Given the job I'm in, as a computer programmer, it's not surprising that I spend a lot of time on the Internet: and quite a lot of that time, on the Web. So I found myself earlier today, having just read again my last entry, idly remembering my childhood and the things we used to do.

For the first seventeen years of my life, the most important thing in it was cricket. All I ever wanted to do was to play for Yorkshire. Not England. Playing for England would have been nice: but playing for Yorkshire would have been the pinnacle. Of course I was never good enough, but in childhood and adolescence you're allowed to dream: and dream I did.

In my reverie I remembered an annual event that sadly is no more - and has not been for quite some time - the Parkhead Cricket Festival. Naturally, I looked it up on the Web. There is a site for the club:

http://www.parkhead.cricketclub.btinternet.co.uk

but not for the festival. So this little article is to put that right.

I don't remember now when or why the Parkhead Cricket Festival ceased to be. I do remember, though, that throughout my childhood and into my teens it was one of the occasions that marked the turning of the year - along with Palm Sunday, the Whit Sing in Endcliffe Park, Works Weeks and the Sheffield Show.

It was sandwiched in somewhere between the Scarborough Cricket Festival and the proper start of the football season and consisted of a number of day and evening games between a variety of guest teams.

The Parkhead cricket ground is in many ways a traditional English village ground. Bordered on the South and West by Abbey Lane and Ecclesall Road South, it has the Wheatsheaf pub and the wooden pavilion at its north end and part of Ecclesall Woods to the east. It is small - compact I guess you'd say - with boundaries that cannot be more than 50 yards, if that.

Every year we would catch the tram to Ecclesall terminus, or walk the couple of miles up the hill, to make the annual pilgrimage. As a boy, of course, entry was by crawling under the canvasses erected along Ecclesall Road South to thwart unpaying eyes. As manhood beckoned, we'd pay our way, to prove to the girls that we could.

So what makes this undistinguished event in the southern suburbs of Sheffield so worthy of remembrance? This. Every year, this unnassuming little club arranged cricket matches between the two Sheffield football clubs - United and Wednesday - and between themselves and a number of teams: but more than that, they arranged for Yorkshire to play there. And more, even, than that, the visiting tourists would also play - against that Yorkshire team. At Parkhead I saw Freddie Trueman bowl, and saw him bat - hitting sixes towards the inviting windows of the Wheatsheaf Tavern. I saw Bob Appleyard before his early retirement and early death, Johnny Wardle - whose wicket I would one day take - and Jimmy Binks who would have played regularly for England but for Godfrey Evans. I saw Doug Padgett, Roger Taylor and Brian Close - who used to get us complimentary tickets for the games at Bramall Lane.

But there, on this tiny ground I saw the three 'W's of Worrall, Weekes and Walcott. I saw the young Garfield Sobers and all those great West Indians.

Sometimes I think I must have dreamt all this. Did all these people really visit us? Did they stay so close to my home? Did I really sit with them on the steps of a tiny, white-painted, wooden pavilion at a club cricket ground on the edge of Sheffield?

I think I did. And I think it says something about the age we grew up in, that people who today would be celebrities beyond our reach were then celebrities in our midst. I don't know what happened to extract celebrities from their society - what drove us to drive them out. Perhaps we pursued them too closely and made them lock themselves away. Perhaps it's simply a matter of money. More likely it's a mixture of many things.

I do know that it was better then, when you could touch the hem of your hero's gown - or just sit quietly at his side. Or listen to him swearing - as was the case with Freddie Trueman. He may be responsible for the addition of more than one word to my vocabulary.

And it's sad that it cannot now be done. The Parkhead Cricket Festival is no more - has not been for many a long year. We are poorer for that whether we follow cricket or not.

But the real value of Parkhead Cricket Festival in those days of its prime, was not to consort with heroes: at least, that was not its main importance to little boys who loved cricket. I've mentioned that Ecclesall Woods made up one side of the pitch, and into that wood flew a great many cricket balls over the course of the week.

Cricket balls were like gold to working class boys of Sheffield. In the parks where we learnt our game we usually made do with cork balls bought from the local Post Office for a few coppers. I even remember playing with a hockey ball, once. To have a real leather ball was a dream come true.

Parkhead Cricket Festival was a cricket ball mine. Tens of young boys would scour those woods for lost balls. The more financially oriented would return them to the club for the shilling reward they offered; but the true cricket lover would stuff his pockets with as many as he could find, for these were next year's kit, and priceless.