In that bustling location, Henry Blofeld would have had a field day on commentary: ‘Oh I say, there goes the Oxford flying coach, and just behind it the Liverpool stagecoach, packed with people and their belongings, and I say, isn’t that the Whitbread brewery wagon crammed with beer barrels? My dear old thing, the poor old carthorses are really heaving that one along . . . now . . . Beauclerk polishes the ball on his cream breeches, adjusts his cuff, moves in and bowls another one to Walker, a loopy delivery, and he pats it gently to the short cover point fielder and there’s no run . . .’
