At the end of our UK holiday, Jen and I had a Sunday evening flight back to Malaysia. This meant that if we made our way down towards Heathrow in plenty of time we could watch most of the third day’s play at the Oval in the final test of the series with India. So that’s what we did.
Rather than just rattle all the way down the M1 at once, we broke our journey overnight at Eyam. No, I’d never heard of it either, but in looking for somewhere to go for a walk in the Peak District I discovered that four and a half centuries ago Eyam earned it’s fame as a ‘plague village’.
Apparently, a load of flea infested clothes arrived from London, bringing the plague with them. It caused devastation among the villagers who, very thoughtfully in the circumstances, agreed for the village to be quarantined until they either all died or someone invented antibiotics.
Eyam is an interesting place to stay. Most of the period buildings are still standing with a lot of the plague-related history detailed on signs around the village and then expanded upon in a visitor’s centre. There are also a few footpaths, one of which goes past the boundary stone where food would be left by folk from the next village and coins would be placed in holes filled with vinegar by the Eyam residents.
I’ve no idea how effective vinegar is against plague but I used to work with a bloke who swore by it as the answer to all of life’s ailments. He’s dead now so it looks as if it may not quite cure everything.
We followed up the Eyam stopover with a night in Richmond. The London one. That made it easy enough to take a train into the Oval the next morning where the touts were out in force. The prospect of seeing Alistair Cook’s final innings for England meant that they were frantically trying to hoover up any spares, although I didn’t see any actual buying or selling taking place.
I’d bought our tickets a couple of months earlier, at eighty-five pounds a pop in the Lock Laker Stand and even at that stage there weren’t many available. I imagine Cook’s retirement announcement quickly shifted any that had remained.
There were brass bands playing as we arrived, although probably not specially for us, and our early start allowed us to watch the teams warming up. England, somewhat controversially due to the past injuries that have been sustained, were playing five-a-side football. Or maybe six-a-side. Stuart Broad didn’t look to have much of a first touch, whilst Moeen Ali appeared to be able to waltz through the opposition at will.
Whilst our seats were nominally in the Lock Laker stand, they weren’t really. We were actually sat in the curved section close by to the side nearest to the gasometer.
India resumed their first innings about a hundred and fifty behind, with just four wickets in hand. For most of the crowd, or at least those supporting England, it was just really a matter of how long it would be before Cook batted for the last time.
It reminded me of when Juninho made his comeback after a long-term injury in his third stint at the Boro. He’d been named on the bench with the consequence that until he finally got onto the pitch every movement in the dugout commanded far more attention than anything happening on-field.
We had a long wait for the England opener though as India eked out their innings until mid-way through the afternoon session and reduced the deficit to just forty runs. From the moment the last wicket fell all eyes were on the pavilion until such time as Cook made his entrance to another standing ovation. It continued long after he’d arrived at the wicket and stopped only as the bowler commenced his run-up. I think I may have had something in my eye at that stage.
Our flight time meant that we had to leave at five, with still another hours worth of batting to come. I was unsure, somewhat selfishly, whether I’d have liked Cook to have been dismissed before we left, so I could be part of the clapping off. That wasn’t on the cards though and he batted out the session in our absence before returning the next day to complete one more daddy ton.
By the time the former England captain was out for not far short of a hundred and fifty, we were back in Malaysia where I watched his dismissal and departure as it happened on the telly in our house. It’s not often you see a batsman’s innings start and finish from locations more than six thousand miles apart.
Trail of the Lion King 