The ball sped down to the Oval boundary, hit the rope and flew over the fence into the first crowd assembled at any sports event since lockdown.
Middlesex paceman Toby Roland-Jones was in hot pursuit. ‘Don’t touch it!’ he shouted with mock melodrama, much to the amusement of those within earshot.
County cricket, with all its genial good humour, was back on Sunday morning, and so were 1,000 of its followers for the start of a friendly between Surrey and their cross-Thames rivals.
The Oval hosted the first test event with spectators since March in a two-day friendly
Surrey were hosting Middlesex as alternate rows were used and advisory signs were on show
All very cautiously, it must be said. As openings go this was like an imaginary first wicket partnership between Dom Sibley and Chris Tavare – watchful, well-organised and with not many shots played.
Under the close eye of government officials in attendance The Oval was operating to just four per cent of normal capacity. No chances were being taken, and 100 staff were on duty shepherding the members-only audience.
This was no bold experiment, but the first baby step on a long road which, it is hoped, will lead to some kind of normality returning to events around autumn-time.
Surrey were keen to be at the front of the line, and they will be soon followed by limited numbers allowed at the snooker in Sheffield and a trial for a select few racegoers at Goodwood.
Sunday’s assembly was sedate and appreciative and definitely not the sharp end of sporting crowds, as far removed from the celebratory throngs brandishing flares outside football grounds as could be.
The Oval was set up with social distancing guidelines and regulations as it hosted the event
Tickets were hugely sought after, restricted to 900 home members and 100 from Middlesex. Just five blocks of the 1845 Stand were in use, with the idea being to see how that kind of area would cope with being 30% full.
Ben Price and four other family members had travelled up from Wimbledon, rewarded for having spent two hours repeatedly ringing the hotline the moment tickets were released last week. Surrey’s phone systems had registered 10,000 calls in the first hour from those eager to witness this belated start of the domestic season.
‘We were just desperate to come and watch some cricket, we’ve missed it,’ he said from a vantage point that deliberately had no-one sitting either side of them. ‘It’s nice to be among the hum of the crowd, it feels almost normal.’
Masks were not required to be worn in the seating areas, nor around the complex’s open air Wanderers bar or Vauxhall Pie Shop that was open, where business was steady rather than spectacular. Face coverings were, however, compulsory for the few venturing to two other outlets under a roof.
The ripple of applause which greeted the early runs was music to the ears, starkly authentic compared to the canned noise being used to liven up proceedings at Old Trafford.
Yet, as Surrey Chief Executive Richard Gould pointed out, the pleasing sound of live spectators in these quantities will not pay the bills for long, here or anywhere else.
There were a limited number of members in assigned seats in a mostly empty stadium
‘Thirty per cent is not viable, you really need 60 or 70% for commercial viability, and that isn’t going to happen this summer,’ he said of the prospective occupancy for bigger matches, which bring with them major overheads. ‘If we aren’t back to normal next summer the structure of our sport will need to significantly change.’
Given that the rate of Covid infection in the community around these parts is perhaps less than one in 5,000, it is eminently possible that nobody at the ground on Sunday was actually carrying the virus at all.
‘People here today are being very sensible,’ said Gould. ‘ They know if they misbehave the ground will get closed down, but in every sport the supporters love their clubs. To many people it feels like they have come home today.’
The attendance will not have shared in the laziest joke of the day doing the rounds, that sparse county cricket crowds tend to come with their own self-distancing.
The cricket itself was reassuringly undramatic, the highlight being the strokeplay of Surrey’s Will Jacks, who made 62. One happy day, when the current grim period is hopefully consigned to history, he will entertain far bigger crowds than this, probably for England.
The two counties will meet on Saturday in the first round of the new four-day competition