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:
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:
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