Neal Collins cricket Today, I will talk of the tree. Not to the tree you understand. England may be losing regularly to Zimbabwe but I haven’t lost my sanity. Yet. The tree? There is only one worth talking about in cricket. You may have seen it on telly recently, while the West Indies were getting walloped by the mighty Zims. Big brute it is. Must be 30m high. And it stands smack in the middle of Kent’s St Lawrence ground at Canterbury. Well, not smack in the middle, but close enough to square leg to keep even the largest fielder completely in the shade (though given the summer we’re having, shade isn’t a problem right now). If nothing else, it makes a great talking point. And for those with frail wrists, it makes scoring four runs that much easier: according to local rules, any ball that hits the tree, even skims it, will be deemed a four. Apparently, even if the ball gets stuck in the tree, any hopeful fielders with climbing gear are out of luck: it won’t count as a catch, only a four.
I remember turning up at Canterbury to see England play Kenya at the 1999 Cricket World Cup (the festival of cricket that left England captainless and South Africa’s Allan Donald batless) with some visiting African spectators. Having followed them around the surrounding lanes for some time in their nifty hired car (which, sadly, appeared to be without a satellite navigation system), I felt I almost knew these four brave travellers who had ventured into deepest Kent to see their team beaten by Alec Stewart’s mighty men. As it happens, England actually did win this one, but that wasn’t the memorable part.
It was the tree which will linger long in the recollection of the Kenyan spectators. I was chatting with them when they got their first glimpse of the 180-year-old lime tree growing slap-bang in the middle of one of the world’s oldest cricket grounds.
“My word,” said one of the group (actually he may have used a stronger term), “What is that tree doing there!” His friend looked, rubbed his eyes in pantomime fashion, and said: “It’s inside the boundary ropes, surely it will get in the way?” Ever knowledgeable, I told them: “It’s been there 180 years, and only two players have ever hit the ball over it.” (Both West Indians – Learie Constantine in 1928 and Carl Hooper in 1992. As a journalist I’m allowed to look up the details later.) One of the group, all of whom were, um, rooted to the spot by the vision of this great tree, said: “But surely all those years ago they could have found a cricket ground without a tree in the middle? Or they could have cut it down one night when nobody was looking.” At this point, good old-fashioned female sense took over. The woman in the party admonished him: “You can’t get rid of a tree as beautiful as that; cricket has to take second place.” The conversation got really complicated when I explained that, as the current tree has potentially lethal wood fungus, they are already growing a replacement outside the boundary. The 6m young pretender was planted last February. “Good idea to put the new tree just outside the field,” said one of the visitors. I had to explain: “Erm, actually, they’re going to move it on to the field to replace the old one when it becomes unsafe.” At this point, they all shook their heads and made for the beer tent. Clearly the pure eccentricity of the tree at Canterbury was too much for them, as it is for most visitors.
But, like tummy button fluff and Muttiah Muralitharan’s bowling action, this inexplicable phenomenon grows on you. The St Lawrence ground without a tree would be unthinkable.