That short holiday in Brighton was one of the least memorable of my childhood, but for the fact that we happened to be staying in the same hotel as the Yorkshire cricket team.
I’ll explain the context of the holiday after I relate this seminal moment in my lifelong love of cricket.
Dad and I were in the lobby of the hotel, probably waiting for mum, at the same time as the Yorkshire team were preparing to set off from the hotel to the Sussex CCC ground; I’m guessing this was the morning before the start of the three-day match.
Our coinciding will simply have been happenstance. Dad had no interest whatsoever in any sport, let alone cricket.
But Geoffrey Boycott was a big name in those days – one of very few cricketers who might find himself on the front pages of the paper or on the television news, not just the back pages. Dad knew who he was.
So, as we found ourselves in such close proximity to a big name, dad thought he would introduce me to Geoffrey, along the following lines.
This is Geoffrey Boycott, one of the most famous cricketers in England and indeed the whole world.
Being pretty well trained for a seven-year-old, I looked up at Geoffrey and said words to the effect of:
Very pleased to meet you, Mr Boycott.
Geoffrey responded well to these polite enquiries. I’m told that this is not always the Geoffrey way, so he must have been in a decent mood and I guess we came across as suitably deferential, fellow hotel guests.
What a polite young man.
Geoffrey patted me on the head. He might even have added
I do like polite young men.
He then explained the teams presence to me and my dad, half-introducing us to some of the other players. For reasons I cannot explain, Phil Sharpe, Geoff Cope and Chris Old’s names stuck in my head for ever. Perhaps it is to do with the minimal number of syllables to those names.
From that holiday onwards, for many years, I thought of Yorkshire as my team. After all, I knew them. I’d met them. They were my friends.
Here is a link to the scorecard from the match Yorkshire played while staying in that Grand Hotel with us. It did not go well for Geoffrey, who had to retire hurt on 3, just a few minutes into the match. Neither did the match go well for Yorkshire.
My family took that unusually short and proximate break, because I had my adenoids and tonsils removed a couple of weeks earlier, so mum and dad felt that a short break (sea air, ice cream, that sort of thing) not too far from home was the safest option and might aid my convalescence.
There is a short home movie from that holiday – not one of dad’s best:
A few transparencies too – below is a link to the highlights of that, which includes some pictures of me in school uniform when we got home and possibly my earliest efforts with the camera – a couple of pictures of dad:
Mum and dad clearly put a lot of effort into trying to keep me amused – frankly that holiday must have been deadly dull for them.
But I met the Yorkshire cricket team on that short Brighton break and my love of all things cricket was surely sparked there.
Loved it.