Next week, we are going to begin the winter cull of books in the Kent CCC collection. We, in common with all county clubs, have very many cricket books, a lot of which are duplicates or of little relevance to Kent cricket. Every year, we receive books from a variety of sources, and we are happy to do so, provided that the donor gives us a free hand to do what we like with the books.
What happens next is that the books go up to the top of the Woolley Stand where we tend to store everything, and then they sit there with perhaps a thousand others until we get round to sorting them out in the winter. The sorting process requires three things – willing volunteers, a big enough room to sort the books into piles, and a skip. By the end of the sorting process, the volunteers have enlarged their biceps and/or exacerbated their lumbago from all the stooping, the room will be in need of a good going over with a hoover, and the skip will be full. But there will be a great sense of satisfaction at some sort of order being achieved.
The books are divided into various piles. There are the comparatively few really useful or valuable books, which go into our archive library, currently in the Committee Room, for use by people doing research, for books, PhDs or the like. In that archive we have, among other things, a complete set of Wisden almanacks, a complete set of Kent Blue Books and annuals, past Kent CCC minute books, and copies of books about Kent county cricket in all its aspects.
A second pile is made of those books which we do not want to keep, because they are duplicates or not about Kent cricket, but which are in good enough condition that we may be able to sell during the summer, to raise money for the Cricket Heritage Trust. Last year’s sales raised several hundred pounds, useful money when you are working on a shoestring budget.
A third pile is made of those books which we don’t need and which we don’t think we can sell, but which are in good enough condition to be donated to local charity shops. This pile usually features several copies of the works of Dickie Bird.
The fourth pile is the biggest. It consists of those books which you couldn’t give away, and these go into the skip.
There is however, one large shelf of books which cause us some concern. Until a few seasons ago, we had a library of books in the Cornwallis Room in the Cowdrey Stand, where anybody could come and pick out a cricket book, either to take home for a week or two, or else to read there and then, during a lunch hour or a rain break. It was a pretty popular part of what these days would be called the ‘spectator experience’, or in days of yore ‘a day at the cricket’. But pressure of space meant that we had to relocate the bookshelves, which we liked to think of as a library, downstairs into the meeting room on the ground floor of the Cowdrey. Access was far more complicated and restricted, and almost immediately, the library died a death.
But there ought to be a library at the Spitfire Ground. Part of the remit of the Trust is to make the story of cricket in the county more accessible to everyone, and a library is one element in fulfilling that duty. So we still have two questions to answer: where should a library be, and what selection of books should it contain? Oh, and do we still call it a library, or is it a ‘learning centre’ or an ‘information experience’ or some such woke phrase? No, it’s a library.
Where should it be is more difficult to answer, as at the moment there is just no space at all around the ground. The Committee Room is available by appointment to anybody who wishes to undertake some research, but that is not suitable as a permanent library for people to dip in and out of at their leisure. Perhaps when the Woolley Stand is demolished and a new one built in its place, we can reserve a space there for a library, but unless anybody has around £5 million to spare, that will be more of a long term solution than a quick one. We continue to work on it.
What sort of books should our library contain? Well, cricket books, obviously, but in my view it should hold a wide selection of books to appeal to anybody and everybody who comes to the ground. That means Kent Annuals for those who want to look up past glories or remind themselves of once familiar Kent faces; it means Kent histories; it means biographies and autobiographies of famous players – the good ones and the bad ones (players and biographies both); and it means a selection of books which will appeal to younger readers. Whether that is the Bunbury epics of David English, or the complete works of Chris Cowdrey, or any one of the many cricket coaching books aimed at kids does not really matter. If we want to attract young people to cricket, especially red ball cricket, where the average age of spectators at most county grounds on a midweek afternoon is roughly 127 years and 4 months, then we have to make sure that every part of the ground holds something of interest for them. They don’t only come for the ice creams and the autographs.
So our task over the next few weeks is certainly to weed out the rubbish, and make sure that the archive material is as complete as it can be, but it is also to plan ahead for the time when we can reopen a cricket library at the Spitfire Ground, which will add to the enjoyment of anybody who visits it, and will help to spread the word of cricket in Kent.