Unless £280,000 is found quickly, Heytesbury Cricket Ground will be lost forever. Photo: Neil Pollard
Saturday was not only one of the hottest days of this cricket season, but also one of the most spicy. It was the last game at the stadium in which Siegfried Sassoon, the greatest of war poets and bravest of men, played.
At the beginning of July, the cricket club was given a three-month notice to withdraw from the game. Unless the £280,000 is found in a hurry, it will go the same way as the neighboring football field, where the grass is already rising over the goal.
After receiving the Military Cross for capturing a German trench single-handedly and returning one of his men to safety, Sassoon was celebrated by London society and then criticized for being the greatest whistleblower. Having been there and done that, he dared to declare that the First World War did not cost millions of lives. The authorities threatened to shoot him, first of all, for cowardice; he voluntarily returned to the trenches, as he was very sympathetic to his people.
Sassoon moved to Heytesbury in 1933. As well as playing cricket on the estate, he walked through the woods of the surrounding hills with his pruning shears and his undying memories. «He was still having terrible nightmares in 1953 when I first met him,» said Dennis Silk, the Cambridge and Somerset batsman whom Sassoon befriended before becoming Radley's caretaker. According to Sassoon, “The worst thing was looking at the clock before jumping into over your head, when the seconds were ticking and you knew that most of the men would be dead in ten minutes.”
War hero Sassoon was awarded for his bravery. Photo: Getty Images/George C. Beresford
An essay worthy of Sassoon was written by David Foote, the late West Country writer, and it is reproduced in the new anthology Traces. In the course of his research, Foote discovered that Sassoon had assigned two of the estate's workers to open the bowling, Jim Keatley and Henry Reynolds, while he himself batted in the lower order, where he was «very ordinary». Gone are the days when he could triumph, as Sassoon described in Memoirs of a Foxcatcher, and win a match at the Flower Show.
“He sat right in the center of the field, a lean, stately figure,” wrote Foote about Sassoon's performance. “When the batsman hit the ball hard in his direction, Siegfried remained at attention, allowing the ball to crack against his exposed shins. The rest of the team winced and tried their best to suppress soft laughter. He would then, in due course, bend down to pick up the ball and return it under the bowler's arm.»
There are no Shinpads either. It seems wrong that an officer who fought in the trenches and still has the scars on the back of his head from two German sniper bullets should have a cricket ball adding to his pain; but such was his sense of duty.
Sassoon plays for Heytesbury Cricket Club. Photo: Wiltshire Times
Foot gives another example of the importance of cricket to Sassoon. His party trick was to memorize the initials of first-class cricketers, especially the «Kent players before the First World War» and, above all, the initials of his hero Frank Woolley, or «Woolley — F.E.»
Trees the woods, especially the beech trees, were barely colored when Heytesbury began their final game against a team raised by their club chairman Justin Wagstaff. The brimstone butterfly scanned the area before looking for shade. The land slopes down to the village and the River Wylie, which after descending from Salisbury Plain is still clear enough for children to swim.
Top view of Heytesbury CC. Photo: Heytesbury Cricket Club
In the middle of the innings, chairman Tommy Reynolds came out to bowl and rose to the top. slope, just like his great-grandfather. A strong figure, he ran in, jumped, turned his arm and hooked the wicket at square leg with a full toss.
A few overs later, Graham Keatley, the Heytesbury captain, took the lead and rolled down the slope as his grandfather had done, but not for long. Jim was trapped in Singapore and when he returned three and a half years later from a Japanese prison camp, his legs were so covered in boils and sores that he could not play cricket again. So said John Keatley, Jim's son and Graham's father, who watched the final game.
John Keatley, when he was a tong, sat on the roller — the same one he now has — and watched Sassoon come down from Heytesbury House to set the net against his father. Sassoon usually wore too-short trousers and a funny hat, “like the Pope’s,” and was too silent to speak. Sassoon and his first bowler soon found themselves in the same boat: Jim Keightley, returning from World War II, «woke up sweating every night of his life until he died at 88.»
Tea became a welcome break from the heat. The tea housewife began making sandwiches at 10.30 am, but cut them only at 1.30 pm so that they would not curl. In Sassoon's time, players would go to the Angel Hotel for tea and drink afterwards. It was an omen when it closed earlier this year.
I've always had a soft spot for Heytesbury because I played my first league game there after sepsis and that was about the only time I scored more points than missed. . For some reason they didn’t drag me down the slope and into the field by the hand again; they must have mistaken me for a tricky spinner, not a Wiley spinner.
The Heytesbury Cricket Club site could be given over to developers. Photo: Heytesbury Cricket Club
“Last 12 overs!” — Captain Wagstaff announced after our second drink break. Not the last 12 overs of the season, but ever on this immaculate pitch. Soon our gatekeeper shouted: “The last one has arrived!” Wagstaff himself batted, and although Heytesbury were bowled out by almost 20 runs, their opening batsman reached his century.
Sassoon may have been disappointed by the outcome, and also by those of his descendants — they are not unanimous — who are selling the land. Indeed, these proposals split the poet's surviving descendants: his granddaughter Kendall Sassoon and her children opposed the scheme.
She told The Telegraph: “I told the trustees: no, don't sell the land, donate it to the village for public use. The cricket club was very important to my grandfather. He loved it. He found peace there after everything he had been through. Other beneficiaries of the trust, including members of the wider family, are in favor of the proposed sale.
If the sale goes through, nothing will remain of him except his writings and a spartan tombstone in the Mellsa cemetery, which reads: » Siegfried Lorraine Sassoon 1886-1967, RIP.» Or, as he himself might have said: “Sassoon – SL.”
After the handshakes, the Heytesbury players gathered to sit in the square like a wake. The sun disappeared behind the beeches. This concludes The Farewell Match.
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