As
an impressionable schoolboy, going to watch a game at Taunton was like walking
into a citadel. To me, at the time, it was an absolutely awesome place. There
used to be trees down in the corner by the River Stand. We’d sit under them
to eat our sandwiches and then, during the intervals for lunch and tea, we’d
play our make-believe Test matches on the outfield, using a bottle for a bat
and bowling with a tennis ball. I’d just dream that one day I might play
there for real – and, amazingly enough, so I did.
I
feel that fortune favoured me, though, in making my debut at Bath rather than
Taunton. The Bath track always did something for the spinners while Taunton
was a good flat wicket that suited the batsmen. If I’d started there,
perhaps I’d never have been heard of again!
An
early memory of the ground at Taunton is of the lowing cows in the cattle
market punctuating the applause from the crowd. It is the most companionable
and pervasive of county grounds and, within its gregarious climate, men from
origins as diverse as Sammy Woods, Len Braund, Bill Alley, Arthur Wellard, Viv
Richards, Johnny Lawrence, Ian Botham, Frank Lee have become as much part of
the Taunton scene as the Somerset born Harold Gimblett, Horace Hazell, Jack
White, Mervyn Kitchen, Peter Denning, Colin Dredge and Bertie Buse.
It
is as if they had all been drawn into the same atmosphere, like the people
converging on the market from the countryside for miles around. On a July
Saturday market day, cricket and the weekly visitors and shoppers all merge
into a unique yet typically West Country warm, busy, relished – purely
Taunton – summer’s day.