angrily onto the outfield from the Western Terrace. My mood was grim. The match was lost, and with it the Ash- es. I resolved to go back to work on Monday. At work on Monday afternoon cricket wasn’t on my mind at all until I overheard a chance remark - ‘I see Botham’s giving it to the Aussies’, said someone in the office. This must have been a surreptitious radio - no mobile phones then. I sought out my car radio and, picking up the state of play, I raced home to see the concluding ninety minutes of mayhem. On Tuesday it was my routine to visit my mother on my fort- nightly half-day off work. Going across the car park just after midday I met a colleague. ‘They’re [the Aussies] 58 for 3!’ I drove through the lunch break, coaxed my mother’s TV set into life and we sat eating our lunch on our knees. Wickets fell, then some resistance as the Aussie run tally crept up. I recall cursing loudly as Chris Old spilled a catch. Bob Willis looked like a man possessed. And then, that moment when he knocked over Ray Bright’s stumps. I punched the air in delight, bade farewell to my mother and drove to pick up my wife from work to go out for a celebratory drink. The television images will stay with me forever; for Christmas, I received a VHS video, Botham’s Ashes. Thirty-eight years later and it’s as much as I can do to pay out for two days’ tickets in one go for the Third Test - and then almost a year before the event! A bit later on, I relent and buy a day-3 ticket that my son and his friends suddenly have going spare. Later still, I take up Yorkshire’s offer of a day-5 ticket for £25, fully refundable in case of no play. So I now have tickets for every day except the Sunday. And that is how I came once again to be watching a gripping finale on television, having diligently sat through the first three days at Leeds. To be fair, our prospects at the end of Saturday this time seemed rather better than in 1981, but still 359 in the fourth innings would be a tall order indeed. A good day’s watching was in the offing. Only this time, thanks to the wonder (and expense) of Sky’s superb coverage it is unin- terrupted. And then, just after ten past four, it was all done. Several hours of pent-up tension exploded out when B A Stokes hit the winning boundary. There I was, so much old- er but probably no wiser, cavorting around our living room, jumping about and roaring in a way that would have shocked my mother to the core all those years ago. Immediately, in that moment, I knew who would be Sports Personality of the Year. The television images will stay with me forever - I have them on catch-up on Sky. It is as close as I’ll get to the second miracle of Headingley. I wasn’t there. I WASN’T THERE… Millions claim to have been there when England miraculously beat Australia at Headingley in 1981. No doubt similar numbers will say the same about 2019. Chris Barron isn’t one of them… 10 11 I recall cursing loudly as Chris Old spilled a catch. Bob Willis looked like a man possessed. And then, that moment when he knocked over Ray Bright’s stumps. I punched the air in delight