It is always cheering to wake up in the
Wellington chill to news that the old county has won overnight. This has
happened pleasingly often recently, particularly in the Sunday League (as my
Blean Correspondent and I still choose to refer to 40-over cricket). Six wins in a row have taken Kent to the top
of their group with one match to play. That will be against Sussex, who are
just a point behind. So it will, almost, amount to a quarter-final at the St
Lawrence Ground on Bank Holiday Monday. Almost, because the best second-placed
team will join the three group winners in the semi-final draw, and my
calculations (not always a reliable guide) suggest that the defeat would have
to be huge for Kent to be pushed out of this position.
I hope that the ground will be full, just as it
was in the glory days. Let us select a scorecard from July 1974 by way of
illustration. Harold Wilson was Prime Minister, Richard Nixon was about to
resign from the White House, George Macrae’s Rock Your Baby was No 1, and Kent played Leicestershire in the
quarter-final of the Gillette Cup.
The two counties had already contested a
quarter-final at Canterbury that year, in the 55-over competition.
Leicestershire won that one. They batted first and reached 238 for six, a
reasonable score for the time. Barry Dudleston’s 79 was the top score, his
partnership with Brian Davison of 98 from 18 overs the heart of the innings.
Dudleston was to become my personal ski instructor a decade or so later, but
that’s a story for another day.
It was a school day, so I saw none of that,
arriving hotfoot down the Nackington Road in mid-afternoon to be told by a
collective groan that things were not going well. You can read the noise of a
cricket crowd quite easily if you have been in enough of them and there was no
mistaking that this was a “God there’s another one gone” groan: Kent were 12
for three.
Brian Luckhurst was steadfast at one end, but
wickets kept falling at the other. Some hope was retrieved when Bernard Julien
was promoted to No 7 and shared a partnership of 87 with Luckhurst at a
reasonable pace. It was the only time I can remember Julien being given any
responsibility with the bat and the result suggests that it might have been
done more often. He had scored a quick hundred in a Test at Lord’s the previous
year, after all. But there was talent everywhere in the Kent order in those
days, and Julien at No 7 meant that Bob Woolmer, who was to score a Test
hundred against Australia the following year, was down at No 9.
Luckhurst was out for 111 trying to hit the
penultimate ball of the innings for six when ten were needed. He won the
man-of-the-match award despite Graham McKenzie having taken five for 34,
winning the game with decisive spells at either end of the innings. It’s a
batsman’s game.
So seven weeks later the teams met again to
contest another quarter-final, this time with 60 overs a side. That year, these
two counties were the best in the country, at one-day cricket, at least. Just
to make it even more interesting, there was the sub-text of Denness v
Illingworth, the incumbent England captain against his predecessor. Raymond Illingworth
had not been pleased by this turn of events and – I was to learn during the
après-ski at a later date – was particularly keen to put one over on Kent. As
we will see, it was not to be his day.
I was there by nine o’clock, but the cars would
have been lining up down the Old Dover Road from daybreak, the first in observing
the tradition of what John Arlott called “the Canterbury breakfast” by getting
out the camping stoves and starting the sausages sizzling. By the time McKenzie
bowled the first ball to Luckhurst at 11 o’clock the ground was full; Wisden gives the attendance as 12,000. It
was the best day of a wet summer.
All day, there were echoes of the match a few
weeks earlier. Again, Kent lost early wickets, starting with Graham Johnson. Colin
Cowdrey came in at three. Cowdrey’s reputation as a fine batsman, but a
cautious one led opposition supporters to expect him to block all day. In the
55-over final the previous year, there were jeers and laughter from some Worcestershire
folk as he came to the middle with only a couple of overs to go. But he increased
the scoring rate with shots so deft and well-weighted that he scored two from
almost every ball he faced, even with the field back in those pre-circle restriction
days. He was puffed at the end though.
By the way, guess where Cowdrey often fielded
in one-day cricket. At backward point. So did Norman Graham. It was where the
captain hid his slow fielders. A generation later and it had become the place from
where Jonty Rhodes, Paul Collingwood and the other guns leapt, dived and threw
the stumps down.
This day was not Colin Cowdrey’s. He was out for
a duck and Kent were 22 for two. That was where our anxiety peaked for the day,
as Mike Denness joined Luckhurst for a partnership of 149. One of the great
pleasures for Kent supporters was to watch these two bat together. They
complimented each other so well, Luckhurst strong on the onside, Denness on the
off. Almost a decade of opening the batting together had given them the trust
and understanding that made them thieves of a quick single, two baseball batters
stealing base at the same time. There was no calling to alert the opposition to
their mischief either; no need when both knew what the other was thinking.
When Denness went for 72, Alan Ealham came in
to rev things up. When people look at the Kent line-up in the seventies they
might wonder how Ealham came to have a regular place in a team that otherwise
comprised international players, and how he went in above Knott, Shepherd,
Woolmer and Julien for many years. His career figures – an average of 28 with
only seven centuries in 16 seasons – are ordinary. They tell not a quarter of
the story. Besides being the finest boundary fielder I have seen, he made his
runs when they were most needed. Look through the scorecards and count how
often his 50 or sixty was highest score in a low total, or, like today, when
quickfire 40 was the difference between a gettable total and one that was beyond
reach.
Ealham added 57 with Luckhurst (who finished
with 125) then 42 in four overs with Knott. Illingworth drew much of the fire,
conceding 23 from one over and finishing with the figures of 12 overs, no
maidens, 76 runs and no wickets. Mention Illingworth (and it should be made
clear that he was a fine cricketer and one of England’s best captains) to my
Blean correspondent or myself to this day and we will intone these figures with
the seriousness of a Buddhist monk teaching the eightfold path.
Kent’s total of 295 disappeared over Leicestershire’s
horizon thanks to parsimonious use of the new ball by Graham and Shepherd.
Brian Davison gave them hope with a splendidly aggressive 82. He hit Derek
Underwood for 18 in one over, as many as the great man ever went for I would
think. It was good to see Davison featured on the Tasmanian avenue of fame at
the Bellerive Oval a few weeks ago. He had a few years at Bristol when he was
past his best, as so many did. When he was out, that was effectively it, and
the final margin of victory was 66 runs.
I hope that the modern Kent team go into their
big match with something of the confidence of their predecessors from 40 years
ago. They could do with a Luckhurst or an Underwood of course, but Rob Key
would have had a place in that great team, there is exciting young talent (I’d
love to see young Sam Billings bat) and a few Alan Ealham types who can make a
difference on the day. I’ll be up early to see how they get on.
