This is the point at which we first encounter the
author’s younger self, sitting on the grass by the boundary in front of where
the Lime Tree Café is now located. There is a photo somewhere to prove this,
showing the boy crouching behind the boundary fielder, Bishan Bedi. We reached
St Lawrence for the final session of the first day of the game against the
Indians in time to see Alan Dixon and John Shepherd hitting out in an unbroken
partnership of 172 for the seventh wicket, compiled in two-and-a-half hours,
which was roughly the speed of light in 1967.
I recall that the batting was exciting, and the moment
when Dixon reached his century, his first since 1960 and the third (and last)
of his career. He was helped by some abysmal fielding; Wisden reports that he was dropped three times. Vice-captain of
Kent in 1967, Alan Dixon was a fine county cricketer, a genuine all-rounder who
perennially batted at No 8, and who could bowl both seam up (as they would have
said then) and off spin. In the latter mode he took five for 39 in the second
innings.
Kent’s victory was their first over a touring team since
the 1937 New Zealanders. They played plenty of good cricket, but still needed
help from the weather. The one over that was bowled before the rain came on the
third morning meant that the pitch was left uncovered, the Kent spinners
sharing the wickets, Stuart Leary taking three with his leg spin, and Derek
Underwood two.
Or did they? Here is John Woodcock on the second day,
making it clear that he does not regard Underwood as a spinner.
Strictly speaking, he is right, but misleadingly so.
Underwood was medium pace (as I have written before, Playfair categorised him as LM throughout his career), and as
Woodcock says elsewhere in his report, he cut rather than spun the ball. But
Underwood filled the spinner’s role in any side and came to be regarded as one
of the greatest spinners to play the game.
Notice that Kent played a full-strength team for this match,
except for Norman Graham, who may have been injured. Despite the relentless
six-days-a-week routine of county cricket in the sixties, players wanted to
play in what was a prestige fixture, and spectators expected them to. I see
that Canterbury Week this year is to be built around a three-day game against
the West Indians, and trust that a full-strength side is put out for it.
The Indians of ’67 had plenty of classy batting, particularly
Wadekar, Borde and the captain, the Nawab of Pataudi junior. It was
wicketkeeper Farokh Engineer who took the eye here, hitting away merrily as he
was to do for Lancashire over the next decade. The great quartet of spinners
was here: Bedi, Chandrasakar, Venkataraghaven and Prasanna, but is was decent
pace, swing and seam that they needed in a damp English spring, and they didn’t
have it. Most counties had three or four quick bowlers better than Guha and
Mohol who took the new ball for India.
Around the country there were wins for Yorkshire (Illingworth
making his off breaks “talk” at Hull according to Peter West), Middlesex (a
strong all-round performance from skipper Fred Titmus), Leicestershire (with
Tony Lock “baffling” Glamorgan) and Hampshire, who led the table despite having
played only two games.
Continuing with theme of the past foreshadowing the
present, there were large Conservative gains in the local elections, though
they were then in opposition and there was no election in the offing.
Mick Jagger and Keith Richard were in court on minor
drugs charges at the start of the process that led to William Rees-Mogg’s
famous charge that the establishment was “breaking a butterfly on a wheel” by
pursuing the matter so censoriously.
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