LEARNING CURVE

There's nothing wrong with today's young cricketers donning helmets and arm-guards when batting, but it was all very different in the self-taught days of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
As Phil Glentworth, of Broughton (and others) well recall, our cricketing upbringing involved self-made games on a rough stretch of grass squeezed between Brigg Rec Ground, the houses on South View Avenue and Woodbine Avenue prefabs (demolished in the late 1970s).
Phil - a few years younger than me - recalls that 'yours truly' brought along a Slazenger bat, which we all shared (batting alone, not with a partner), and four stumps, plus a composition ball (hard, but with no seam).
No pads, no gloves, no boxes!
The rule was 'six and out - and fetch' if you hit the ball into a nearby garden (on the basis we might not get it back from the upset householder!).
Col Mumby (still signed on with Broughton 2nds today, though he's pushing 60) was a bit older than us but used to come down sometimes for a brief bat. Until he hit the ball into a panel on someone's asbestos garage, when we were left to face the music.
Medium-pacer Dean Nutbrown, who played for Brigg but mostly Broughton, was among our group who went on to play club cricket, along with Martin Hunt (Brigg and Broughton), plus brother Simon Fisher (Brigg Town swing bowler who once took a hat-trick against Grimsby BRSA), and the more junior Phil Glentworth, of course.
Our batting strip was never cut, nor rolled. No wonder we developed 'a good eye for the ball'. Having moved into club cricket, the likes of Barrett's and Bradley sportsgrounds, in the old Grimsby League, seemed like billiard tables to us.
Now a surprise for Phil Glentworth...I have kept the book containing all the scores recorded for our games on the old ground, over several years. Unbelievable, but true. It's upstairs, somewhere, among my collection of old pictures.
Back then we used to play matches morning, afternoon and night - every day, from early May to mid-August (when football took over). Hundreds of mini-matches a season.
Maybe, when I've looked out the old collection, we will share some of the career records with readers of Lincs Cricket Latest.
Going from memory, I think my best 'down the field' was something like 148 - almost double my best effort in club cricket over 30 years. Phil, of course, has done much better than that during his days with Broughton.
But is early 1970s playing field cricket against club matches a level playing field for comparisons?