28 June – 4 July: Woolmer’s week

Bob Woolmer had been a Kent regular for seven years by 1975. For most of that time he had batted at No 8 and been a useful purveyor of swing at an amiable pace, most notably in the Canterbury Week of 1972 when he took 17 wickets. These days he would probably have shifted to another county with more space at the top of the order. Now he was showing what he could do when batting was his main purpose. His unbeaten 71 (with a break for injury mid-innings) was valuable support for Cowdrey in Kent’s win over the tourists. For MCC against the same opposition he made 56 and 85 with a hat-trick thrown in taken on the day of the funeral of the last man to take a hat-trick against the Australians in England, HS Enthoven for Middlesex in 1934. International selection was just a few weeks away.

The two other Kent players at Lord’s did not do so well. Colin Cowdrey, leading MCC, bagged a pair, ending sentimental speculation that he would play again for England. Graham Johnson made two and one at No 3 and was not to catch the eye of the selectors again.

Graham Gooch’s first innings 75 attracted considerable praise and resulted in his notorious England debut the following week. Both Arlott and Woodcock focus on Gooch’s build, which led to comparison with Colin Milburn. The daily runs from ground to hotel were still a thing of the future apparently.

I was at Maidstone on Sunday to watch Kent beat Lancashire by 24 runs in a (by the standards of the day) high-scoring game. Luckhurst, Johnson and Cowdrey all made fifties, but the one memory I have of the game is of Clive Lloyd smiting a six over Mote Park’s mock-Tudor pavilion, a mighty blow.

Kent also won the Championship game against the same opposition at Tunbridge Wells. John Woodcock was there for The Times. Most readers will know about Knott’s greatness, as will anybody who has made the mistake of engaging me in conversation at the Basin Reserve. Alan Ealham’s fielding prowess will be less well-known. Being somewhat dumpy in stature, nobody would have picked him as the gun fielder. New overseas players were often caught out in this way, the middle stump flying out of its ground while they were still a couple of yards short of completing what they had thought a safe single. What Woodcock has to say about the Kent team and the captaincy of Denness (of which he was not a fan) is interesting.

 

 In the 55-over semi-finals Middlesex beat Warwickshire and Leicestershire defeated Hampshire, against form in both cases.  In the latter case it was despite a century by Gordon Greenidge and a storming Andy Roberts, as described by Gerry Harrison in The Times.

With Roberts roaring in from the car park end…Steele, Balderstone and Davison were not sure whether it was Shrove Tuesday or Sheffield Wednesday.

Harrison was, for many years, Anglia TV’s football commentator. His Yorkshire TV counterpart, Keith Macklin, also reported cricket for The Times in 1975.

Middlesex’s win was largely down to a century by Clive Radley, whose batting style was captured by Alan Gibson:

Radley…was, as usual, a mixture of the classical, the baroque and the Old Kent Road.

Radley’s name often comes up as the scorer of key runs at crucial times, and continued to do so for another decade or more. It seems wrong that his England career was so short.

This was the second week of Wimbledon, which was exciting, firstly for the tennis itself, but also because it meant that Clive James would be reviewing the tournament’s TV coverage in The Observer, an annual treat in this era.

In 2025 the BBC lists 39 commentators for the TV coverage, which continues for 12 hours a day and ranges across all 18 courts. Fifty years ago it was limited to Centre and No 1. Harry Carpenter presented coverage that lasted under six hours plus a highlights package in the evening. The commentary team comprised no more than six led by Dan Maskell and Peter West (Peter Walker filled in at the cricket during the fortnight). On the radio Peter Jones presented three hours of commentary by Max Robertson and Maurice Edelston, with expertise provided by Fred Perry and Bob Howe.

It has always seemed a pity that Clive James was the only Australian with no interest in cricket. I only came across him writing about the game once, when he referred to the Chappel [sic] brothers. Cricket broadcasters may have been relieved.

 

21-27 June 1975: West Indies Win the First World Cup; Cowdrey 100 as Kent beat the Australians

This week fifty years ago was the finest of my cricket-watching life. That two defeats for Australia were involved only enhances the memory, writing as I do from New Zealand. There were two days that, of all the hundreds I have spent at the cricket, I have wanted to revisit most, lately along with the final day of the Basin Reserve test of 2023, New Zealand’s one-run win over England.

I won’t, in this piece, relitigate the events of either of these two sublime days, both of which I have described before:

World Cup Final

Kent beat the Australians

Here are John Arlott’s accounts of both days.

World Cup Final

Kent v Australians

 

On more pace-friendly Australian pitches a few months later  Lillee,  Thomson and the rest re-established suzerainty with a five-one win in the test series.

From this far-off perspective some things that were not worth commenting on then now seem extraordinary. One such is that several of the victorious West Indies team were back with their counties for the Sunday League just 17 hours after the Duke of Edinburgh handed the trophy to Clive Lloyd. Viv Richards went all the way to Bradford to score 30. Alvin Kallicharran made 72 for a losing Warwickshire at Edgbaston, where Rohan Kanhai also turned out. Later in the week Keith Boyce took 11 wickets in the Championship for Essex.

The only World Cup participant who was not back in county colours was Barry Wood who absented himself from Lancashire service, claiming injury (as did his colleagues Hayes and Lever, but they took the precaution of securing a doctor’s note) and was suspended for six matches.

Cowdrey’s famous innings came a few days after he announced his retirement. Tony Greig at once asked him to play for Sussex in 1976, an offer to which the great man gave serious thought before turning down. The rest of 1975 turned into a Cowdrey-fest; he collected farewell gifts wherever he went, starting this week with an engraved miner’s lamp from Glamorgan.

On the day of his hundred Cowdrey was named as MCC captain against the Australians next week. These fixtures—another long-gone relic of the schedule—were always played before the test series and were essentially opportunities for players on the edge of the England XI to impress. Two Kent players were in: Graham Johnson and Bob Woolmer. It would have been hard to have predicted which of the two would have a good, if brief, international career, as Woolmer did. Johnson was unfortunate with the timing of both form and injury.

Two young batters of rich promise were also named: Graham Gooch and Phil Slocombe. Again, it was not obvious which was have a 20-year international career and which was destined for obscurity.

Wednesday saw the first round of the Gillette Cup, the 60-over knockout competition. At that time the 17 first-class counties were joined by the top five minor counties based on the previous year’s Minor Counties Championship. All five were in the first-round draw along with seven of their social betters. However, no seeding applied, so Oxfordshire played Cornwall for a place in the second round, while Sussex (who were having a grim run of form) went out to Nottinghamshire (where newcomer Clive Rice was making quite the mark) and Surrey lost to Somerset by one wicket.

In the second XI competition a young man named Gower scored two nineties.

Lines of the week:

“The Glamorgan innings was a little like those early aeroplanes worked by pedals: impressive as they gathered speed but never getting more than a few feet above the ground.” – Alan Gibson

“It always gives special pleasure to an Edgbaston crowd to win when Close is the opposing captain” – Alan Gibson. This refers to the 1967 time-wasting by Brian Close’s Yorkshire that denied Warwickshire victory and cost Close the England captaincy.

“If the idea of playing…at the Morris Motors Ground was for the strikers to swell the crowd it misfired” – John Woodcock at Oxfordshire v Cornwall. This tells us much about 70s Britain.

Of a loose dog on the field at Westcliff “Like several of the Gloucestershire batsmen, the intruder made a brief visit to the middle” Peter Marson, The Times

Alan Gibson was at Canterbury for the Australians:

 

 Daily updates on Twitter/X @kentccc1975 and Bluesky @kentkiwi.bsky.social

 

 

 

 

 

 

14-20 June 1975: Swing it like Happy Gilmour

 

Public interest in the World Cup was increasing as it moved towards its climax. Its success was clear. On Saturday New Zealand beat India to take what would become our traditional semi-final spot. India’s respectable 230 was passed with an over to spare thanks to Glenn Turner’s unbeaten 114, his second century of the tournament.

East Africa continued with their strategy of making the (sparse) crowd regret that they had paid good money to go to the cricket. They took 53 overs to make 92 in answer to England’s 290. John Snow took four for 11.

Sri Lanka weren’t much different: 138 in 51 overs chasing (or not) Pakistan’s 330.

Even though it meant nothing in terms of qualification, the game of the day was Australia v West Indies at the Oval, with immense interest in how the Caribbean batters would face up to the sensation that was Lillee and Thomson. The prospect was sufficiently intriguing to tempt Hugh McIlvanney into a rare visit to the cricket. His report in The Observer demonstrated an insight beyond that of most regular cricket correspondents and shows why he was widely regarded as the best sports writer of his era.

 

It was the West Indian quicks rather than the Australians who won the day. Kent’s Bernard Julien—I’d forgotten what an striking loping run he had—, Keith Boyce and Andy Roberts reduced Australia to 61 for five, with the help of a brilliant run out of Walters by Greenidge at mid-wicket. When an RAF flypast connected with the Trooping the Colour ceremony was seen at about this point Richie Benaud said that it was to mark the first Australian boundary.

Edwards and Marsh put on 99 before the second batch of five wickets fell for 32, leaving the West Indians with an obviously inadequate target of 193. After losing Greenidge early, Fredericks and Kallicharran put on 124 for the second wicket. The Warwickshire left-hander carried his fine county form into the World Cup and took it to Lillee in particular, with four fours in one over, leaving the great fast bowler with one for 66 off ten overs.

Anybody younger than 40 would not understand how difficult it was to keep up with this game. Because of the pageantry at Horseguards there was no live coverage for the first hour or so. Thereafter, the Oval game had to share space with the England match, racing from Bath and show jumping from Hickstead. There was sparse radio commentary, and it was pre-teletext, so basically a live-scores Stone Age.

Their defeat meant that Australia faced England at Headingley while the West Indies played New Zealand at the Oval.

For the Australians, it was a return to Headingley where they had been defeated in three days on a fusarium infested pitch perfect for DL Underwood to run through them, which is exactly what he did. To this day, mention Headingley ’72 to any Australian and they will slam their glass on the table and allege conspiracy and chicanery. It must be on the Australian schools curriculum in the Wrongs Done to Us section given roughly equal weight with the Japanese bombing of Darwin. What unfolded that Wednesday was seen as payback, as the Leeds gloom provided perfect conditions for Gary Gilmour’s left-arm swing.

Gilmour’s career consisted of dramatic entrances that created expectations that he did not come close to living up to. A century on debut for New South Wales; 52 and four for 75 on Test debut against New Zealand. Then the World Cup semi-final at Headingley. A late selection to replace Ashley Mallett when the Australians saw how grassy the pitch was, he took six for 14 as England were rolled for 93, then shared a partnership of 55 with Doug Walters to take Australia from 39 for six to a four-wicket victory. As we will see, Gilmour had another good day at Lord’s in the final, but there was hardly any more. Not quite a one-match wonder in the manner of Bob Massie, but not that far off. Unfulfilled promise for a player who the great left-armer Alan Davidson thought was a better player than he had been early in their careers. Gideon Haigh's profile of Gilmour for CricInfo suggests that a "light-hearted" approach to training did not help.

It could have been even worse for England on one of those Leeds days when the grey Yorkshire skies allowed the ball to go in any direction bar straight; they subsided to 37 for seven. Skipper Mike Denness top scored with 27, sporting a resemblance to the captain of the Titanic stoically on deck after iceberg Gilmour had holed his craft with irrevocable consequences. Only Arnold joined him in double figures. When Australia lost four wickets for seven runs the home side briefly became unlikely favourites, but Walters and Gilmour saw them home, helped by the first sight of the sun that day.

The other semi-final was much more prosaic. New Zealand’s 158 was about a hundred short of what was needed against the confident West Indian batting. Julien was agin in form with four for 27. A second-wicket partnership of 165 between Greenidge and Kallicharran settled it.

On the Sunday of that week I was at St Lawrence for the 40-over game against Worcestershire, one of the better examples of the genre. The visitors made what by the standards of the time was a massive 231 for four, Alan Ormrod batting through the innings for an unbeaten 110. How we missed the restraint that Derek Underwood imposed. Kent were 184 for one (Luckhurst 53, Johnson 88) but had fallen behind the clock. Four wickets fell quickly and things seemed hopeless when Colin Cowdrey, greeted as a hero after the announcement of his retirement, came in at No 6. Cowdrey was nobody’s choice for the improvised slogging that appeared to be Kent’s only hope, yet when John Inchmore dug one in Cowdrey swivelled inside the line and casually flicked the ball among the benches by the white scoreboard. A repeat and the game was Kent’s but Cowdrey was bowled by Inchmore and Worcestershire won by two runs.

The Sunday game interrupted a Championship match at Maidstone against Sussex, which Kent won on the third morning thanks to one of the greatest all-round performances by a Kent player. John Shepherd bowled unchanged through the first innings, finishing with eight for 93. He then made 52 in a sixth-wicket partnership of 122 with Dave Nicholls before taking seven for 54 to finish with 15 for 147. It seems that only a late change stopped him from becoming the first Kent bowler to bowl unchanged through both innings since the First World War. It was the first time since Dave Halfyard in 1959 that a Kent man had taken 15 in a match, Only Mohammad Sami and Martin McCague have done it since.

It was timely that Henry Blofeld interviewed Shepherd for The Guardian after this game.

 

One curiosity of that match was that it featured Norman Graham and Kevin Jarvis in the same Kent XI. Cricket scholars have long debated the question of which of these two was the worse batter. Their respective final career averages were 3.88 and 3.59. Graham’s seniority promoted him to the unexplored heights of No 10.

Gregory Armstrong, another young Caribbean fast bowler referred to in the Shepherd interview, was taking plenty of wickets, and creating a fair amount of mayhem, for Glamorgan. Surrey won the game at Cardiff but captain John Edrich (the “He” quoted in the following report) was not happy.

 

 

Wilf Wooller could always be relied upon for a pointed or splenetic quote. There are many stories associated with him. One of my favourites was his response to Jim Swanton’s letter requesting information about a young Glamorgan player. Swanton, often accused of focusing too much on the south-eastern counties, enclosed a stamped-addressed envelope for the reply. When it was returned a few days later it was found to contain only a copy of the London to Cardiff train timetable.

At the end of the week Hampshire remained on top of the County Championship while Clive Lloyd and Derek Underwood led the first-class averages.

 

There was a century by David Steele of Northamptonshire, an innings that was of much greater significance that anybody could have imagined.

The Second XI scores record nineties by T Chappell of Lancashire and Gower of Leicestershire.

 

At the end of the week your writer is preparing to go to Lord’s for the World Cup final. It was to be the biggest week of his cricket-watching life, and remains that to this day.

Daily updates on Twitter/X at @kentccc1975 and Bluesky at @kentkiwi.bsky.social

7 – 13 June 1975 The First Cricket World Cup is Underway

 In the present there is a world cricket final taking place at Lord’s. There was another one, in Dubai (!) a couple of months ago, and another last year, when part of the tournament was played partly in the USA (!!). And so on. It all began fifty years ago this week, when the first Cricket World Cup began. Not that is was called anything so vulgar. Officially, it was the International Championship Cricket Event of 1975, or, in acknowledgement of the sponsors, the Prudential Cup. The word “World” did not appear on anything official.

There were eight competing teams: the six active test-playing sides plus Sri Lanka (Ceylon, recently renamed) and the composite East Africa. England, India, New Zealand and East Africa constituted one group, Australia, Pakistan, West Indies and Sri Lanka the other. Each played their groupmates once, the top two progressing to the semis. It was a 60-over, which made for long days. There were no fielding restrictions. The whole thing was done in 15 days.

Fitting in with the established pattern of domestic cricket in the UK, matches were scheduled for Saturdays and Wednesdays, with two days in reserve to finish in case of weather interruption. Happily, this was unnecessary. From the time that the first ball of the World Cup was bowled, 1975 turned glorious, the sunniest summer of my lifetime to that point.  

The tournament was covered on television by the BBC, who had cameras at two games on each matchday, but insufficient airtime to cover one from first ball to last, let alone a pair. On Saturday, the cricket had to share Grandstand with the racing from Haydock Park, and BBC 2 preferred to give its afternoon to the Tony Hancock film The Punch and Judy Man rather than offer the possibility of live coverage of both games. The four commentators who would normally have worked at one game were spread between two, Jim Laker and Ted Dexter at Lord’s for England against India, and Peter West and Richie Benaud at Headingley for Australia versus Pakistan.

There was no ball-by-ball commentary on radio until the final. There were BBC commentators at all four games, but they had to compete with racing, cycling and tennis on Sport on 2, presented by Alan Parry, and extended until 7pm, which would not have been late enough to guarantee covering the end of every contest. The Radio Times listed John Arlott, Brian Johnston, Don Mosey, Henry Blofeld and Freddie Trueman as commentators, along with visitors Tony Cozier and New Zealand’s Alan Richards, but does not say who was where. On Wednesday there was no commentary at all, merely reports on the hourly sports desks.

The showpiece of the first day, England v India, is remembered fifty years on, but not in a good way. England showed the value of experience in this form of the game by running up 334, 137 by Dennis Amiss leading the way. This was an immense score. For context, the highest in 12 years of England’s domestic 60-over competition thus far was 327, and that by Gloucestershire against minor county Berkshire.

India had one of the Himalayas to climb. They decided before leaving the dressing room that it could not be attempted. Famously, Sunil Gavaskar batted through the 60 overs for 36 not out of India’s 132 for three. BBC huffily switched to Headingley and included none of the Indian innings on the highlights package. Gavaskar is usually blamed, but there was collective responsibility. None of the other batters were much more aggressive and, as John Arlott noted in The Guardian, Farokh Engineer—hard-hitting member of three Lancashire 60-over champion teams—was not promoted up the order. In The Times John Woodcock made the point that the previous year India had been humiliated at Lord’s, bowled out for 42, and that anything was better than that.

Not all India’s supporters agreed and several entered the field of play to inform Gavaskar of this personally. One felt strongly enough to punch two policemen and on Monday was jailed for six months.

We have to remember that the grammar of one-day cricket was still being learned. Almost every week in this series of articles it has been noted, with a degree of astonishment, how low the scoring was in limited-over games of various durations. The next day only nine sixes were hit across seven games in the Sunday League, and only one of the 14 teams passed 200. To a fair extent limited-overs cricket was approached as if it was a first-class innings with a bit of hitting at the end. The Indians, who as yet played no domestic one-day cricket, opened the grammar primer for the first time that Saturday at Lord’s to find out about a language that they had not heard before. They learned quickly. Just eight years later they fluent enough to win the third World Cup.

The game at Edgbaston followed much the same pattern. New Zealand scored 309 for five, of which Glenn Turner made 171 not out, which remained his country’s highest ODI score until Lou Vincent made 172 against Zimbabwe 40 years later. East Africa made four fewer than India did at Lord’s, their aim not to win but to survive 60 overs, which they did, with two wickets to spare. In 2015 I paid good money to watch the UAE do the same thing (over 50 overs) against South Africa, which is why I am in the small minority who do not want World Cups open to a greater number of teams until there are enough who want to win not just be there.

Pakistan lost to Australia by 73 runs, Lillee five for 34, though his mate Thommo had no-ball issues. West Indies blew Sri Lanka away by nine wickets.

On Wednesday, West Indies v Pakistan produced the first classic World Cup contest, a game that remains one of the competition’s greatest. Pakistan, without Imran Khan taking exams in Oxford and captain Asif Iqbal in hospital, made 266. Stand-in skipper Majid Khan led with 60 and a young man we had not heard of called Javed Miandad chipped in 24 at the end.

Sarfraz Nawaz knocked off the top three and wickets continued to fall until West Indies were 168 for eight. Henry Blofeld told Guardian readers what happened thereafter.

The key was that the run rate was kept up even as wickets fell. Deryck Murray’s experience of the limited-overs game helped as did the intelligence and judgement that later made him Trinidad and Tobago’s representative at the UN.

At the Oval Australia made 328, opener Alan Turner leading with 101. When Jeff Thomson took the new ball, for the Sri Lankans it was more like the Colosseum as Wisden 1976 relates with some distaste.

 

As Australian manager Fred Bennett said in response to criticism of Thomson, “What do you expect us to tell the boy to do, bowl underarm?”. Given that Sri Lanka were 150 for two in good time a little hostility seems not unreasonable. It should be remembered that we are two years away from batsmen wearing helmets for the first time.

The two exponents of slow cricket, India and East Africa, met at Headingley where the Boycott fans no doubt cheered the Africans as they took 56 overs to make 120, a total that openers Gavaskar and Engineer put on without loss in a breathless 30 overs.

England dispatched New Zealand easily enough with Keith Fletcher making 131. For New Zealand it was notable for appearance of three Hadlee brothers together in international cricket, batter Barry joining Dayle and Richard, something that also occurred when New Zealand played England in Dunedin a few months before.

So with a round to play, Australia, West Indies and England were through to the semis with New Zealand and India to play for the last place.

The County Championship continued, though with most sides depleted by the loss of World Cup players. Performance of the week was eight for 73 by Yorkshire off spinner Geoff Cope at Bristol, this three years before being troubled by problems of legality with his bowling action that led to a disruptive young section of the Kent crowd referring to him as “Chucker” Cope.

A young Somerset player was being tipped for future international selection, but not the one you think. It was batter Phil Slocombe who was attracting attention with a run of good scores, stylishly made. 1975 was to be his best year. John Woodcock also observed that “Botham is a robust hitter of the ball, a strong young man, in fact”.

Kent lost in the Sunday League for the first time this season, vacating the top of the table not to return until the following year. It was Kent’s worst season of the seventies, with early exits in both knock-out competitions and falling out of contention in the leagues well before the season’s end.

Alan Gibson was in a mood to reminisce, first at Ilford.

 

And at the Oval for the Australia v Sri Lanka game.

 

This week saw the start of a four-week trial of broadcasting radio coverage of question time in the House of Commons. It so happened that this occurred on the very day that I sat the British Constitution O level exam. I collected obscure subjects, but took no science O levels. French Literature followed later in the week.

Colin Cowdrey announced his retirement at the end of the season, but was to have a glorious curtain call in a couple of weeks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

31 May – 6 June 1975 Snow returns

 On Monday, famously, play between Derbyshire and Lancashire at Buxton was prevented by snow, enough for a covering of the field. Snow also fell at Colchester and it was cold and wet almost everywhere. Both Alan Gibson at  Edgbaston and, more unusually, John Woodcock at Lord’s began their reports on Monday’s play with a weather report.

 

Derbyshire were having a rough time. They quit the County Ground in Derby after the opening game, for good it was thought, though they were to return two years later. The second XI had been disbanded for financial reasons. By the start of June they had already changed captain, from Brian Bolus to Bob Taylor. They began the Buxton game equal bottom of the Championship and were without their first-choice opening attack of Ward and Hendrick. Their replacements, Stevenson and Glenn, both fell ill on the first day and were unable to bowl a reasonable quota of overs, leaving Philip Russell—who many spectators of the time will remember for the glint of his gold tooth in the sun—to bowl 34 overs of a possible 50 at one end.

The outcome was the highest first-innings total since the 100-over first-innings limit was introduced at the start of the previous season: 477 for five, Hayes 104 and Clive Lloyd 167 not out including a 50-run spell that included seven sixes spread about the Peak District.

The loss of the second day to the snow might have been expected to save Derbyshire, but that was not their luck at that time. Its damp residue left the pitch so treacherous that it might have been at Cambridge in the thirties. All out 42 in the first innings (Lee four for ten) and 87 (Lever five for 16) in the second.

Snow also returned to the England team, with John of that ilk named in the World Cup squad, his first selection fo the national team for two years. There was a reluctant acknowledgement that the limited-overs game required different talents by the inclusion of Frank Hayes, John Jameson and Bob Woolmer, who in June was seen as an accurate medium-pace bowler who could make the ball do a bit and by September as an Ashes centurion and match saver. He would be the only one of the 14-man squad not to get a game.

Jameson had scored a sackful of runs in the 55 and 40-over competitions so far in 1975, and took three for 16 in the quarter-final against Essex on Wednesday. Playfair described his bowling as RM/OB, the indecision because it was rarely seen and possibly hard to tell even then. He was Knott’s reserve as keeper in the World Cup squad should the great man suffer an injury, which did about as often as Captain Scarlet.

Preparation for the tournament was no more than a couple of warm-up games in the few days before it began. Asif Iqbal made 94 of Kent’s 154 as they lost to Championship leaders Hampshire on Tuesday, and on Wednesday led his country against the county at Canterbury, bowling Colin Cowdrey. Alvin Kallicharran and Rohan Kanhai guided Warwickshire home in the 55-over quarter-final against Essex and the next day both made fifties for the West Indians against Nottinghamshire.

In that quarter-final Essex could not recover from 16 for five. At Lord’s, Boycott and Richard Lumb took half the overs on their opening partnership of 68, the rest of the line-up taking the score to 182, two more than Lancashire reached at Leicester. It seems to have been a convention that the team chasing a such modest totals would take up as many of their overs as possible. Leicestershire did so with five balls left, Middlesex with nine. Only Hampshire breached 200, their 223 giving them a comfortable 50-run win. It was a round of unremarkable cricket.

The referendum on whether Britain should continue its membership of the European Economic Community dominated the week’s news. The result was declared on Friday, votes counted by administrative area (in England  mostly counties). Only Shetland and the Western Isles voted against. David Dimbleby anchored a BBC results programme for the first time, while Robert Kee led ITV’s coverage, which was interrupted by the racing from Epsom. George Scott presented on Radio 4.

 

As we know, the conclusive result was far from the end of the argument, but served Harold Wilson’s purpose in resolving divisions in the Labour Party (or one of them at least). The precedent of deciding a great constitutional question was an unfortunate one, particularly when left in less politically skilled hands than Wilson’s.

The Observer’s cartoonist Trog, aka Wally Fawkes, saw that the idea might catch on.

 

Daily updates of the 1975 season on X @kentccc1968 and Bluesky ‪@kentkiwi.bsky.social‬

 

24 – 30 May 1975 A Good Week for Mike Denness

 

24 – 30 May 1975

This was the first week of the 1975 season that followed the pattern familiar to followers of county cricket in the seventies: three-day games beginning on Saturday and Wednesday with a 40-over game interposed on Sunday. For spectators it was a brilliant arrangement, particularly in Kent where the season was divided largely into cricket weeks, each at a different venue around the county: Canterbury, Folkestone, Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells.

For the players, it looks like madness, more a motoring rally than cricket season, particularly the year in question when it was decreed that counties should play different opponents on Sunday to those they were against on Saturday and Monday. So this week, Yorkshire had to drive down to Edgbaston from Manchester for the Sunday game, returning to resume the Roses match on Monday; Northamptonshire went from Leicester to Bristol and back (this on a bank holiday weekend).

The present-day schedule is much more forgiving, allowing time for travel and preparation (the latter in 1975 probably being a euphemism for extra drinking). The English season has been stretched into the extremities of April and September to accommodate this. Yet still the players complain that there is too much cricket in too short a time. I have less sympathy than for their (much lower-paid) predecessors. Obviously, the workload of fast bowlers must be very carefully managed, like lead pitchers in the MLB, who play once every four or five days. Counties have a duty of care for all their players, and any deserve a break when their physical or mental health demands it.

The larger squads that counties have these days should make that possible without reducing the number of fixtures. I cannot accept that having to play T20 games on successive days once or twice a season is an intolerable burden. Even with a generous margin for wides and no balls, that adds up to no more than 60 balls for a bowler, about what our baseball pitcher would expect to throw in a game.

There were hundreds this week for stalwarts of the county game: Roger Tolchard and Jack Birkenshaw of Leicestershire; Jack Hampshire of Yorkshire; Peter Graves of Sussex, Dudley Owen-Thomas of Surrey, Phil Slocombe and Brian Close for Somerset; Alan Jones (not to be confused with Alan Lewis Jones) of Glamorgan; David Turner of Hampshire; Jim Foat, a folk hero in Gloucestershire (his maiden century); and Bob Woolmer and Graham Johnson of Kent. Johnson had a fine season in 1975 with 1300 runs and 36 wickets. Had England toured that winter he might well have been selected. It remains a minor scandal of that time that Geoff Miller of Derbyshire, a similar player, appeared in 34 tests, while Johnson played in none. His best form never coincided with a vacancy.

Alan Gibson was at Bristol for the Jones hundred.

 

As ever, Gibson reported on what happened around the ground as well as on the field. He came across the injured David Shepherd (later a famed umpire), who, he tells us, “was wearing a sweater of violent purple as though contemplating applying for a job on The Guardian”.

There were also centuries for Barry Richards and Alvin Kallicharran, both more than stalwarts. Richards was reeling them off, and was well ahead of rivals at the top of the batting averages. And one for Mike Denness, who had whose 171 against Derbyshire ended a run of indifferent form.

Bowling performance of the week was by Worcestershire’s Brian Brain, eight for 55 against Essex. “He looked like a young sociology don at Harvard” wrote Gibson. Despite this career-best, 34-year-old Brain was released by Worcestershire at the end of that season, but took a further 316 wickets in six years with Gloucestershire. His diary of the 1980 season Another Day, Another Match was an outstanding example of the genre (if anybody has a copy I would be happy to pay the postage to New Zealand). John Arlott’s brief review in the 1982 Wisden said that it was “an account of pleasure and pressure; a blend of shrewd and thoughtful observation; of humour and anxiety; the story of one man’s job – but a job that is lit by the romanticism which is in every full-time cricketer”.

The same match saw an achievement that surpassed even Brain’s. Essex leg-spinner Robin Hobbs took his thousandth first-class wicket. “No other leg-spinner, I am afraid, will do it again” wrote Gibson, echoing the universal view that leg-spin was on its way out as surely as black-and-white televisions and half-day closing. You want to reach back through the years and say “there’s this five-year-old in Melbourne…”. Of course, as far as English leg-spinners go, it was a point well-made, though in all forms of the game Adil Rashid is well clear of a thousand, including, I was surprised to discover, 512 in first-class cricket. For comparison, there were 18 players listed in the 1975 Playfair with a thousand wickets at the start of the season. Only Jimmy Anderson is past the mark in this year’s edition.

It was a good week for Denness, who was confirmed as England captain for the World Cup. John Arlott’s Monday commentary in The Guardian tells us that the decision was not straightforward.

 

Some of the criteria that got Denness over the line tell us a lot about English cricket at that time: “well turned out…good manners and bearing.” A curiosity is that this was the first time that the selection panel consisted entirely of ex-professional players.

In The Times, John Woodcock had the inside line on the selection meeting. Reporting that Charlie Elliott (a test umpire for many years, including one at Lancaster Park, Christchurch in 1971) and Ken Barrington favoured Greig, while Sir Len Hutton and Alec Bedser backed Denness. Woodcock favoured Greig, despite his established reservations about the Sussex all-rounder and his acknowledgement that others may be relieved that they did not lead MCC in Australia. He is interesting on Boycott, who announced his unavailability for England selection hard upon the confirmation of Denness. The claim from the Fitzwilliam Firebrand that he has found “peace and contentedness” with Yorkshire is hard not to smirk at when hindsight gives us knowledge of the blood letting that characterised Yorkshire cricket over the following decade or so. Here is Woodcock’s Monday commentary in full:

 

As well as being cricket correspondent of The Guardian, Arlott was also its wine writer. This week he offers advice on cooking with wine. He always followed his own advice that “it is better to be generous than cautious”.

Headline of the week, from The Times, is as applicable now as it was then:

Why Kent take so long to bowl out the opposition on good pitches.

Today, the old county languish at the bottom of Division Two and my Blean Correspondent and myself fear that it could be the worst season since the annus horribilis of 1980.

The 1975 season had been scheduled as a one with a full tour by South Africa. The World Cup and four-test series with Australia came about with the continued suspension of cricket with the apartheid state. Those who thought that sport was separate from politics might have asked themselves how that could be conceivable under a government that enforced laws in the manner reported by Stanley Uys in The Guardian. Uys, by the way, was described by a minister of the Vorster Government as "probably the most unscrupulous liar in South Africa and a self-confessed traitor", a badge of honour indeed. 

 

 

 

17 - 23 May 1975 The Appeal of the Shoreditch Sparrow

This week in 1975 was given over to one-day cricket, with the final two rounds of the zonal stage in the 55-over competition and the Sunday League. Again, the scoring was generally as modest as a Jane Austen heroine. Minor Counties (North) were dismissed for 67 (Nottinghamshire’s left-arm quick Barry Stead five for 26), MC (South) for 94 and 83, Oxbridge for 93. Worcestershire fell 49 short of Northamptonshire’s 152. Another left-arm seamer tending to the portly, John Dye with five for 30, was central here too.

At Lord’s, Kent made just 137 for nine in 55 overs, of which John Shepherd contributed 96, a Bannermanesque[1] proportion of the total. Otherwise, only Underwood made double figures. Shepherd came in unusually high at No 5 here, which is where he would have batted regularly for most counties rather than his perennial No 8 for Kent. There are any number of similar examples of Shepherd making runs when others failed. His three for 21 ensured that his runs were just enough for Kent to win. No player contributed more to Kent’s success in the seventies than John Shepherd.

Alan Gibson was there. I do agree with him that low-scoring one-day games are the most interesting kind. It is a measure of the financial development of the game in the subsequent half-century that now it is the fast bowlers who break down. Then it was their cars.

 

Later in the week Gibson was at the Oval for Surrey versus Gloucestershire, which meant that he was sure to report on the performance of one of the main players in his repertory company, Robin Jackman aka the Shoreditch sparrow.

 

Jackman was a magnificent appealer, quite the best of his generation. With a noise sometimes mistaken for a passing aircraft he would turn, throw his arms in the air and continue backwards down the pitch, finishing close enough to the batter to shake hands, this after a run up double of the length that the subsequently generated pace suggested it should be. That his dash to the boundary did not prevent an all-run four was no shame; the Oval field in those days was vast, barely contained within a single postal district.

In a footnote to Gibson’s account it was reported that in the 52^nd over of Surrey’s reply umpire Peter Rochford failed to add an extra ball to the over for a wide. The match finished with the scores level but with Gloucestershire the winners having lost fewer wickets. These days, even in a non-televised match, such an error would be picked up by the match referee and communicated to the middle. In the past, counting mistakes were more frequent than might be thought, and, like other umpiring decisions were more widely accepted as part of life’s rich tapestry.

At Chelmsford, Brian Edmeades of Essex was caught on the boundary, but fielder Roger Marshall told the umpires that he could not be sure that both feet had remained inside the boundary (I’d bet that it was marked by a painted line rather than a rope). Edmeades was reprieved, and was unbeaten at the end of the innings. When the numbers were crunched at the end of the day that one wicket enabled Middlesex to qualify for the quarter-finals at the expense of  Sussex. Perhaps Sussex skipper Tony Greig had renounced the law of the jungle as urged by John Woodcock (see last week).

More slow scoring in the Sunday League. I was at Canterbury for the visit of Yorkshire, another game that fails to register in the memory, but the scorecard attests that I was there. 

The Times reporter was Michael Horsnell, at the beginning of three decades as a staff reporter. He covered crime and other issues rather than sport, possibly the result of his experience at St Lawrence that day.

 

Derbyshire had a bad week. On Saturday they lost to Lancashire by 67 runs. “Since for them any total over 150 constitutes and unseemly run orgy, it was clear that Derbyshire would have to rise above their usual mundane level with the bat to win” wrote Derby-based reporter Michael Carey (later to be come cricket correspondent of the Daily Telegraph). Later in the week Brian Bolus resigned as skipper, to be replaced by Bob Taylor.

Trawling the archives provides a reminder of stories that took up a lot of space at the time, but are now forgotten. One of these was the question of whether Montreal’s the new Olympic stadium would be ready for the 1976 summer games. Such was the level of doubt that this week Mexico City offered to dust down the 1968 stadium as an alternative.

The upcoming referendum on membership was the biggest continuing story. Like referenda on anything, the protagonists presented their view as the universal elixir while the truth lay ignored halfway between them.

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[1] In what is now regarded as the first test match Charles Bannerman, who faced the first ball, went on to make  167 out of a total of 245, which remains the highest proportion of an innings contributed by one batter in a test match (67.35%). Shepherd’s innings was 70.07% of the total. 

10 - 16 May 1975 The Good and Bad of Geoffrey Boycott

 

Geoffrey Boycott was the focus of much attention this week, as he was so often in these years. Against Worcestershire, he made an unbeaten 152 and thus became only the third Yorkshireman (after Sutcliffe and Hutton) to register a century against the other 16 counties also his fiftieth in the cause of the white rose. Wisden said “Few of these previous efforts can have been technically better”. Nobody else passed fifty, except a bludgeoning Chris Old when the game was dead on the third afternoon.

The excellence of Boycott the batter was universally acknowledged, even by those who thought that he might speed up in his interest of his team from time to time. The following day the praise turned to blame, as it so often did. Boycott refused to respond to Norman Gifford’s declaration 101 in arrears by setting a meaningful target, an approach that John Woodcock did not care for:

 

These were more cautious times; later in the season I was at Canterbury when Richard Gilliatt of Hampshire was booed off the field for failing to set a target in similar circumstances.

Boycott had not yet answered the question of the day: would he play for England this season? As Woodcock records, he had been absent more than present for several years.

 

The great man’s reluctance to don the England cap has sometimes been put down to a reluctance to face the fast bowlers of the time. This is unfair. He had dropped out after the first test against India the previous year when there were runs to be harvested despite his habit of falling to the pedestrian left-arm seam of Erinath Solkar. When he pulled out of the tour to Australia in the winter Lillee was widely considered to be finished because of his back and Thomson was never mentioned. It was because Denness (and before him Tony Lewis in 1972/73) had been preferred to him as captain. Had he grimaced and borne it, Boycott, rather than Greig, would probably have succeeded the Kent man in 1975. Woodcock had a bit of a blind spot re Greig, even pre-Packer, but his appraisal of the Sussex captain’s chances of leading the national team: “His appointment would have to be conditional upon his renouncing altogether the law of the jungle” would have been widely shared in the St John’s Wood area.

The only opener who might claim more renown than Boycott was Barry Richards, probably the best in the world in 1975. His unbeaten 96 took Hampshire to victory and the top of the Championship table. Alan Gibson was at St Helen’s to rhapsodise.

 

I was at Canterbury on Saturday to see Kent lose to Sussex in the 55-over competition, a vengeful John Snow (11-4-11-3) keen to demonstrate to Denness the foolishness of his omission from the winter’s tour. I recall a spectator who was right behind the arm describing on the bus home the late swing of the ball that trapped our beleaguered leader lbw for one. Snow was at the crease to guide Sussex home in the 55^th and final over. Two hundred and fifty-two runs in 106 overs would have the marketing people these days phoning the Samaritans, but the low scoring games are often the most fascinating. “Kent’s golden touch has deserted them” wrote former Kent player Tony Pawson in The Observer. This was to be the case for most of this season, the worst of the seventies for Kent.

Sunday saw fewer overs but more runs, including a record aggregate for the Sunday League with Somerset’s 270 topping visitors Gloucestershire’s 255 at Bristol. Here, it was the other great Richards, (IVA), who set it up with 126 not out (six sixes and 13 fours). Sadiq Mohammad made 131 in reply, but with insufficient support.

Who said “there’s a mistake there, Gloucestershire would be at home in Bristol”? Not so. This was at the Imperial Ground in Knowle, south of the River Avon that marked the historic boundary of Somerset. I watched a Sunday League game there four years later.

That Sunday I was at Folkestone, or at least assume that I was, though I recall nothing of the game, even after reading the report in The Times by Gerald Sinstadt, better known as Granada TV’s football commentator. He highlights two things: the cold, but there have been so many cold days at the cricket that they stick to each other like buns too long in the freezer, one no more memorable than another. Also the running between the wickets of Mike Denness and Brian Luckhurst. When I see murmurations of  starlings performing their swooping impeccably synchronised displays, I think of Denness and Luckhurst stealing singles with wordless understanding.

 

Off-the-field cricket news concerned the standoff between the BBC and the TCCB (forerunners of the ECB) over the TV rights for the four test matches against Australia. The BBC had increased its offer to a “final” £116,000 (the equivalent of about £890,000 now according to the Bank of England’s inflation calculator). The ECB’s current arrangement with Sky TV for all cricket is said to be worth £220 million a year. Of course the BBC had an effective monopoly. ITV, now with a daytime schedule, would not contemplate a rival bid.

The Godfather Part II was released that week. “Few movie sequels are as good as the films they follow and even fewer have about them an air of necessity. Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II is a rare exception” was the verdict of Philip French in The Guardian.

Most chilling headline of the week: “Inflation in Britain running at over 30%”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3-9 May 1975: Boyce and Lloyd a class above the rest

Saturday was FA Cup final day, an all-London affair between West Ham and second-division Fulham. A measure of what a big occasion it then was is that three of the 55-over group games were postponed from Saturday to avoid clashing with the big match at Wembley. TV coverage started mid-morning, giving the producers of Grandstand and World of Sport four hours or so to fill before kick off, something they did with various degrees of desperation. It’s a Cup Final Knockout was a perennial lowpoint in this regard.

As so often, the game failed to live up to the hype. David Lacey wrote that “It was as if the floats of the Lord Mayor’s Show had preceded merely a man in a taxi, in a grey suit, anxious not to be late for work”. East London triumphed over west two-nil, both goals by Hammers’ striker Alan Taylor. It was a curiosity that he also scored a brace in both the quarter and semi finals, but that is all he is remembered for. Bobby Moore and Alan Mullery both wore the white of Fulham.

The headliners in the 55-over games were Combined Universities, who bowled out Worcestershire for 92 to win by 66 runs. To be accurate, it was the combined Oxbridge universities that were on the field here. The result is not as surprising once we read their team list, which included Imran Khan, Peter Roebuck and the great CJ Tavaré, as well as others who had briefer county careers such as Chris Aworth of Surrey and Steve Coverdale of Yorkshire (and later CE of Northamptonshire). Vic Marks was absent, whether from injury or form isn’t clear. Imran took four for four against his own county, and Andrew Wingfield-Digby had three for 28. Wingers-Diggers, as he was later known, became both an Anglican clergyman and one of Alan Gibson’s repertory company of characters who would be guaranteed a mention regardless of how many runs and wickets they notched up. He also had a spell as chaplain to the England team, one of Ted Dexter’s ideas, and one of the more noble acts of self-sacrifice of the modern Church.

Again, the moderate nature of the scoring in this round is striking (or, rather, not). In addition to Worcestershire’s capitulation, Nottinghamshire were all out for 94 against Lancashire, Leicestershire amassed 148 for nine off the full 55 overs (it took Warwickshire 52 overs to overtake them), Middlesex bowled Sussex out for 101. At Bristol, Hampshire’s 129 was enough for a 67-run win. Essex’s 212 versus Kent was the highest score of the round.

The County Championship continued in midweek. In an attempt to shove the quart that was first-class cricket into the pint pot of three days, there was a rule for several years that the first innings of Championship games closed after 100 overs. I had forgotten this until I came across innings that were not all out but not recorded as declarations. These days, the last ten overs or so would be a slogathon, but the figures and my memory suggest that any increase of pace in the pursuit of runs in the final stages was usually barely perceptible, lest the decorum of first-class cricket should be compromised.

There was fast scoring at Chelmsford where Keith Boyce, Essex’s Bajan all-rounder hit a century against Leicestershire in 58 minutes, the fastest hundred in the Championship for 38 years. In the field, he took 12 for 73 as well as two catches, all on what Wisden describes as a spinners’ pitch. In June he would make a quick 34 and take four wickets in the World Cup final, but this is too often overshadowed by the memories of Lloyd’s batting and Richards’ fielding that day (I had forgotten and I was there). Essex folk of that era will never forget him.

“Clive Lloyd played one game yesterday and everyone else another” wrote John Woodcock of Lloyd’s century at the Oval. In the time that he made 109 , the other batters accrued 24. Worcestershire’s two New Zealanders made hundreds, Parker in the first innings, Turner in the second. Twenty-five years later I eavesdropped as they reminisced about their New Road days in the press box at Seddon Park, The other centurion in this round was the promising young Nottinghamshire batter Derek Randall, after a first innings 70. 

At Northampton, Alan Gibson was cold. You would not read a report on a cricket match like this now, and you wouldn’t have done so then by any other reporter.

 

I have a subscription to The Times, and, for the purposes of this exercise, have taken one to The Guardian archives (which also include The Observer). This was about the time when I began to read the broadsheets (as they then were) regularly, and trawling through them fifty years later reminds me how much they inspired a love of knowledge and writing. What writers there were. In The Guardian James Cameron, Barry Norman’s weekly column, Nancy Banks-Smith on TV and David Lacey on football, to name just a few. The Times had Bernard Levin (from whom I learned that you don’t always have to agree with someone to admire their writing) and Woodcock and Gibson on cricket. Above all, a Sunday morning walk to the newsagents to buy a copy of The Observer became a regular thing about now for, among others,  Nora Beloff, Levin (again) and AJP Taylor reviewing books, Hugh McIlvanney, Russell Davies, and, above all, Clive James on television. What a shame he wasn’t interested in cricket. Russell Davies is on Twitter. I posted a copy of one of his football reports. He responded, saying that he usually used fictional bylines for his football pieces as some readers did not approve of arts writers cheapening themselves in the sports section.

Here, from this week, is a typical opening to a Levin book review. You will notice the absence of a full stop. The sentence is just getting under way as we leave it.

 

In the pages outside the sports sections two of the continuing stories were the European referendum and the elusive John Stonehouse. In a month, Britain was to vote, in its first national referendum, to decide whether to stay in the EEC (as it was then known). This was Harold Wilson’s masterplan to resolve internal division in his party. The political skill necessary to execute this successfully was not fully appreciated until David Cameron tried the same thing forty years later and stuffed it up completely.

Wilson’s calling of a general election in the previous October had delivered a three-seat majority, which took considerable managing in a 635-seat Commons. This got more difficult a month later when John Stonehouse. Labour MP for Walsall North, went missing from a Miami beach, presumed drowned. He turned up, alive and well, in Melbourne a few weeks later. The Victorian police thought that they had caught Lord Lucan. Stonehouse explained that he was on "a fact-finding tour, not only in terms of geography but in terms of the inner self of a political animal". This week in 1975 the House was deciding whether it could expel him from its membership.

Headline of the week, in The Guardian:

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