As the modern cricketer hops from Crowne Plaza to Holiday Inn, well rewarded and with plenty of time for golf, he or she might feel perfectly content. But life has not always been a merry-go-round of air-con and airports.
Hop off the train at Grindleford, where homemade bunting loops along the platform fence, highlighting books about trains in this national year of reading, and you’re in the Peak District. There’s been early morning rain and the trees, damply beautiful, are on the turn. Golden beech, rusty horse chestnut, hues of greens and yellows, disappear up the slopes of Padley Gorge and into the valleys.
Five minutes along Station Road, past hikers’ favourite the Station Café, famous for its huge mugs of tea, and you arrive at The Maynard, once the Maynard Arms, host to international touring cricket teams in the middle of the last century when they played Derbyshire and Yorkshire. In the snug, tucked in behind the reception desk and the bar, is a small homage to teams past, autographs, bats, black and white photos of young men, nearly all now gone.
According to the caption accompanying the team photo, the Australians first stayed here in 1930, to escape the noise of Sheffield, then a city of steelworks and smoking chimneys. A young Don Bradman, just 21, stares back in his blazer from the front row, legs stretched out, arms crossed. He’s part way through a magical summer which included 334 against England at Headingley, 1,000 runs by the end of May and 974 runs in the Ashes series.
Australia returned to Grindleford in 1938, unpacking their suitcases for 10 days, from 28 June to 7 July, playing against Derbyshire at Queen’s Park, Chesterfield, and Yorkshire at Bramall Lane, Sheffield, when only rain prevented the hosts pulling off a famous victory. “Tremendous furnaces paint the night sky with rosy brilliance for many square miles on the northern and eastern sides of Sheffield,” writes “Easel” in the Maitland Mercury on 21 July that year, “but when the train emerges at Grindleford from the long tunnel, it enters a haven of rest where nothing but beauty meets the eye and greets the senses, ideal conditions for the Australian team to return to after their strenuous days of cricket.”
The Australians may have been much admired during that tour, but they were not perfect house guests. The rumours about Lindsay Hassett smuggling a complaining goat from the nearby hills into his room, to the dismay of roommates Stan McCabe and Bill O’Reilly, appear to be true. There is corroborating evidence from the Albany Advertiser, which wrote: “The goat, with a goat’s extraordinary taste in food, reduced McCabe’s bedroom to a remarkable condition, much to the delight of that rascal Hassett.” And Jack Fingleton remembered the incident in his book Cricket Crisis: “The next night everybody locked their doors, which was just as well because Hassett found a hedgehog.”
Yet the escapade was not enough to put the hotel off naming 15 rooms after the players. You can stay in the (Chuck) Fleetwood-Smith or the (Ben) Barnett, the Fingleton or the (Jack) Badcock. The gorgeous bridal suite, complete with roll top bath and enormous wooden bed looking out of a huge window over the hills, is named after Bradman – and his nearly perfect average. There are also rooms named after Hugh Tayfield, Percy Mansell, George Fullerton and Syd Pegler, members and manager of the South African side of 1951.
After the war years, the next Australian team to land on these shores was Bradman’s Invincibles of 1948, who completed an entire tour of England without losing a game, drawing with Yorkshire and defeating Derbyshire by an innings. They too stayed at The Maynard and were said to have bathed in the nearby river Derwent. The Rev Keith Bamford, speaking to the Derbyshire Cricket Foundation as part of a heritage project, said “Keith Miller was there in 1948 and apparently spent a little too long in the bar one night and missed the bus to Sheffield. A journalist there lent him £10 for a taxi, didn’t see any repayment for years and years, and many years later in Melbourne he was sitting watching the Test. Miller tapped him on the shoulder and gave him some money and said that’s for Grindleford.”
The dates might be slightly different, but it is a memory backed up by the journalist himself, Basil Easterbrook, writing in the Sunday Sun of 17 June, 1973. “Once in 1953, I was staying with the Australian Team at the Maynard Arms. Lindsay Hassett, the captain and George Davies, the manager, went off to London for a few days break and Keith Miller was left in charge. Nugget shared a room with Lindwall and on the second morning due to an oversight they received no early call.
“At 11am, Australia’s two great opening bowlers were peeling off their pyjamas at the Maynard Arms, while several miles away they were just closing the gates on 30,000 Yorkshiremen waiting for battle to recommence at 11.30.
“Hire a car Bas,” shouted Miller, as he and Lindwall fell about the bedroom trying to climb into their trousers. I got a Rolls-Royce from the local undertaker – the only vehicle available – and the three of us drove in some state up to the edge of the moors and then down the rim of the saucer that is Sheffield. We pulled up outside Bramall Lane at 11.28.”
In this version, Easterbrook gets his money back 19 years later, via Ray Lindwall, “older, heavier, greying of hair, but the smile and the eyes the same,” pushing a fiver into the breast pocket of his jacket.
Local historian Alan Jacques, who was born above the village shop in Grindleford in 1951, remembers going up to The Maynard to get autographs from the 1965 South Africans, the last side to tour before isolation. “Some of them came out and asked us where was a good place to walk and we took them down to the riverside.” He still has his autograph book from 1963 too, which contains scribbles from four of the visiting West Indians, who were sitting on the wall outside the hotel – Lance Gibbs, Alf Valentine, Seymour Nurse and Derek Murray.
These days, though the local cricket club comes in for drinks and events, touring teams choose hotels with sharper corners and city footprints. Perhaps they could again be tempted to build in a few days break at the Noosa of hiking boots and peachy dawns. As Ian Johnson wrote for the Adelaide New in 1953. “It’s a very comfortable country pub on the side of a very lovely valley which allows the players a perfect rest.”