There has been much chat in the public press about roadmaps. It would seem that escape from the constraints of the pandemic cannot be accomplished without a roadmap. Or several. The recovery of economic health also needs a roadmap. There are road maps to the digital future, the carbon free future, to every longed for future.
For the lower league cricketer with a long memory, such as Fantasy Bob, all this roadmap talk is chilling. It awakes long repressed memories, leaving them sleepless and exhausted. Younger cricketers may depend on SATNAV to do their dirty work for them. They therefore have little conception of the horrors of the roadmap. But in the pre-digital age, cricketers travelling to unfamiliar away grounds had to take their chances with roadmaps. Many fixtures did not happen or had to be truncated because players spent the better part of the afternoon aimlessly roaming the country side in search of the promised land. By comparison the Israelites had it easy. What yesterday's lower league cricketer would not have given for a pillar of fire to guide them through the wilderness. (Seam bowlers in the side would also have been happy with a pillar of cloud).
Occasionally the unfortunate travellers might press the AA Book into service. Not that it was a great help. FB understands that the first printed map of Scotland was prepared in Italy (where else) by Paolo Forlani in the mid-16th Century. As can be seen from the reproduction above, it signally fails to identify any cricket ground. Perhaps this is not remarkable, the Italian interest in the game in those days being minimal, but it seems to have a set a trend for subsequent map-makers. And the AA Book, whatever other improvements it might have made since the 1500s, did not see fit to correct Forlani's basic oversight. Cricket grounds simply are not marked.
Even the most keen-eyed junior player, designated navigator for the day by virtue of having gained the map-reading badge in the Cubs, would be flummoxed. Many a skipper has found to his cost that the award of that badge was no assurance that its owner had even the vaguest idea in which direction lay North, far less a basic appreciation of right versus left.
Cricketers therefore had to resort to other guides. Too often this took the form of a scribbled set of instructions from the club secretary transcribed from his telephone call with the opposition skipper. That the call took place in the pub late the previous evening brought a sense of mystery, if not adventure, to the interpretation of these instructions.
For unfamiliar venues that were relatively local, there would be a list of abbreviated street names. If you understood Cam R to be Campbell Road, rather than Cameron Road or even Cambridge Row, then you were flying. If not, a long tour of the city's less familiar nooks was in prospect.
These instructions were often embellished with obiter dicta. Some of these - for example 'beside pub', 'after church' - could actually be helpful, providing you had guessed correctly on Cam R.
But 'turn at Jimmy's house' might be excellent, if you knew who Jimmy was, where he lived and which way to turn when his house hove into view, but less so in other circumstances. Similarly, 'Get to the big ASDA and then take the short cut' teased with its spurious accuracy. Other instructions could suffer from an uncertainty which suggested that the background noise in the pub had swollen to unhelpful levels during dictation. It is hard otherwise to understand instructions such as '3rd or 4th right or maybe left'. Always these instructions were handed over to the travelling skipper with the suggestion that, 'It's easy - you'll know it when you're there.'
For new locations further afield, there was less local knowledge to help narrow the target area. Understanding road numbers seemed beyond the Cub Scout navigation syllabus and brought additional risk. Trunk roads could generally be relied on - assuming the young navigator had the travellers heading toward the correct compass point. But minor roads could be challenging. 'B83something' on the scribbled instructions was no great help.
Backseat drivers who felt their claim that the road sign that had just been sped past was unjustly ignored could sour the trip.
'Why didn't you tell me before we passed it?' hissed the frustrated driver. To which, 'I thought you knew where we were going,' was not deemed a particularly helpful response.
A forthright exchange of views would inevitably follow. As a result of which squabble neither back nor front seat driver would notice the handmade sign 'To the Cricket Ground' on the next turn off. Being good club men neither would bear a grudge, although adjustments to the batting order could affect the passengers of this car more than others.
Instructions were always complemented with the suggestion, 'If you get lost, just ask.' It is hard to underestimate the hazard attached to following that instruction.
FB remembers once pulling up at a petrol station after failing to locate the desired ground. Getting out of the car, he asked the attendant,
'Can you tell me the quickest way to the cricket ground?'
'Are you walking or going by car?'
'By car.'
'Quite right, that is the quickest way.'
It is a wonder any away fixtures ever happened. Cricketers must hope that the map shown below is more helpful.
