I
can’t recall a wetter English summer than that of 1980. Rain made a nonsense of
the Sunday League game that was part of Maidstone week, and not another ball
was bowled until 5 pm on the Thursday. The Saturday of the Centenary Test Match
was largely spent with Dickie Bird and David Constant agonising over the constraining
effects of wetness, something that Mrs Thatcher spent a lot of 1980 doing in
Downing Street.
The
rain was the reason why I spent the afternoon of Saturday 19 July not at Lord’s
for the scheduled 55-over final, but at the Criterion Theatre on Piccadilly
Circus for the matinée of Tomfoolery, a collection of the satirical
songs of Tom Lehrer starring Robin Ray of Face the Music fame. Lehrer said
that he gave up satire when Henry Kissinger was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize,
on the basis that life was making a better job of it than art ever could. I
think of that whenever the ECB makes another announcement about The Hundred.
For
Kent, the change from the sensational seventies to the egregious eighties could
not have been more stark. I returned to Canterbury for a 55-over group game
against Somerset that resulted in a defeat as shattering as the 60-all-out at
Taunton in the previous year’s 60-over quarter-final. As in that game, all
seemed relatively well at the halfway stage. Kent made 242, with fifties from
Alan Ealham and Chris Cowdrey. But after only a few overs of the reply the
inadequacy of the target had become all too clear.
Opening
for Somerset were the captain Brian Rose and Sunil Gavaskar, on debut for
Somerset as replacement for the touring Viv Richards. Gavaskar had now got past
his apparent belief—36 not out in 60 overs on the opening day of the 1975 World
Cup—that this one-day stuff was not worthy of an artist of his calibre, and
made as easy a 90 as one could hope to see. However, he was the minority
partner in the first-wicket stand of 241. At the other end Brian Rose was
unbeaten on 137 as Somerset reached their target with more than 11 overs to
spare.
Back
in Bristol the following weekend, I watched the home team upset the holders
Essex. Graham Gooch went off quickly, but after he went for 62 the innings lost
momentum, as it was to do in the final. Mike Procter, took two for 26, but it
was four wickets from Alan Wilkins that did most to limit Essex to 224. Wilkins
became better known as a TV commentator than he was for playing; I had
forgotten that he had brought his left-arm seam across to the other side of the
Severn Estuary for three seasons. Andy Stovold guided Gloucestershire home with
an unbeaten 73, supported by his brother Martin with whom he put on 57 for the
fifth wicket.
Essex
nevertheless made it to Lord’s once more. Their opponents were Northamptonshire,
who had lost the 60-over final to Somerset the previous September.
There
were sufficient of we, the indolent and workshy, to come close to filling
Lord’s on the Monday. Northamptonshire won the toss and chose to bat. Both XIs were
unchanged from those that appeared in Lord’s finals the year before, something
else that would be improbable these days (aside from the obvious detail that
there are no Lord’s finals now).
It
one of those games that is more interesting in retrospect than it seemed at the
time, because the team that looked routine winners for 85% of the match ended
up losing it.
John
Lever set the tone by conceding just seven runs from his first six overs, but
it was seamer Keith Pont who took the first three wickets. At 110 for three
just before lunch, Northamptonshire had the capacity to reach a reasonable
total, if they increased the tempo urgently. But three quick wickets meant that
the rest of the innings would be attritional. That they struggled past 200 was
thanks to a seventh-wicket stand of 59 between Allan Lamb and Jim Watt.
Watt
had been recalled to the Northamptonshire colours from his second retirement
two years before for his second spell as captain. This was in the era before counties
acquired coaching staffs the size of royal courts. The choice of captain was
crucial, in a way which is no longer the case. From 1969 to 1981 the England
selectors went outside the team five times so as to get the right captain:
Illingworth, Lewis, Denness, Brearley, Fletcher. These days, some captains have
to have serious strength of personality just to avoid being controlled from the
dressing room like a PlayStation character. Later in the afternoon Jim Watt was
to show the value of good captaincy.
For
the second year in a row, Allan Lamb played a Lord’s final innings of striking
quality. Wisden called it “a match-winning innings of beautifully executed
strokes, refreshing footwork and well-judged running between the wickets” while
John Woodcock in The Times described Lamb as a “strong, orthodox and
forceful batsman of high class”. It was thanks to Lamb that Northamptonshire
reached 209.
Lamb
was in the third of four seasons spent qualifying to play for England and was
building quite a reputation. Of course, he went on to have a good international
career, playing in 79 tests, but he didn’t quite live up to the hype. His
average of 36 was decent, but ten or so fewer than might have been expected of
him after two commanding Lord’s final innings and three successive seasons
averaging 60. Not the anti-climax of Hick or Ramprakash, but neither the new
Barry Richards for whom we hoped.
With little
more than a hundred needed off 24 overs and nine wickets left, Essex were favourites
of the magnitude of Shergar in a donkey derby. What went wrong? Perhaps Essex
themselves were taken in by the situation as much as the rest of us and didn’t notice
that the match was being taken away from them like a scammer emptying a bank
account until it was too late.
In
the next 19 overs Essex scored only 50 runs and lost four wickets. As well as
bowling tightly and taking Hardie’s wicket, Jim Watts changed his bowlers cannily.
As well as bringing Sarfraz Nawaz (three for 23) back early, he introduced
Richard Williams’ off spin late and decisively, just as he had in the
semi-final at Lord’s a few weeks before. A look through the scorecards of era
tells us that, much more often than now, captains used only the minimum five
bowlers, and to a formula at that. A skipper like Watts who was prepared to put
the template aside and rely on his wits, was a huge asset.
Norbert
Phillip took 30 off two overs from Jim Griffiths, leaving 11 needed from the
last, but Phillip could not get the strike until the fourth ball of the over.
Essex finished six short to give Northamptonshire their second Lord’s win
following the Gillette Cup in 1976. It was the closest Lord’s final so far.
The
week before I had paid my one, and so far only, visit to Headingley, for the
second round of the 60-over competition between Yorkshire and Kent. It had been
a sobering year for us in the Garden of England with our team spending the
summer in the disreputable areas of the Championship and Sunday League tables
and the 60-over competition was our last chance of glory.
There
was early hope with Geoffrey Boycott in one of his more funereal moods. After
12 overs Yorkshire were only 29 for one. But he put on 202 for the second
wicket with Bill Athey, and that was just about that.
Athey
was hailed as the rising star of his generation when he made his debut in 1976,
but his career stalled as will happen to careers caught in a civil war like the
one that preoccupied Yorkshire CCC in these years. Only now did he receive his
county cap, which carried more status and financial significance then than now.
Most counties indicated uncapped status discretely; Kent players had a small II
under the horse on the sweater and cap. Yorkshire went for ritual humiliation.
Uncapped players wore navy-blue banding on their sweaters rather than the sky-blue,
yellow and navy combination of the capped players. Athey had waited only four
years. Arnie Sidebottom, capped on the same day, had made his debut seven years
before. Athey stuck the atmosphere in the Ridings for a couple more years then
moved to Bristol, where I enjoyed his stylish, organised batting for nine years.
Boycott
made 87, Athey 115 and Yorkshire finished on 279 for six, a mountain for a side
whose confidence was as low as Kent’s at this time. The report in The Times
(by Keith Macklin, better known as a commentator on football on TV and rugby
league on the radio) says that the third-wicket stand of 96 between Asif Iqbal
and Woolmer had the match on a “knife-edge”, but my memory is that the required
rate climb prohibitively throughout the partnership. The last eight wickets
fell for 90, leaving Yorkshire 46-run winners. Sidebottom celebrated his cap
with four wickets and that fine bowler Chris Old took three.
So to
Lord’s on the first Saturday in September for an all-London final between Middlesex
and Surrey, the top two in the Championship in 1980. The absence of bucolic
partiality was to the liking of Woodcock of The Times, who described the
atmosphere as “pleasantly orderly, smacking more of the saloon bar than the
skittle alley”.
Three
valedictories took place that day. It was the end of Gillette’s sponsorship of the
county knockout competition (though my Blean correspondent and myself refer to
any domestic one-day competition as ”the Gillette Cup” to this day).
It
was John Langridge’s last weekend on the first-class umpires list (he also officiated
at the Sunday League game at Canterbury the next day, where I was also present).
Langridge should be in any XI of the best players not selected for England. He
made 34,380 runs at 37.45, almost all for Sussex, and contended with Hammond as
the best slip fielder of the era. Langridge was 70, but returned occasionally
for a few seasons to come. Now, umpires have to retire at 65, an unnecessarily ageist
rule, brought in, it was said, to usher umpire Bird from the stage without too
many curtain calls.
It was
also the occasion of John Arlott’s last commentary. He had famously ended his
final test match commentary the previous Tuesday with “and after Trevor Bailey
it will be Christopher Martin-Jenkins”, but returned for an encore this day. Arlott’s
departure created a tremendous fuss, including a front-page piece in The
Times by his friend Alan Gibson, who wrote that Arlott had “a gift of
phrase such as no other cricket commentator has possessed”. During one of his
spells that day Arlott authenticated this by describing the tall, bald South
African fast bowler Vintcent van der Bijl as being “like a young Lord Longford,
only not as benevolent”.
The
game resembled the earlier 55-over final closely, but without the late negligence
that cost Essex that game. Surrey never really got going against an attack that
Woodcock rated as superior to England’s: Daniel, van der Bijl, Selvey, Emburey,
supported by Hughes (Edmonds did not play here). They only passed 200 (just)
thanks to some late aggression from David Smith and Intikhab Alam.
Woodcock
noted that Intikhab’s 12 overs were the first leg spin he had seen all summer.
As I write, I am still working my way through the 2006/7 Ashes, Shane Warne’s
last, magnificent, bow. Leg spin was not dead. The best was yet to come.
Mike
Brearley adopted the same cautious approach that had been so disastrous in the World
Cup final the previous year, but on a slow pitch with 90 fewer to chase, it was
more appropriate here. Brearley finished unbeaten on 96. Middlesex had been at
Canterbury for the previous three days and the scorecard of that game tells me
that Brearley had made 104 the previous day. I was there and generally have a
good memory for events, something on which these pieces are predicated, but I
can’t recall anything of that century. I was going to make a crack about
Brearley’s academic style of batting, but here was the game’s highest score on
a turning pitch against Underwood, who finished with seven wickets, so this was
quite an innings, worthy of memory. I’m pretty sure that, unlike Boycott at
Folkestone in 1977, Brearley won’t have loitered behind the lines at the
non-striker’s end, partly because he is a man of integrity and partly because
Phil Edmonds would have run him out had he tried.
Two
hundred runs under pressure in two days shows that Brearley was a better
batsman than his England record suggests. It prompts me to issue my periodic
reminder that Brearley once scored 300 in a day. It was at Peshawar on the North-West
Frontier, captaining MCC Under 25s against North Zone. It wasn’t a club attack
either; Intikhab Alam bowled that day too. Brearley reached his hundreds in
155, 125 and 50 minutes respectively. To add to the quizzicality of the occasion,
his opening partner was none other than Alan Knott, who scored his maiden
century. Knott was the second-highest scorer in the Championship match that
preceded the final, sweeping Emburey and Edmonds like Franz Beckenbauer.
Back
at Lord’s, Roland Butcher provided the game’s most attractive batting to finish
the match off with six overs to spare. His 50 included three sixes and five
fours. Butcher became one of a series of cricketers around this time to be
selected for the winter tour after a good September final performance. He made
his test debut in his birthplace of Barbados a few months later.
It
wasn’t all bad in the sodden summer of 1980. I was at the Oval for the final
day of the fourth test, when Peter Willey and, less probably, Bob Willis batted
long enough to save the game. Also at Lord’s for the fourth and best day of the
Centenary Test against Australia. We hoped that 1981 would be a better year, but
could not have hoped it would be that much better.