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.
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