16 – 22 August: George Davis is innocent but only this time ok?

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.