Of summer, and beauty and community… and cricket

Durham291 (Borthwick 64, Collingwood 50, Anderson 3-58) need 247 runs to beatLancashire204 and 333 (Procter 122, Hameed 53, Stokes 3-50, Borthwick 3-98)Scorecard

To appreciate the full perfection of this day’s cricket, it may be useful, just for a moment please, to recall this ground in December: the grass is tussocky and barely green at all; the outfield is marked out for junior football games; there are dishcloth skies and lowering dusks; and crows are perched in the bare balsam poplars like black commas, punctuating the winter.

Now a Monday in July and summer is suddenly emerging from grey bedragglement. The sycamores at the Grosvenor Road End stand as if saluting its tardy arrival In the middle Haseeb Hameed and Luke Procter are building the 114-run partnership that will take Lancashire into the lead. From the direction of Harrod Drive, Ben Stokes is running in, determined to win the game for Durham and prove his fitness for the Manchester Test. But for all that Stokes and Borthwick may be in the selectors’ minds, this is not an international occasion. It is Lancashire and Durham badges which proliferate along with those of fine local clubs: Ormskirk, Fleetwood Hesketh, Sefton Park.

Then Hameed, having taken 14 runs off a frolicsome four balls from Graham Onions and passed fifty for the sixth time in 15 innings this season, arches back but can only fend a fearsomely nasty short ball from Stokes to the substitute fielder, Jeremy Benton – almost a utility cricketer? – at third slip. Hameed, his sadness momentarily infinite, troops off without waiting for Rob Bailey’s finger. He receives a warm round of applause and the crowd settles again. Blue pastels and panamas are almost a uniform in the marquees. Petersen opens his account with a swept four off Borthwick, who is getting ever more joy from Grosvenor Road. There is a rattle of crockery as lunchtime approaches.

Dreams may, indeed, take their time to arrive and be gone in a casual glance but that is no reason not to enjoy the reverie, be it a day at the cricket or the scent of a …

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