Early adventures in autograph hunting

The two Kent junior membership passes pictured both cost a guinea, or a pound and a shilling, or one pound five pence, for which the keen young cricket fan got entry and a seat in the stand at all Kent’s home games bar tourist and Gillette Cup matches, for which ground admission had to be paid. The 1966 pass was my first.

They could also be used as impromptu autograph books. Below are the back two pages of the 1966 edition. Clockwise from the left are the signatures of Colin Cowdrey, Garry Sobers, Alan Knott and David Nicholls. 

The first two were collected on Monday 11 July, the second day of the match between Kent and the West Indians. I was there on a school day because I was recuperating from the measles, which dates me pretty effectively. It was a cautious first expedition outside home for a few hours in the afternoon. 

It was the match in which Sobers took his career-best figures of nine for 49, in slow left-arm mode. One of these was late on that second day, so I assume that I saw a small part of the great man’s best bowling, but I have no memory of doing so. An amnesiac reaction to Sobers will become a theme of this piece, as you will see.

The West Indian captain’s signature must have been secured after the close of play, given that he would have been on the field throughout the afternoon (there was no racing on the TV—I checked). My memory is that Cowdrey signed earlier, on the spot where the Cowdrey Stand was built two decades later. Cowdrey was England captain at that time, having replaced MJK Smith after the first test before handing over to Brian Close for the fifth.

Of these four names, David Nicholls is the only one that will require introduction to the general reader. Three years previously, as a nineteen-year-old, he had made a double century, a rare thing in the three-day era. But there had not been much since then, and he had become a fringe player. 

I assume that Nicholls also signed earlier in the day. If it was at the close it says much for his well-known affability, as he got his second duck of the game shortly before. The following year, he found the role in which he served the county well for the next decade; that of stand-in keeper when Alan Knott was playing for England, which gave him a place in the team for half the season.

I see from the TV listings that England played Uruguay in the opening game of the World Cup that evening. It was a dull nil-nil draw that could not compare watching the West Indians play cricket.

Knott’s autograph was added a few weeks later, on August Bank Holiday Monday. It was a wet day, as public holidays invariably seemed to be when we were young. Kent were hosting Nottinghamshire at St Lawrence. An on-off, interrupted day ended just before tea, by which time most of the spectators had drifted away. My mother and I went to the back of the pavilion to collect a few autographs as we waited for my father to pick us up. 

Cowdrey came out. Thank you, but I had his autograph (membership card proffered as supporting evidence). Was there anyone else I was waiting for to sign? Alan Knott. Wait there.

Cowdrey returned to the dressing room and a minute later a beaming Alan Knott appeared, as if there was nothing he wanted to do more than leave the warmth of the pavilion to stand in the rain signing a raggedy card. Cowdrey was a flawed individual in some ways (see the D’Oliveira affair), and he lumbered us with the ridiculous Spirit of Cricket in the laws but his kindness that day made a big impression on a seven-year-old. It presented cricket as a game with a heart, as a place of safety where you would be looked after. 

The 1970 signatures were all secured at the Oval on the second day of the fifth and final match in the series between England and the Rest of the World, a replacement for the cancelled tour by white South Africa. In my last piece I bemoaned that the series was retrospectively stripped of test status when the cricket was of a quality rarely equalled and never surpassed in my time. 

Not that it was all brilliant. On the first day, 115 overs had been bowled, almost a session more than the sedentary over rates of the 21st century. But look at the score: 229 for five—a fraction under two runs scored in each of those extra overs. In The Times, John Woodcock blamed the Kent captain: “What had promised to be a classical innings by Cowdrey was beset by apprehension”. 

Things went a little more quickly when we were there on Friday, as they tended to when Alan Knott was making a half-century. But a slow pitch meant that, until tea, great players—Barry Richards, Eddie Barlow, Rohan Kanhai—struggled to be more than mundane. 

Then, something special happened, as Woodcock reports:

Here were the two great left-handers of the age together and at their best, since equalled, but not surpassed, only by Lara and Sangakkara. More than that, it was a partnership between two men who could not have shared the same railway carriage or used the same bathroom in the homeland of one of them. How Vorster must have choked on his breakfast biltong as he read the reports on the South African papers the following morning. 

This should surely make the top ten of my personal cricket-watching list. Trouble is, I can’t remember any of it. I was certainly there, as the autographs in the member’s card testify. It must have been Friday, as that was my mother’s day off from the china-and-glass department. We would not have left before the end. I recall sitting in the Vauxhall Stand, and certain details, such as Don Wilson’s return catch to dismiss Kanhai. But nothing of two great players nearing perfection. 

Though too young to provide analysis or useful insight, I have impressions of everything significant that I had watched up to that point—Cowdrey in the 67 Gillette semi-final; the whole course of the  final that year; Denness’s painful debut innings against New Zealand. Much that was insignificant too, like slow-left-armer Andy Hooper’s first five overs in first-class cricket being maidens in 1966. So why not this? Maybe Kent players not being involved? 

I do remember waiting at the back of the Oval pavilion to collect the autographs shown above. Garry Sobers (my annotation is badly spelt) shows consistency of signature over the years. Deryck Murray uses his initials, as befits a Cambridge man. Dennis Amiss was that year’s victim of Oval-test syndrome, where the selectors based their selection of fringe players for the winter tour just on performance in that match. In the second innings he made 35, but Fletcher scored 63, so got the place on the plane to Australia.

I intercepted EW Swanton as he left the pavilion having delivered his summary of the day’s play on Test Match Special (for those too young to have experienced Swanton’s daily address, it was like the Queen’s Christmas message, but in the summer). Given the fun I have at Swanton’s expense in the monthly cricket magazine pieces, I should report that he was charm itself, saying “happy to oblige a Kent man” with a beaming smile as he returned the card.