I went
to Lord’s for 24 domestic finals (plus the first three World Cup finals). With
the 50-over final moving to Trent Bridge from 2020, there will be no more. Every
one of the 24 was played before a full house, even when there were two a year. Were
that still the case, the question of moving it would not arise, but
over-pricing, the prevalence of international cricket, the devaluing of the
county game and the short attention spans of the marketing folk have conspired
to devalue what were some of summer’s highest days.
To
mark their passing, I hereby announce a series of posts on those 24 finals. This
will involve a bit of “curating” (the name young people give to re-sorting and
sticking a different label on old stuff). Just as those who played at the MCG
in March 1877 were oblivious to taking part in the first test match, so these
old posts turn out to be early episodes of this series.
I’ll
mix the cricket reportage with a little of what was happening in the world and as
much autobiography as the reader might be able to tolerate.
But
anybody anticipating an eyewitness account of the 1974 Gillette Cup final
between Kent and Lancashire will be disappointed. I was there on the Saturday,
sitting in the sunshine to hear that there would be no play that day, thanks to
heavy rain two days before and a sharp shower at 9 am.
People
who hanker for the old days of cricket-watching should remember how much of the
time we spent watching grass dry. Now, play would probably have started on
time.
The
game was played on Monday, a school day, hence my absence. Why not Sunday?
Because Kent had a Sunday League game scheduled at Worcester. What’s more, the
XI that played at New Road was exactly the same as turned out back at Lord’s on
the Monday. Rotation then was merely a means of crop management.
I’m
sorry to have missed the match—the only one of Kent’s first twelve Lord’s
finals from which I was absent—not only because Kent won, but also because it
was such a curiosity. Lancashire, having won the toss, lost their tenth wicket
to the final ball of the 60th over to be all out for…118. That is to say, a
fraction under two an over.
In The Times, John Woodcock described the
pitch as “churlish…of uneven bounce and no pace”, but observed that “there was
less good batting than one would have thought possible from so many
distinguished players”. The Lancashire team contained some of the best one-day
batsmen of the era—Lloyd C (& D), Wood, Pilling, Engineer—and those fine
tonkers of a cricket ball Hughes and Simmons. Nobody in Kent’s innings made as
many as 20, surely a record for a winning team in a final.
Kent’s
bowling was apparently splendid: “Rarely did any Kent bowler drop short of a
difficult length” reported Wisden.
This included James Graham-Brown (his name a pleasing compendium of two other
Kent bowlers of the era), who finished with 12–5–15–2. Graham-Brown was a
medium-pace bowler with bouncy run up. By a lengthy street, this was the best
day of his cricket career. He made only occasional appearances in 1975 and 1976
and then had a couple of years with Derbyshire (as good a euphemism as any for
career failure: “Mrs May, we have arranged for you to have a couple of years
with Derbyshire”). He was a headteacher for 20 years and now writes plays,
including one about Colin Milburn, under the name Dougie Blaxland.
It was
Kent’s fielding that won the cup that Monday. There were three run outs,
including, crucially, Clive Lloyd, beaten by a 50-yard throw by Alan Ealham
after slipping mid-pitch. John Shepherd was responsible for the other two, leading
Woodcock to compare him to Learie Constantine.
Kent were
coasting at 52 for one, but collapsed to 89 for six before being seen home by
Knott and Woolmer (then batting at No 8; within a year he was scoring an Ashes
century).
Those
not around then would find it hard to credit how difficult it was to find out
what was happening in the closing stages for those of us not at Lord’s. BBC
schedules were not sufficiently flexible to take account of the delay. Radio coverage
was restricted to hourly sports desks, and midweek county games had to give way
to the Open University on BBC 2 from about 5 pm, so programmes on Games (sic)
Theory and Pure Mathematics filled the screen as Knott and Woolmer eked their
way to the target. The tension was in wondering how much tension there was. Nor
could time be found to show any highlights, which is presumably so there are
none on YouTube.
55-over final 1973
No two
Lord’s finals were more alike than the 55-over finals of 1973 and 1976. Both
were between Kent and Worcestershire. Kent batted first both times, making a
good, but not insurmountable score. Worcestershire slipped behind, were given
hope by D’Oliveira, but ultimately fell 40 runs or so short. I watched these
games from the top deck of the Warner Stand, a largely Kent area on both days.
Kent’s
glory years were now well under way, the trophies coming as easily as bonuses
to bankers. This was the third of ten in the seventies. Seven of the team were
test players, two of them—Knott and Underwood, obviously—in or near the World
XI of the time. Woolmer had already played ODIs and was to be a test player two
years later. The other three—Johnson, Graham and Ealham—were fine county
players, and the former two might have been capped had the selectors actually
been as biased towards Kent as supporters of other counties supposed they were.
Worcestershire
had three current test players. Norman Gifford, unaccountably (to us in Kent,
and many others) selected in preference to Underwood for the first two tests
against New Zealand, where he had bowled to Glenn Turner, who was opening the
batting here with Ron Headley, who would open for the West Indies in the first
test later that week.
The
loss of Johnson and Denness with the score on 23 forced Luckhurst and Asif
Iqbal onto the defensive, so much so that after 20 overs the total was only 34.
But they knew that if no more wickets were lost the runs would come, and so
they did, in a partnership of 116.
They
were a contrasting pair, the craftsman and the showman. Looking at the
recording (posted by Luckhurst’s son), Brian Luckhurst reminds me a bit of Kane
Williamson, so correct, and with a practical answer to every bowler’s questions.
He was the least stylish of the Kent batsmen, a short backlift turning most
shots into punches, but perhaps the most effective. This was a beautifully
paced innings, and it turned the game Kent’s way.
Tony
Greig said that Asif was the quickest runner between wickets he ever saw. There
is plenty of evidence on the recording to support this contention. See how, as
Luckhurst is halfway down the pitch completing his third run to pass 50, Asif
is already at the other end, scoping a fourth.
Asif’s
fleetness did for Luckhurst in the end, beaten by a howitzer of a throw from
D’Oliveira from the general direction of Regent’s Park.
These
days they call a batsman coming in for the final ten overs or so a “closer”.
Kent’s unlikely closer that day was Colin Cowdrey, whose appearance was greeted
with a certain amount of derision by Worcestershire folk, who spoke of blocking
and maiden overs. What followed was a short masterclass of placement and
timing, enough weight taken off the shot to get two even with seven boundary
fielders (no fielding restrictions yet, of course). He was puffed by the end
mind, particularly when joined by Alan Knott, perhaps the only Kent player who
could challenge Asif in a short sprint. Who would blame Cowdrey for turning
down a second from the last ball of the innings, given that would have placed
him 22 yards further away from the pavilion, to which he was by then so keen to
return? Cowdrey refuted another misconception—that he was a liability away from
slip—early in the Worcestershire innings when he threw down the stumps from
side on.
Kent’s
opening bowlers were Norman Graham and Asif Iqbal. Like Jasprit Bumrah’s now,
Norman Graham’s run up was no more than an administrative necessity, but
batsmen were unused to seeing the ball from the angle that his six foot seven frame
delivered it from. The effect was of a bowler faster than he actually was.
Asif’s handling of the new ball was a surprise in that he had bowled only three
overs in the competition thus far that season, and did not bowl at all in the
first nine games of the Sunday League season. But then Bernard Julien headed
off to join the West Indies touring team and somebody remembered that Asif had
first emerged as in international cricket as an opening bowler. He did the job
very well, with a slingly action and busy arms that looked as if they wanted to
dispatch the ball long before reaching the bowling crease.
Worcestershire
were going along quite well at 57 for one when Ted Hemsley made a mistake that
many had made before and many would after: he took a single to the little dumpy
guy at mid on. He was a yard short when the ball hit the base of the middle
stump, as it tended to when thrown by Alan Ealham.
A
couple more wickets fell quickly. Worcestershire were behind the clock and mesmerised
by Underwood. It was a surprise to see the captain, Norman Gifford coming in at
six, promoting himself above D’Oliveira and Yardley. This may have had
something to do with the fashionable theory that Underwood was less effective
against left-handers.
D’Oliveira
soon joined him and they came close to turning the game, with a partnership of
70 in 12 overs, massive productivity in the year of the three-day week. Gifford
slogged effectively, but some of D’Oliveira’s shots were sublime. All the
political business that his name evokes can get in the way of remembering what
a fine cricketer he was; a man Peter Oborne reckoned would have toured England
in 1951, but for apartheid. As we will see, he wasn’t done with Lord’s finals
yet.
The
rest of the Worcestershire order folded, leaving them 39 runs short with 20
balls spare. Asif had four wickets to add to his half-century and was named man
of the match by Sir Leonard Hutton (“I saw Hutton past his prime…”).
The
highlights package on YouTube was posted by Tim Luckhurst, Brian’s son. No
highlights package is shown in the schedules for that day on BBC Genome, so it would seem to be a
piece of individual enterprise for which we nostalgists are grateful.
How
shining white their kit is in those pictures; they look like angels descended
from heaven, but your childhood heroes always do, I suppose.
55-over final 1976
For
those of us of a certain age, the summer of ’76 will never be beaten. Lazy, hazy,
crazy days, the sun relentless and dazzling, the West Indies cricket team the
same. Viv Richards announced his greatness with two double hundreds. I was at
the Oval for some of Mikey Holding’s 14 wickets on a pitch so flat it would be
an exaggeration to call it three-dimensional.
Zaheer
Abbas with a double hundred and a hundred at Canterbury…a helicopter landing at
Mote Park as Kent won the Sunday League…Cowdrey’s last game…and another Lord’s
cup final win.
Kent’s
XI for the 1976 final had three changes from that of three years before.
Cowdrey had retired (but was to reappear once during Canterbury Week); Luckhurst
and Graham had already had their seasons ended by injury, and were both to
retire that year (prematurely in Luckhurst’s case). Leading the attack was
Kevin Jarvis, like Graham a fine county bowler unlucky not to get a few England
caps along the way. When the two played together Graham was promoted to the No
10 position, a promotion that the introduction of no player I have seen other
Jarvis could have achieved.
Cowdrey
and Luckhurst were replaced by Charles Rowe and Richard Hills. Here was a straw
in the wind, though we didn’t recognise it as such at the time: two players of
proven international quality succeeded by two decent county pros. Rowe was
embarking on the unenviable sequence of three Lord’s finals in successive years
in which he would not score a run, bowl a ball or take a catch.
Only five
returned from Worcestershire’s 1973 XI: Turner, D’Oliveira, Gifford, Ormrod and
Hemsley. There was plenty of talent among the replacements, most of whom would
become well-known county names: Phil Neale, Gordon Willcock, Paul Pridgeon and
John Inchmore. The least familiar is all-rounder Cedric Boyns, who had made his
way from the Drones Club specially.
And
there was Imran Khan, now in the final year of a spasmodic six-season career at
New Road. Worcestershire folk chanted his name to the tune of the chorus of You’ll Never Walk Alone (“Imran” for “walk
on”) as he opened the bowling, but the volume diminished as the Kent openers
Johnson and Woolmer saw off the new ball.
In
1973 Woolmer had been a bowling all-rounder. Three years later, he was an
England batsman, his 61 here part of the reason he was promoted to open in the
fourth test later that week as the selectors hit upon the notion that it would
be a good idea to have openers with a combined age lower than 84, as it had
been when Close and Edrich opened in the third test, at Old Trafford.
It was
always more fun when a county pro who never experienced international glory
turned in the key performance at a Lord’s final. Here, it was Graham Johnson’s
day, the high day of a 20-year career (though I’ve written before about the
scandal that was Geoff Miller playing 34 tests while Johnson played none). With
Woolmer, he put on 110, the first century opening partnership in a Lord’s
final. “Watching Johnson and Woolmer…no one would know that English cricket is
in the doldrums” reported Woodcock.
Kent
didn’t build the big total that might have followed this fine start. There were
no boundaries between the 36th to 52nd overs. Woodcock
described Gifford’s field settings as “as much like rounders as cricket” and
suggested that there might be an inner ring containing a specified number of
fielders, as has become standard. But there was also some good tight bowling,
notably by Gifford himself, but also from Boyns, who had to step up to a full
11-over contribution after D’Oliveira limped off having torn his 44-year-old
hamstring. That Kent got as many as 236 was largely thanks again to Asif’s
scampering in the last ten overs.
Worcestershire
started well enough, with Turner and Ormrod putting on 40 in 12 overs, but
Shepherd had the New Zealander caught behind. He dismissed Neale soon after and
a tourniquet was applied first by Woolmer, whose first seven overs cost only
four runs, then Underwood playing the fifth of his ten finals.
The difficulty
that Underwood presented can be judged by the fact that three batsmen in a row
were caught by Johnson at deep square leg as they desperately sought to escape the
Alcatraz that Underwood built on the line of leg stump.
There
is a curiosity around the first of these catches, to dismiss Ormrod. Johnson took
the catch inside the rope, but clearly continued across it. For a few years in
that era, that constituted a fair catch. That clearly had not been the case in
1968, when Roger Davis caught the fifth of Sobers’ six sixes at Swansea, only
to fall over the boundary for the catch to be overruled. The variation to the
law that did not last long, or the gymnastic displays that are now a regular
feature of boundary fielding would not be necessary.
When D’Oliveira
limped in, accompanied by Turner as runner, Worcestershire were 90 for four and
well behind the clock, as good as done if all they had to offer was an elderly disabled
man and his carer. D’Oliveira proceeded to play what I still regard as the finest
one-legged innings I have seen, rivalled perhaps by Chris Gayle’s equally futile
effort in the World Cup quarter-final of 2015 (when he was not allowed a
runner). With mobility unavailable, he relied on eye and power, one that of an
eagle, the other what would get a small town through an afternoon.
“With
short-arm jabs, D’Oliveira struck four after four and he straight drove Hills
to the pavilion seats for six” reports Wisden.
He never quite caught Worcestershire up with the required rate—all those fielders
on the boundary saw to that—but he certainly had us worried. Only when he was
out for 50 in the 47th over did we relax, after we had stood to see
him on his slow way back to the pavilion. There has never been a cricketer who
has attracted such universal goodwill as Basil D’Oliveira.
Kevin
Jarvis cleaned up the tail, giving him four wickets on his Lord’s final debut. The
43-run victory margin was a touch flattering to Kent. Graham Johnson won the
gold award by Sir Garry Sobers.
Except
for certain members of the committee, none of the Kent people at Lord’s that
day would have believed that Mike Denness was in the final couple of months of
his Kent career. Nobody would have thought that when we returned a year later our
world would have been turned upside down by Kerry Packer (or rather the
establishment’s blimpish reaction to him). In a way, that happy day was the
last of our childhood, the only time in our lives that we had a full hand of
illusions, none yet shattered.
The golden
summer of ’76.
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