The fourth day of the third test set up us up for a wonderful fifth. England, already 337 ahead, added another 107 to their overnight score at a rate of five an over, roughly equivalent to the speed of sound in test cricket in 1975. “Even Steele came out of his shell” reported Norman Preston in Wisden. The man in question top scored with 92. It is hard to convey the extent to which he had become a national totem in just a couple of weeks. The anticipation of his maiden century was akin to waiting for the birth of a new royal heir. “When Thomson hit Steele under the ribs the Australians’ lack of compassion was a kind of compliment to him”, reported John Woodcock. The hundred would have to wait for another year.
Australia did
well in pursuit of a daunting target of 445, quickly dispatching any thoughts
that the game would finish that day. At the close they were 220 for three, fast
enough to leave an attainable 225 on the final day. Opener Rick McCosker was still
there on 95. Doug Walters also, on 25. Perhaps this would be the day when he
would finally show an English crowd how good he was. With Gary Gilmour as high
as No 7, England remained favourites.
We returned
from our Devon holiday on the Monday evening and I looked forward to a tense
day in front of the TV. It must have been at about 8am that the news broke that
the groundsman had discovered upon removing the covers that holes had been dug
in the pitch and that oil had been poured over a length at one end. That was it.
Rightly, there was no question of transferring to a different strip. There was loose
talk about arranging an extra test, but that was dismissed pretty quickly too. Thus
were the Ashes retained by Australia.
It began to
rain at midday, so the game would have been drawn anyway. Or would it? With
play underway, so the pitch would have been uncovered. Deadly Derek would have
needed half an hour…
The protest
was to draw attention to the plight of George Davis, in prison for armed
robbery after (according his supporters) a miscarriage of justice. Given how easily
the match could have finished on the fourth day, there appeared to be a lack of
cricket intelligence about the timing of the action. Davis was given a royal
pardon by Home Secretary Roy Jenkins the following year, though the guilty
verdict was not overturned until 2011. However, Davis was subsequently
convicted of involvement in robberies of a bank and of mailbags, in 1977 and
1987 respectively. In both cases, he was plumb with no question of wasting a DRS
review.
The Gillette
Cup semi-finals were played on the day following the Headingley debacle. Younger
people might be surprised at what huge occasions in the cricketing calendar
these games were. There were 25,000 at Old Trafford for Gloucestershire’s visit,
a repeat of the famous semi-final five years before, won by David Hughes
hitting John Mortimore for 26 in an over as the BBC delayed the Nine O’Clock
News. There was tension here too. Opener Sadiq Mohammad made 122, but only
three other batters got into double figures, so 236 was fewer than
Gloucestershire should have got. Lancashire started well as openers Wood and
Kennedy put on 75 , but wickets fell regularly. Eighteen runs were needed off
11 balls with three wickets left, an equation that would lead to failure more
times than not in 1975, but Simmons and Ratcliffe got them over the line with
three balls to spare.
The other
semi-final was at the more picturesque surroundings of Queen’s Park in
Chesterfield, Derbyshire being without access to the County Ground in Derby
because of a dispute with the council. Mike Hendrick’s four for 16 helped limit
Middlesex to 207. Derbyshire would have been confident when Ron Headley (son of
George, father of Dean) and Phil Sharpe put on 81 for the first wicket. The
occasion got to them after that. They lost by 24 runs.
Yorkshire remained
top of the Championship, 14 points ahead of Surrey who had a game in hand. Rain
at Cardiff prevented Boycott’s men from taking full advantage of a 96-run lead
on first innings, but Glamorgan had knocked off 78 of those for the loss of
only one wicket so it was far from certain.
The innings of the week was Rohan Kanhai’s 192 for Warwickshire against
Worcestershire. Essex, Hampshire and Kent were level on top of the Sunday
League.
Readers who
have come to the view that this exercise in retrospection is merely a pretext
for me to read again Alan Gibson’s reports in The Times are not far from
the mark. Gibson was also a commentator on Test Match Special, and
brought to that role the same wit and descriptive originality that
characterised his writing. With Martin-Jenkins, Mosey and Blofeld joining the
rota, opportunities were becoming more limited and his appearance in the team
at Headingley was the only one that season. It was also his last. The
circumstances are described by Anthony Gibson (the BBC’s Somerset commentator) in
his collection of his father’s writing Of Didcot and the Demon. I agree
with the first line completely.
At the top of his form Alan was a match for any of [the TMS
commentators] with the possible exception of Arlott. But finding him at the top
of his form was increasingly difficult, especially after lunch, and the new BBC
regime was less tolerant of this amiable weakness, as Alan saw it, than their
predecessors. In the end, Cliff Morgan puthis foot down. Alcoholic drink was
banned from the commentary box. Alan’s response was to turn up for his next
commentary session armed with a pint of whisky and water, which he proceeded to
drink whilst on air…when Cliff Morgan heard Alan on the Monday evening, clearly
the worse for drink, he swore there and then that he would never commentate for
the BBC again.
So ended the
career of one of the best radio commentators. He continued to write for The
Times for another 11 years, during which he wrote the classic The
Cricket Captains of England, recently republished by Fairfield Books with a
new companion by Vic Marks to bring the story up-to-date.