2 – 8 August 1975 “It's shapely, it’s masculine and it’s seen the last of its cricket for the day”

It is hard to see how Henry Blofeld could justify calling the second test “exciting”. Memorable, certainly, mainly for the benefits for national morale  of David Steele and Tony Greig showing that Lillee and Thomson could be resisted. As John Woodcock wrote “England will be feeling a lot happier. Aren’t we all?” Engrossing, possibly, but it was a low bar for “exciting”. On the Saturday England managed only 225 for the loss of two wickets. Woodcock again: “Six hours is an awfully long time to take making 104 not out on a good pitch and across a fast outfield; but that is Edrich’s way.” It was the way of many in that era.

On the final day Australia required 387 to win with nine wickets standing on a pitch offering little or nothing to the bowlers. The possibility that this might be pursued was barely discussed. It was all about the draw. Fifty years on, England made 367 in 85 overs in the fourth innings of the test match thrillingly completed this week, a rate of scoring that would have seemed fanciful in 1975. It is a great irony that test cricket’s future is under threat like never before when the cricket it produces has never been more entertaining.

Michael Angelow (which sounds like a name that Bertie Wooster would have made up after being arrested for stealing a policeman’s helmet on Boat Race night) woke everybody up on Monday afternoon by becoming cricket’s first and most famous streaker. He had the good sense or luck to do it while John Arlott was at the microphone: “It's shapely, it’s masculine and it’s seen the last of its cricket for the day”. Arlott added to the occasion by describing Angelow as a “freaker”.

At Canterbury, I missed Arlott on the freaker as I was at the ice cream van buying my fourth radioactive ice lolly af the day. It was so glorious a week that Kent’s disastrous performance against Middlesex did not bother us too much, even though it pretty much finished our championship chances.

There were a couple of notable statistical achievements by Middlesex batters. Mike (MJ) Smith made a century before lunch on the first day and Norman Featherstone made two unbeaten centuries in the match. I don’t think that I have ever seen the former feat achieved since, but the latter was bettered by Zaheer Abbas in Canterbury week the following year, with one of his not out hundreds being a double.

Kent did remain on the same points as Essex at the top of the Sunday League after their win over Sussex. Colin Cowdrey’s fine valedictory form continued with 58 not out to take the team home.

My future skiing instructor Barry Dudleston had a very good week. Mike Carey (whose appearance in the press box generally presaged an early dismissal for the Leicestershire opener) said that he was “at his most effervescent” in making 88 against Derbyshire. On Sunday he scored 152 (then the second highest ever in the Sunday League behind Barry Richards’ 155 against Yorkshire in 1970) of his team’s 235 for six, which must be pretty high on the list of proportions of a team’s total, and on that of big individual scores for the losing side as Lancashire won the game with a century from Clive Lloyd.

The heat appears to have encouraged high scoring on Sunday: Somerset made 243 (Viv Richards 119), Essex reached 283 and Worcestershire set a new Sunday League record with 307 for four.

Gloucestershire beat this in the 60-over Gillette Cup quarter-finals with centuries by their two Pakistan internationals Sadiq Mohammad and Zaheer Abbas. Leicestershire’s 282 in reply (another half century for Dudleston) would rarely have been a losing total in this era, but it was that day in 1975.

The big match of the round was at Old Trafford where the two teams at the top of the Championship met. The gates were shut at a capacity of 26,000, but Gerry Harrison in The Times reckoned that there were 30,000 in there “with those rehearsing for the football season still pouring in over the walls”. Incidentally, I am less sure that this is the same Gerry Harrison that was Anglia TV’s football commentator for many years. This one appears to have been based in the north-west.

A high-scoring draw was anticipated, but Hampshire were shot out for 98, four wickets each for Barry Wood and Bob Ratcliffe, and Lancashire reached their target with six wickets and 28 overs to spare.  

New Zealander John Parker made 107 in Worcestershire’s 257, but Middlesex strolled home by eight wickets. Clive Radley scored 105 with MJ Smith and Featherstone both continuing their good form with seventies.

Derbyshire, without a home headquarters at this time, were undergoing a mid-season resurgence sufficient to dispatch neighbours Nottinghamshire easily enough.

Some stories echo through the eras. Gloucestershire, in deep financial duress, were saved by an large input of cash from an external source. In 2025 this will be the ECB handout that will follow the sale of parts of the Hundred teams. Fifty years ago it was the Pheonix Assurance Co buying the County Ground in Bristol. I spent a lot of happy times there in the 19 years I lived in the city. Nobody would claim that it is a pretty ground, but it has soul and history, neither a commodity that can be moved to any new venue to the north of Bristol, as is being mooted.

The Yorkshire fast bowler Tony Nicholson retired this week. He took 879 first-class wickets at 19.76, all the more impressive when you consider that for the first half of his career Fred Trueman would have had choice of ends. Nicholson was particularly fond of bowling at Canterbury where he took 17 wickets across two games in 1967 and 1968. He has to have an early mention in any conversation about the best players of the era not to play test cricket.