Fun at Fenner's

I first set foot in Fenner’s in the summer of 1982, a short stop on a day trip to Cambridge that was a sop to a teenager who was appreciably more interested in cricket than architecture. As we walked in, Huw Davies, then England’s fly half, was walking out and in the middle Derek Pringle, then being touted as an England prospect, was playing for the University. I was hooked: I loved the informality of being able to wander freely round the boundary and come so close to the players and the possibility of being able to field the ball as it came across the boundary. This was far removed from my experiences of first class cricket to that point, which had been in the rather more rigid environs of Lord’s and the Oval. I was also taken with the flats at the far end of the ground where the pavilion had once stood, little imagining that twenty years later my father would move into one of them.

I went up to Cambridge in 1987 and stayed in the city for much longer, so I was a regular at the ground for twenty years, my office for much of that time being conveniently located for a lunchtime pint and an hour’s play. Although by the time I arrived the glory days of university cricket were firmly in the past, in the summer of 1988 there were seven home fixtures against first class counties, as well as games against the likes of the Free Foresters and the Quidnuncs, and in the times when I wasn’t playing myself I would walk the three-quarters of a mile or so from college and spend long afternoons on the grass watching the big names of Mike Atherton and Rob Turner and the lesser known figures such as Richard Bate, who later became my club captain.

This was a big part of the charm for a cricketing student, for you could watch friends and recent opponents taking on the pros. One year a group of us sat watching in agony as a college friend took what felt like an eternity to get off the mark on his first class debut: to the bemusement of the opposition his first single was greeted by a standing ovation which he acknowledged with a cheery wave of the bat. On another occasion my house mate got hit on the helmet but went on to a composed half century. The days that I spent cadging free pints from the travel pub may not have done my exam results much good, but I wouldn’t have missed them for the world.

The informality of the setting also created the kind of circumstances that you don’t get at most normal grounds. One afternoon I was roped in as a Derbyshire net bowler in spite of the fact that I was wearing jeans and Doc Martens, when Sachin Tendulkar played at the ground for Lashings he had mislaid his trousers and I spent several frantic minutes trying to track down a new pair and one cold April morning Andy Afford, who was wearing enough sweaters to look like a left arm orthodox Michelin man, shouted from the field to ask if he could borrow my coat. I should imagine that if you hang around any cricket ground for long enough then you have some stories to tell, but Fenner’s always had a whiff of eccentricity about it.

Although I’m now a Life Member, I seldom get to the ground these days. I no longer work just round the corner, my son is not yet interested enough to want to spend a few hours there and, unsurprisingly, the connection isn’t there anymore. I did manage to catch a few hours of the MCCU’s’ remarkable victory over Surrey last summer, including Paul Best’s blistering 150 not out, and was there long enough to retrieve a shot from Kevin Pietersen from under a bench (my thirteen year old self would have been beside himself), but I didn’t brave the Arctic conditions for any of the game against Essex last week and I’m not sure when I will get there this summer. In spite of that, Fenner’s will always be one of my favourite places to watch cricket – it may not have the pastoral charm of the Parks and the pavilion may not have the romance of the old building, but there aren’t many places where you can get in free to watch professionals play cricket and have a drink with them afterwards. Long may it continue.