Nasa Hussain BEM: Bradford Park Avenue to Buckingham Palace

Nasa Hussain, Head Groundsman at Bradford Park Avenue cricket ground, has been awarded the British Empire Medal (BEM) in the King’s Birthday Honours List.

Announced in The Gazette, the UK’s official record since 1665, the citation read: THE KING has been graciously pleased, on the occasion of the Celebration of His Majesty’s Birthday, to approve the award of the British Empire Medal (Civil Division) to the undermentioned:

B.E.M. Zarith Nasa HUSSAIN For services to Cricket.’

Anyone can potentially be nominated for an honour and Nasa has no idea who put his name forward – successfully as it turns out – for services to cricket.

Having known this fantastic news was coming up, I’ve interviewed Nasa for a special Cricket Yorkshire Podcast episode where we discuss his life in cricket.

From playing in the street as a kid with stumps and bat his dad, as a carpenter, had made to winning the Bradford League with Undercliffe and learning about pitches at Karmand where a cricket ground was dug out of a hill overlooking the city.

There are plenty of anecdotes, laughter, moments of reflection and refreshing honesty. The phone call that he received from his daughter to break the news about the BEN award made me smile:

“I was doing what I always do. I was cutting grass at the time! I got a phone call from my daughter and normally when I get a phone call from home, something’s happened…she said, ‘It’s a letter from the King!’….Why would the King want to write to me?’

The history and changes at Bradford Park Avenue are covered; where some of the greats have played for Yorkshire and in tour matches while a young Nasa stepped out onto the hallowed turf himself for Bradford Schools.

Little did he know then that an opportunity would come, out of the blue, to turn out for the Commonwealth XI vs West Indies some years later on the same ground.

We also touch upon the controversial Department of Education and Science policy of Bussing Out where local authorities, including Bradford, dispersed ethnic minority children out of cities to go to school elsewhere.

Common language of cricket

As a nine-year-old, Nasa was bussed out to Idle in Shipley to be ‘integrated’ into a school that was in a white-majority community. Many have talked of the sense of isolation and discrimination with the policy eventually scrapped across the country – although Bradford was the last to ditch it in 1980.

Thankfully for Nasa, the common language of cricket and sporting prowess broke down barriers and earnt respect: “It was sport that then created that bond with the rest of the students. We got politely accepted by the local kids in the school.”

Laisterdyke at 14

At just 14, a stint at Laisterdyke Cricket Club followed in the first division of the Bradford League. It was a steep learning curve as a medium-pace swing bowler back when overseas of the quality of New Zealand’s Mark Greatbatch were the opposition.

Hard-hitting batter Greatbatch had signed for Pudsey St Lawrence: “The first three balls of the over went for six, the fourth ball I got him out so that’s my claim to fame!”

There was even a trial at Yorkshire where Nas remembers having to borrow pads and gloves from Laisterdyke CC but wearing the White Rose wasn’t meant to be. Spells at Great Horton, Queensbury, Bowling Old Lane but mainly Undercliffe was to be his CV until retirement crept up.

Fiercely competitive on the field, Nasa felt the creeping hand of time: “My son had started playing and I dropped a catch off him. To this day, he’s never forgiven me!”

Both as a cricketer and appropriately enough as a groundsman, Nasa has not been unused to breaking new ground. He was part of the first generation of British-born South Asian cricketers who could have played for Yorkshire at a time when it was all about being from Yorkshire.

Roles as Chair of Undercliffe Cricket Club, groundsman at Park Avenue and Vice-Chair of the National Asian Cricket Council (NACC) have been taken up since.

Front-of-mind is the transformation at Bradford Park Avenue cricket ground down the years from initially not having a machine to cut the outfield to a facility that welcomed 30,000 people last year.

This is an in-depth, personal account from such a popular figure in grassroots cricket who I’m fortunate to have known for years now. Plenty of others are mentioned along the way in our conversation including how Richard Robinson, Yorkshire’s head of grounds, used to (and might still) pull his leg.

The podcast is a celebration of Nasa but more broadly of cricket in the city of Bradford too. If you have a fondness for Park Avenue, the Bradford League, cricket grounds or want to hear more about Nasa’s life from the man himself, it’s 45 minutes well spent.