John Arlott wrote that the purpose of watching cricket is to take pleasure from it; everything else just detail. In the 2000s  Hampshire cricket moved to the  Rose Bowl, and with the like-minded Burgess Hill contingent from Dean Park times, days at the cricket often became days at Hove. Given memory of a cloudless day there in the 70s it was not a difficult decision.

Patrick Ferriday and James Mettyear’s book Field of Dreams has 24 personal accounts of how much the ground has  meant to folks: theatre director Michael Simpkins leading the Harry Baldwin Occassionals, a team now coming up for its 40th anniversary, Paul Weaver when an aspiring journalist acting as John Arlott’s telephonist, which sounds like a great job to have had. As elsewhere a place for boundary chats about stuff and nonsense: how joining the EEC in 1973 had brought with it warmer continental weather. For many a childhood happy place and the emotions return visits bring; for the most part accounts of those born in the decades after WWII.

Those doing the playing? In 1872 the first game was a game for  Victorian  Gentlemen, 11 of them as mentioned in FoD supported by two players; old Harrovians and the great-nephew of Jane Austen at play. In the world of 2025, in what Eliza Filby calls  an Inheritocracy, county cricket is  reliant on  the Bank of Mum and Dad. In short a playing history  that has gone from the moneyed classes to the moneyed classes.

The  general rise in the numbers of privately educated  cricketers  ten years or so after FTA  ending  is also apparent in Sussex teams, albeit moderated by the arrival of Danny Lamb and Jack Simpson, two players now in their 30s.  While it’s not obvious there is strategic shift from buildings to people coming, a glance at the chart and it is obvious it would be better if there were.