Have bus, still travelling

Long ago Alec Bedser told me that in the days of his youth, before coaches, before one-dayers and long before match referees and television replays he used to wait in the lobby of the team hotel every morning until one of the local fans offered him a lift to the ground.

I know it is true because when I attended my first Test against India at Headingley in my teens I - naturally as it seemed to me then - went by train from York, walked across the road from Leeds station, and caught a bus. The Headingley Special it was called and it was packed.

After play I - like the other thousands who had been sitting on the grass at the boundary edge all day - queued for the bus to take us back to the centre of the city. Next to me in the queue was Allen Watkins, Glamorgan all-rounder and rarely an England player, was standing next to me with his wife. He had been fielding all day.

In 2009 Paul Collingwood, Watkins's successor has a FWD the size of a small bungalow and if he is not a millionaire, he soon will be. Good luck to him. Watkins was 87 yesterday and I suspect shakes his head every time he remarks on the have-nots of his era and the haves of today.