30 August to 5 September: The Never-ending Test Match: Leicestershire Make Their Move

 

The fourth test match was the longest game of cricket ever played in England, and was still drawn when it finally ended after six days.

When I left the Oval at the end of the second day England were 513 behind Australia with all wickets standing and four days to go, there being a sixth day available as the series could yet be drawn. This situation, and how it was resolved, tells us much about how attitudes to test cricket have changed over the past half century. Now, McCullum and Stokes’ England would have their eyes on a lead acquired at sufficient pace to make a win possible, as they did at Multan in 2024, replying to 556 with 823 to set up the win. In 1975 such an eventuality would have been considered incredible, not worth discussion. Survival was the only aim, which meant that the pace would be measured, particularly on an Oval pitch that offered the bowlers nothing and attacking batters not much more. John Woodcock described it as “being as dry as the Nullarbor Plain, and much the same colour”.

On the third day, England subsided to 169 for eight, which Woodcock wrote was “as poor a display as any in the last year”. Yet over the next three days England ground out 538 in the second innings to save the game. Edrich, made for this situation, opened with 96. Steele the folk hero registered his fourth half-century in six innings and Roope made 77, which turned out to be his highest test score. It is pleasing to record that the draw was finally secured by the Kent pair, Knott and Woolmer’s, sixth-wicket partnership of 151.

It was not pretty. Woolmer’s 149 was the slowest century for England against Australia. Ten successive overs before tea on the fifth day were maidens. John Arlott called it “one of the best defensive performances in the history of test cricket”. It is probable that modern batters would not be capable of mounting such a rearguard, though the existence of DRS might also have been a mitigating factor: “At Lord’s Fagg and Spencer gave everything out. At the Oval Spencer and Bird gave everything in”, according to Woodcock.

Australia were left with 198 to win the game in about 30 overs. Now, they would have had a go. Then, not a chance.

In the County Championship, it was the week in which Leicestershire moved from being outsiders to putative champions. They began at Tunbridge Wells, achieving a first-innings lead of 78 thanks to an unbeaten ninth-wicket partnership of 136 between fast bowlers McVicker and McKenzie. Kevin Jarvis, in his first season, took four for 43 as Leicestershire were dismissed for 123 in the second innings. At 160 for four, Kent looked like being the team to make a late charge for the Championship, but Ray Illingworth’s excess of cunning made him an appropriate leader of Foxes and he induced a collapse of the last six wickets for 23 runs to leave his team winners by 18 runs. Illingworth was the bowler for four of the six, and caught one of the other two. No doubt he took quiet satisfaction that his replacement as England captain was the defeated leader.

Leicestershire then went home to Grace Road to face Middlesex (whose minds may have been on the Gillette Cup final on the day after this fixture). The performance of the match was by my personal skiing instructor Barry Dudleston, who made 107, described by Peter Marson in The Times as “an innings of high quality”. Illingworth again weighed in with second-innings wickets that ensured a modest victory target. The two wins left Leicestershire 17 points clear of Yorkshire with a game to play, though third-placed Hampshire had a slightly better chance of catching them with two games left and a 27 point deficit (there were 10 points for a win and a maximum of four batting and four bowling bonus points).

On Sunday, Leicestershire lost to Hampshire, with Barry Richards rolling out anther century. This left Hampshire four points ahead of Kent (four points for a win), but with a much superior run rate, which meant that there would have to be two mathematically improbable results to deprive them of the trophy.

A curiosity among the cricket scores this week was the Fenner Trophy, played over the then unusual duration of 50 overs per innings. It was a three-day knockout tournament that was part of the Scarborough Festival. Yorkshire and Hampshire defeated Kent and Gloucestershire in the semis, and Hampshire beat the hosts despite (or perhaps because of) a century by Boycott in the final. The teams were close to full strength despite it being played at the end of an intense season, but the inducements, financial and liquid no doubt, were sufficiently enticing. There were five-figure crowds throughout.

 

Cricket in England, April 2024

Kent v Surrey, County Championship, 19-22 April 2024

It was such a good plan. I would begin in Canterbury with two or three days under the Spring sun before heading west to Bristol to watch at the County Ground for the first time since leaving for New Zealand in 1997. Then a day at Lord’s, where I had last been that same summer, when I put on my suit for a day in the pavilion on my Kent member’s privilege. But England was grey, wet and, above all, cold this April, so my return to English cricket after a five-year interval ended up as two (slightly-less-than) half-days at St Lawrence, where champions Surrey were the visitors.

It was wet on the first morning, but I made my way up the Old Dover Road regardless. I am drawn to this place of memories and happiness whenever I return to Kent, especially today, when tributes were to be paid to Derek Underwood, who had died a few days before.

With no score to show, the big screen was playing a reel of highlights of Underwood picking off some of the best: the Oval ’68 (how well I remember that long afternoon waiting for the puddles to be erased from the Oval outfield and the black-and-white tension of the last hour); Australia in ’72, with Knotty taking a smart catch or two; Eddie Barlow yorked in the 55-over final at Lord’s in ’78.

There was supposed to be a tribute before the start of play, but with the delay they decided to hold it at midday instead (it embraced Ramon Subba Row too). I hope that they do it again when the ground is full and the sun is shining, but at least the few who were there had mostly seen him play. None of the players obviously. For them Derek Underwood would have been as distant a concept as Tich Freeman was to us. But Alec Stewart was there. He played against him and will have let the Surrey team know something of the man.

Those of us who stood and remembered all had stories that we wanted to tell. Mine was of another grey and wet day at St Lawrence, much like this one, forty years before. There were even fewer there that day, but I was one of them. Mark Nicholas was another, one of Underwood’s victims as he made a nonsense of Nick Pocock’s gleeful acceptance of Chris Tavaré’s offer of 179 off 59 overs. You see, rain had got under the covers, and it was bows and arrows against bombs. At least Underwood’s passing was the cause of some fine writing, Nicholas again to the fore. I’m pleased that I was there, in the cold.

There were things to do to pass the time. For an extra fiver, there was a tour of the ground, conducted by a young volunteer called Sam, one of Canterbury’s official guides, but doing this recreationally. He was excellent. I learned more than I expected to, given that I have been steeped in the place all my life. It had never occurred to me to find out why it bears St Lawrence’s name. Thanks to Sam, I now know. He was the second Archbishop of Canterbury after whom a leper hospital on the site of the ground was named, replaced by a mansion called St Lawrence House, which was demolished early in the nineteenth century, creating space for the cricket ground.

The fiver also gave access to a teatime talk in the Chiesman Pavilion (which surely should be renamed the Stevo Pavilion: the great man was present, ready for recall) by Kent’s curator, Ian Phipps. This is intended to be a regular feature, the starting point of each being an item or two from the club’s collection. Here, we went back to the origins of cricket in the county by looking at one of the sticks into which notches were cut to record the scores. Afterwards, I chatted to Ian and he showed me the scorebook in which Colin Cowdrey’s hundredth hundred was recorded in the copperplate hand of Claude Lewis in 1973.

Kent are to be congratulated on these initiatives, which I encourage anybody going to Canterbury to take advantage of. Now, more than ever, there is a need to celebrate cricket’s story and heritage.

Last time I was there, on the final pre-Covid day of cricket in 2019, I was a bit concerned for the old ground, which looked a little tired and uncared for. I am pleased to report that it now has more sparkle about it. There are new seats around the ground and the Frank Woolley no longer looks as if it might crumble out of use. They have done a good job of integrating the new buildings on the pavilion side of the ground; the new dressing rooms are a great improvement on the old. As Andrew Miller notes on a piece that has appeared on CricInfo while I was writing this, even the new apartments look as if they belong; what was there before was only a car park, after all (Miller appears to have had the day in the sun that I was hoping for, but was denied). Only the magnificent old analogue scoreboard over the Leslie Ames Stand, installed in 1971 if my memory is correct, looks as if it may be reaching the end of its life. The biting northerly introduced a random element by blowing the numbers about in a way that would please the North Koreans who run the Basin Reserve scoreboard. Neither this board nor the big screen can be seen from the Ames Stand, but as this is given over to a bar and hospitality boxes, I doubt that anybody notices.

When the covers were rolled back, I experienced culture shock. Living in New Zealand I have become so used to a first-morning pitch being a palette of greens that one comprising colours of the desert rather than the forest came as a surprise. Perhaps this made the scheduled use of the Kookaburra ball in this game somewhat superfluous as a equalising factor between bat and ball. County cricket, under threat as it is, must be able to sort the good players out from the moderate. Dobbing seamers producing unplayable deliveries in the Spring does not do this, but neither do centuries from mediocre batters against emasculated bowlers. It cannot be beyond the wit of science to produce a ball that combines the qualities of Dukes and Kookaburra. Failing that, a machine like those that choose the Lotto balls could be loaded with an equal number of both and present the fielding side with the ball of the day after the toss.

Zak Crawley might as well not bother if I am in the crowd. I have seen him bat “at the ground” five times including this day; only once, in the second innings of the Greatest Test of All, has he reached double figures (25 in that case). Here, he nicked off to third slip on five off Dan Worrall, who followed up by trapping Ben Compton lbw to reduce Kent to nine for two.

Daniel Bell-Drummond is club captain this year. At 30, his chance of the international preferment for which he was mooted as a youngster has probably gone. This is to Kent’s benefit if he continues to bat as he did here. From the start he showed the touch and eye of a man who has made two centuries already this year. He hit six fours in his first 34 runs, this off perhaps the best attack in the Championship. He was more measured thereafter, but not troubled. It was a surprise when he was out three overs before the close, lbw to Tom Lawes. If he follows in the tradition of Johnson, Ealham snr and Jarvis, to name but three, giving service to county alone, it will have been an honourable career.

It was a treat to watch cricket once more with my Blean correspondent, and to discover that the jokes and observations that originated in the glory years of the seventies have stood the test of time, as has our ability to clear the seats around us with the tedium of our conversation. But some things change, and we both found that the intense cold could not be shaken off as easily as it was in our (potato) salad days. It took us both the rest of the day to restore our body temperatures to normal.

This was my first time back to Kent since my mother passed away in 2021, so there were things to do and people to see. Nevertheless, a bright warm day would have brought about a change of schedule, but the weather continued to be delivered fresh from the Arctic.

We returned on the fourth morning with a short day in prospect. In the interim, Surrey had created a lead of 299, with centuries for Sibley and Lawrence. Kent resumed on 120 for five. It could all have been over very quickly, but the prospect of brevity was an incentive in these conditions. In fact, we found a place inside the Cowdrey Stand, where the bar was closed but the room open. It was much the same as watching from behind glass in the Long Room at the Basin Reserve. The company was similar too. Somebody was doing the stats and keeping us in touch with progress elsewhere. Football is a common topic. Given our location, and small numbers, a statistically unlikely number of the Basin faithful support East Anglian teams, creating an edge to proceedings when an Old Farm derby is in the offing.

There was an excellent discussion in Canterbury about the moral obligation on supporters to attend on days like these that could be all over quickly. It was agreed that it was an imperative for people in the city itself, and probably for Herne Bay and Whitstable, given the improved bus services. Those from the more remote coastal settlements were to be commended, and someone who had come down from Greenwich almost received a standing ovation. One odd trait shared in both locations is that applause continues to be offered as normal, even though we are behind glass and the players can’t hear us. A player who has done really well on a cold day at the Basin will know because the sliding windows of the Long Room will be unfurled like the unmuting of a Zoom call.

The money people who condemn the County Championship to the extremities of the season, and who plot to streamline/optimise/rationalise (or whatever business euphemism is in fashion) the number of matches, and the number of counties don’t know the currency that this stuff is counted in.

The cricket was better than expected, Kent fell only 33 short of making Surrey bat again. Ben Compton went quickly, but Joey Evison and Matt Parkinson put on 74 for the seventh wicket in 31 overs, taking us into an unexpected afternoon session. There was little that was spectacular, but I enjoyed it enormously. Two batters refusing to accept any inevitability about the result against a determined attack. I am pleased that Kent have signed Parkinson, more so that they are both picking and bowling him, even when he goes for a few. This will pay off as the season draws on.

Arafat Bhuiyan batted as all No 11s should, and took a six and two fours off successive deliveries from Kemar Roach, which few have done. Parkinson was out to the second outstanding short leg catch by Jamie Smith, and that was that. A pleasant day in good company.

The biting weather persisted, and I went down with the usual cold I get whenever I return to the old country, so I did not attend the County Ground in Bristol. I could have made a token visit but want what memories I have yet to form of cricket in England to be of shirtsleeves and lemonade, not bobble hats and Benylin. Lord’s was rained off, so I did not have to work my way through the 21 steps that the Middlesex website takes you through before sending you to the MCC website to buy the ticket.

I hope to be back one day, before too long, at a time of the year when the focus can be on enjoying the cricket, rather than the preservation of life. A gritty seventh-wicket stand and the chance to say goodbye to a hero will sustain me for now.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Early adventures in autograph hunting

The two Kent junior membership passes pictured both cost a guinea, or a pound and a shilling, or one pound five pence, for which the keen young cricket fan got entry and a seat in the stand at all Kent’s home games bar tourist and Gillette Cup matches, for which ground admission had to be paid. The 1966 pass was my first.

They could also be used as impromptu autograph books. Below are the back two pages of the 1966 edition. Clockwise from the left are the signatures of Colin Cowdrey, Garry Sobers, Alan Knott and David Nicholls. 

The first two were collected on Monday 11 July, the second day of the match between Kent and the West Indians. I was there on a school day because I was recuperating from the measles, which dates me pretty effectively. It was a cautious first expedition outside home for a few hours in the afternoon. 

It was the match in which Sobers took his career-best figures of nine for 49, in slow left-arm mode. One of these was late on that second day, so I assume that I saw a small part of the great man’s best bowling, but I have no memory of doing so. An amnesiac reaction to Sobers will become a theme of this piece, as you will see.

The West Indian captain’s signature must have been secured after the close of play, given that he would have been on the field throughout the afternoon (there was no racing on the TV—I checked). My memory is that Cowdrey signed earlier, on the spot where the Cowdrey Stand was built two decades later. Cowdrey was England captain at that time, having replaced MJK Smith after the first test before handing over to Brian Close for the fifth.

Of these four names, David Nicholls is the only one that will require introduction to the general reader. Three years previously, as a nineteen-year-old, he had made a double century, a rare thing in the three-day era. But there had not been much since then, and he had become a fringe player. 

I assume that Nicholls also signed earlier in the day. If it was at the close it says much for his well-known affability, as he got his second duck of the game shortly before. The following year, he found the role in which he served the county well for the next decade; that of stand-in keeper when Alan Knott was playing for England, which gave him a place in the team for half the season.

I see from the TV listings that England played Uruguay in the opening game of the World Cup that evening. It was a dull nil-nil draw that could not compare watching the West Indians play cricket.

Knott’s autograph was added a few weeks later, on August Bank Holiday Monday. It was a wet day, as public holidays invariably seemed to be when we were young. Kent were hosting Nottinghamshire at St Lawrence. An on-off, interrupted day ended just before tea, by which time most of the spectators had drifted away. My mother and I went to the back of the pavilion to collect a few autographs as we waited for my father to pick us up. 

Cowdrey came out. Thank you, but I had his autograph (membership card proffered as supporting evidence). Was there anyone else I was waiting for to sign? Alan Knott. Wait there.

Cowdrey returned to the dressing room and a minute later a beaming Alan Knott appeared, as if there was nothing he wanted to do more than leave the warmth of the pavilion to stand in the rain signing a raggedy card. Cowdrey was a flawed individual in some ways (see the D’Oliveira affair), and he lumbered us with the ridiculous Spirit of Cricket in the laws but his kindness that day made a big impression on a seven-year-old. It presented cricket as a game with a heart, as a place of safety where you would be looked after. 

The 1970 signatures were all secured at the Oval on the second day of the fifth and final match in the series between England and the Rest of the World, a replacement for the cancelled tour by white South Africa. In my last piece I bemoaned that the series was retrospectively stripped of test status when the cricket was of a quality rarely equalled and never surpassed in my time. 

Not that it was all brilliant. On the first day, 115 overs had been bowled, almost a session more than the sedentary over rates of the 21st century. But look at the score: 229 for five—a fraction under two runs scored in each of those extra overs. In The Times, John Woodcock blamed the Kent captain: “What had promised to be a classical innings by Cowdrey was beset by apprehension”. 

Things went a little more quickly when we were there on Friday, as they tended to when Alan Knott was making a half-century. But a slow pitch meant that, until tea, great players—Barry Richards, Eddie Barlow, Rohan Kanhai—struggled to be more than mundane. 

Then, something special happened, as Woodcock reports:

Here were the two great left-handers of the age together and at their best, since equalled, but not surpassed, only by Lara and Sangakkara. More than that, it was a partnership between two men who could not have shared the same railway carriage or used the same bathroom in the homeland of one of them. How Vorster must have choked on his breakfast biltong as he read the reports on the South African papers the following morning. 

This should surely make the top ten of my personal cricket-watching list. Trouble is, I can’t remember any of it. I was certainly there, as the autographs in the member’s card testify. It must have been Friday, as that was my mother’s day off from the china-and-glass department. We would not have left before the end. I recall sitting in the Vauxhall Stand, and certain details, such as Don Wilson’s return catch to dismiss Kanhai. But nothing of two great players nearing perfection. 

Though too young to provide analysis or useful insight, I have impressions of everything significant that I had watched up to that point—Cowdrey in the 67 Gillette semi-final; the whole course of the  final that year; Denness’s painful debut innings against New Zealand. Much that was insignificant too, like slow-left-armer Andy Hooper’s first five overs in first-class cricket being maidens in 1966. So why not this? Maybe Kent players not being involved? 

I do remember waiting at the back of the Oval pavilion to collect the autographs shown above. Garry Sobers (my annotation is badly spelt) shows consistency of signature over the years. Deryck Murray uses his initials, as befits a Cambridge man. Dennis Amiss was that year’s victim of Oval-test syndrome, where the selectors based their selection of fringe players for the winter tour just on performance in that match. In the second innings he made 35, but Fletcher scored 63, so got the place on the plane to Australia.

I intercepted EW Swanton as he left the pavilion having delivered his summary of the day’s play on Test Match Special (for those too young to have experienced Swanton’s daily address, it was like the Queen’s Christmas message, but in the summer). Given the fun I have at Swanton’s expense in the monthly cricket magazine pieces, I should report that he was charm itself, saying “happy to oblige a Kent man” with a beaming smile as he returned the card. 

The Cricket Magazines: October 1972

I have fallen behind in my surveys of the cricket magazines of half-a-century ago. My summer holiday task is to catch up, starting with the October editions.

The focus of both The Cricketer and Playfair Cricket Monthly was the fifth test at the Oval that concluded the best Ashes series in England since the Second World War. It was decided on the sixth day, the last test in England to have such a provision until the final of the World Test Championship in 2021.

Centuries by both Chappells gave Australia a first-innings advantage of 115, but debutant Barry Wood’s 90 led a strong response to set a target of 242, a cinch in the era of Bazball but quite a challenge in 1972.

England were handicapped by the depletion of their attack through the second innings: D’Oliveira had a bad back, Illingworth turned his ankle and Snow had the flu, “sick and shaking” as he managed a single over with the second new ball.

At 171 for five, Jack Fingleton, according to Basil Easterbrook, “groaned and said ‘It’s too many for us now’ ”, but Paul Sheahan and Rod Marsh took them home without further loss.

England’s top scorer in the match was Alan Knott, with 92 and 63. The other day one of the Australian TV commentators said that Adam Gilchrist had re-written the book on how wicketkeepers batted in test matches. Gilchrist, brilliant as he was, merely added a chapter to Knott’s draft. This match was one of many on which Knott had a critical influence with the bat, and in a way that ignored cricket’s geometry. He would have broken the bank in an IPL auction.

Both titles agree that Australia deserved to (at least) draw the series. Easterbrook’s summary put it in historical context.

Australia won both their victories after losing the toss. They had the series outstanding bowler in Lillee, the best supporting bowler in Massie and their batsmen produced five centuries, whereas the best England could manage were three innings in the 90s. If Australia, who were beaten in vile weather in Manchester and on an unworthy pitch at Leeds, did not have the luck this time it perhaps went some way to compensate for the period between 1961 and 1968 when three Australian sides in no way superior to England…undeservedly held on to The Ashes.

John Woodcock agreed that Lillee had a decisive influence, which he expressed in the language of the time.

He runs a tediously long way; yet to see him pounding in to bowl, and to put oneself in the batsman’s shoes, is to know one is watching a man’s game.

Not quite how I would put it, but Lillee running in, shirt billowing, with a Dick Dastardly scowl, was one of the great sights of cricket.

Clive Lloyd made one of the finest Lord’s-final centuries in the first World Cup in 1975. Three years earlier he made another as Lancashire won the Gillette Cup for the third successive year (Jack Bond, Lancashire skipper, is pictured with the trophy on the cover of Playfair). It was the centrepiece of the reports by Michael Melford for The Cricketer and Gordon Ross for Playfair. Melford noted the power of Lloyd’s drives:

…most of them, off fast bowling, went at such a pace that the bowler, deep mid-on and deep mid-off scarcely moved before the ball was past them.

For Ross, it was the cross-bat shots:

Three times he cleared the boundary ropes with massive pulls, and it made no difference whatsoever who was bowling; this was utter domination of the attack.

Bryon Butler’s press review in The Cricketer collected more acclaim for the Guyanan, from Arlott, Swanton, Marlar, and from Dennis Compton, who got quite carried away in the Sunday Express:

This was the greatest innings I have ever seen at Lord’s at any level. I have seen and played against Sir Donald Bradman, Walter Hammond, Stan McCabe, Sir Frank Worrell, Clive [sic] Walcott, Everton Weekes and many other great players in full flow: but I have never seen an attack torn to pieces like this.

The October editions cover the first ODIs—or one-day tests as they were referred to—played in England, the first anywhere except for the hastily arranged inaugural at Melbourne the previous year. England won an entertaining series two-one. In the first game, Dennis Amiss became the first century-maker in this form of the international game.

It will surprise many to see that, in the absence of the injured Illingworth, England were captained by Brian Close. A more obvious choice might have been Tony Lewis, already named as captain of MCC’s tour of India, Pakistan and Ceylon (as Sri Lanka was then known). Illingworth, along with Boycott and Snow, had made himself unavailable for a gruelling schedule that included eight test matches over more than four months.

EW Swanton’s editorial in The Cricketer once again deployed the royal pronoun in critiquing the tour party:

We must admit to disappointment that the promising new material among the 21-25 brigade has been overlooked.

The only player under 25 was Chris Old. The India correspondent of The Cricketer, KN Prabhu, reported on an underwhelmed response to the selection. The editor of a sports magazine demanded that the tour be called off if England were to be represented by a second XI. The Indian Express was barely less damning, saying that the team

…might be well balanced in that the standard of its batsmanships [sic] and bowling are likely to balance each other in mediocrity.

Prabhu himself was not so quick to write off the tourists, noting the success of various members of the party as members of an International XI some years before.

England won the first test in India before losing the next two narrowly, by 28 runs and four wickets. The final two matches in the series were drawn, as were all three in Pakistan, a reminder of how historically difficult it has been to attain a positive result on those pitches. The achievement of the McCullum/Stokes team in winning three-nil in similar conditions is one of the great achievements of the intervening half century.

       

       

The Cricketer: June 1972

 

The touring Australian batter Doug Walters appears on the cover of the June 72 edition of The Cricketer, right knee almost grounded, bat above his head on the follow through, ball presumably clattering over the boundary at Worcester even as Patrick Eager’s shutter clicked. It was a shot seen only on county grounds that summer; in the tests he scored just 57 in seven innings. On his four tours to Britain, Walters never made a test century, an astonishing omission for a man who averaged almost 50 in that form of the game.

Henry Blofeld reported from the Caribbean on the final test of New Zealand’s first tour to that part of the world. It was drawn, as were the previous four games in the series. It was only New Zealand’s third five-test series. With none in the half century since, we can safely say it was our last.

The West Indies were in transition between the great side of the early and mid-sixties and that of the mid-to-late seventies. In the featured game, at the Queen’s Park Oval in Port-of-Spain, the bowling was opened by Vanburn Holder and Garry Sobers, now 35, who went for only 67 from 40 overs across the two innings.

The run rate for the match was well short of two-and-a-half an over. What a contrast to the turbo-charged series just completed fifty years on. Readers of these pieces over the years will be aware of my admiration for Brendon McCullum. We all have our XIs of favourite cricketers; McCullum is captain of mine.

But the most dedicated of his fans could not have anticipated the extent and speed of the change that he has brought to the England team, transforming them from the frightened, risk-and-esteem-free unit that we saw in Australia and the Caribbean into the warp-speed daredevils now before us. What he has done is make them forget that they are English.

At this rate, if he stays in post for the full four years he could change the entire fabric of British society. People will start talking to strangers on public transport. Beer will be drunk only if refrigerated. Café patrons will refuse to accept bad coffee.

For us in the South Pacific, it has all been a bit much. We feel a certain nostalgia for the days when you could block for a draw for five days, five times in a row.

Blofeld identifies four New Zealanders as “world-class”. Glenn Turner hit his peak and averaged 96. Like Turner, Bevan Congdon made two centuries in the series. The following year, Congdon was to score another pair of hundreds (both170s) in a losing cause; Daryl Mitchell has gone one better.

Another to reach a career peak in the sun was Bruce Taylor, whose fast-medium took 27 wickets at 17. More surprisingly, Blofeld’s quartet is completed by slow left-armer Hedley Howarth, whose contribution was “a much bigger one than his figures suggest”. You might hope so, given that those figures were 14 wickets at 50, At least Howarth was picked; Ajaz Patel has bowled all of two overs for the national team since he took all ten in Mumbai at the end of last year.

The most interesting piece in the June edition was Christopher Martin-Jenkins’ profile of Alan Knott. These days, it would be entirely unremarkable for a cricketer to speak of yoga (taught to him first by Bishen Bedi), training with a soccer team (Charlton FC) for better fitness, or pursuing perfection through continuous improvement. Knott, frequently mocked by away crowds for his stretching regime during play, was way ahead of his time.

CMJ reminds us that, earlier in 1972, a selection panel of Arlott, Cardus and Johnston had picked Knott ahead of Godfrey Evans as keeper in England’s greatest post-war XI for a computer Ashes test (featured nightly across a week on Radio 4 as I recall). It is gratifying to find that his genius was recognised by his contemporaries.

There is also a profile of Warwickshire skipper Alan Smith, better known as AC to differentiate him from MJK Smith, also of that parish. Those familiar with AC as a keeper-batsman good enough to play six tests will be surprised to see him pictured in mid bowl, deploying a Procter-like chest-on action. There is a piece to be written on keeper-bowlers. Something in the air at Edgbaston made custodians cast off the pads and grab the leather. Geoff Humpage was wont to have eight overs of a Sunday in the eighties.

With Deryck Murray now in the team, Smith was free to bowl more often, and did so with some effect in 1972, taking a five-for in both the Championship and the Sunday League. He was a frightening sight, ball in hand. His run up was that of a man charging a locked door, the teeth, bared in a clown’s smile, only accentuating the aggression. The ball emerged from a confusion of limbs, apparently an afterthought.

AC Smith later became one of English cricket’s leading administrators, famously (if Martin Johnson is to be believed) responding to a journalist’s enquiry with “no comment, but don’t quote me on that”.

1968

Sharp-eyed Twitter followers will have spotted that a few weeks ago @kentccc1967 became @kentccc1968. This was intended to be the prelude to a brief return to the day-by-day re-creation of cricket and the world fifty years ago, which proved popular among the discerning when applied to the 1967 season last year. The idea was to follow events from the first day of the final Ashes test through to the cancellation of MCC’s tour of South Africa.

It soon became clear that I don’t have the time to achieve even this modest goal. For one thing, work is very busy, for another my Khandallah correspondent and I were married a few weeks ago. She returned from a trip to Auckland recently with a copy of the 1932 Wisden for me, so I won’t do better. 

On the face of it, 1968 should have been a season worth remembering. It was an Ashes year, overseas players were able to play county cricket without enduring a qualification period and bonus points were introduced to encourage brighter cricket. For all this, it was not a summer that shouts out for commemoration.

The Ashes series was a damp and often dull, without quite emulating the torpor of the 1964 series (frighten your children with Tom Cartwright’s first innings figures at Old Trafford: 77–32–118–2).

During the final test against India recently, one of the television commentators revealed that of the previous 31 test matches in England only one had been drawn. Coming into the ’68 series, just over half of the 25 Ashes tests in England since the Second World War had been drawn. England won just four home Ashes tests in that period.

An unfancied Australian team won the first test, at Old Trafford, by 159 runs, England collapsing to Bob Cowper’s soothing trundle in the first innings. Then the rain set in.

After the Lord’s test against India, Mike Atherton wrote a piece in The Times about how ground technology has moved the game along. He imagined how that match would have progressed in an age without top-notch drainage and floodlights. India might well have saved that game, not just because much more time would have been lost, but because they would have had the opportunity to rescue their first innings from a bad start by batting in the friendlier conditions that England experienced.

Let’s reverse the counterfactual. What if the rain-ruined second and third tests of 1968 had had modern ground facilities available? It is probable that England would have won both.

In the second, at Lord’s, Australia needed 273 to avoid an innings defeat (having been bowled out for 78 in the first innings), but, with only two-and-a-half hours played on the last day, survived easily enough.

The first day’s play in the third test at Edgbaston was called off at 10 am. England again gained a considerable first innings lead. A declaration left Australia with 330 to win, an achievable target now, but one that the Ashes-defending Australians would never have attempted in those defensive days. The onset of rain an hour or so into the final day raised hopes that Derek Underwood could be a drying-pitch magician, but it didn’t stop all afternoon.

The match was notable for Colin Cowdrey becoming the first cricketer to play a hundred tests, which he marked with a hundred, all the more meritorious for the fact that he had Boycott as a runner for the latter part of the innings.

The rain mostly stayed away from the fourth test at Headingley, but still there was insufficient time for a positive result. The first three innings each reached just over 300, leaving England 326 at 66 an hour, a fact recorded in Wisden as if it were one of the tasks of Hercules. They gave up soon after tea with four wickets down, the possibility of defeat apparently more shaming than the chance of winning the Ashes was enticing.

In The Times, both John Woodcock and Jack Fingleton identified the superior Australian fielding as the defining difference. Fingleton contrasted the pristine flannels of the home side with those of the grass-stained Australians.

Those who see the selection of Adil Rashid for the test team after he had forsaken domestic red-ball cricket as an unprecedented derogation of county cricket should have a look at the England team at Headingley, in particular at the presence of ER Dexter at No 3. Why had Dexter been brought into the side? What sort of season had he had?

He hadn’t. A few knocks on Sundays for the Cavaliers apart, Dexter’s first innings of the year came against Kent at Hastings on the Saturday before the Leeds test, after he had been given the nod for selection. He took full advantage of the opportunity, knocking up a double century against Kent at Hastings, but what did David Green, Brian Bolus or Alan Jones—to name three players who were having good seasons—think of Dexter’s selection?

As well as Dexter, the selectors brought in another southerner, Keith Fletcher, for his debut. They couldn’t have anatagonised the Yorkshire crowd (who favoured their own Phil Sharpe) more had they gone round Headingley poking each personally with a sharp stick. Fletcher got a first-innings duck, dropped a couple of catches and had a rough reception at Leeds ever after. One senses Dexter making notes for his own spell as selectoral supremo a couple of decades later.

So to the Oval, and a truly memorable test match, the more so because of the rain. Late on the fourth evening Australia were left with 356 to win. Now, that would be thought tough but achievable, but the caution of the era meant that the possibility of an Australian win was barely considered. Fingleton thought Cowdrey too cautious in not declaring.

In the nine overs bowled that Monday evening, Australia lost two wickets. I remember watching on television as a gleeful Underwood left the field having just got Redpath lbw.

Tuesday morning’s television coverage started at noon, half an hour after play began. There was no reason for this other than the cussedness of the scheduler; the hour-long gap between Watch With Mother and the cricket was filled only with the test card. So I’d have heard about Ian Chappell’s leg-before dismissal to Underwood on Test Match Special (Arlott, McGilvray and Hudson commentating).

You can see the Chappell dismissal and that of Doug Walters on this black-and-white footage. That vicious bite and turn from Underwood refutes the notion that Underwood was dangerous only on drying pitches. And what a catch from Alan Knott. If I could choose the last thing that I would see on Earth it would be Knott taking a catch like that off Underwood.

By luncheon (as The Times still called it) Sheahan was also out and Australia were 86 for five. The main question for me was how many of the rest would fall to Underwood.

As they walked off at the interval the rain started to fall. By the time of the scheduled resumption the Oval was a collection of ponds, and a draw looked certain. There is a famous photograph of a forlorn Colin Cowdrey looking across the field like a failed Moses.

With modern drainage the water would drain straight through. It would be out of the question to give fifty or so strangers sharp objects with which to accelerate the drying. It is surprising that there is no recorded objection from the Australians, as it would not have happened if they had been on the verge of victory.

It worked. Play resumed at 4 45 with 75 minutes to go (it was all on the clock, no statutory number of overs to be bowled). For half an hour the pitch was sedated by the rain. Inverarity and Jarman had little difficulty dealing with Underwood or anybody else. Then came the first signs of drying, with the ball starting to kick a little. D’Oliveira induced Jarman to leave a ball that clipped off stump and was immediately replaced at the Pavilion End by Underwood, who made the cricket world aware of what we in Kent already knew: that on a drying pitch he was a sorcerer.

McKenzie and Mallett fell in the first over of the spell, caught by David Brown, insanely close at short leg. John Gleeson survived for a quarter of an hour before leaving a ball that took his off stump. Ten minutes remained when last-man Alan Connolly reached the middle. Throughout the carnage, John Inverarity had remained staunch and defiant. He contrived to face what might have been Underwood’s last over and it seemed that he was within a few defiant lunges forward from saving the game.

But to the third ball Inverarity raised his bat and almost turned his back to the bowler. Charlie Elliott’s finger went up so quickly that it was almost ahead of the appeal, but freeze the video in the right place and you will see that the impact came before the big movement of the leg; it was a good decision. Underwood finished with seven for 50.

It was the tensest finish to a test that I would see on television until Edgbaston 2005. Yet the end is not what the match is primarily remembered for. Much has been written about the Oval ’68 on its fiftieth anniversary, almost all of it about Basil D’Oliveira’s first-innings 158, his initial omission from the MCC team to tour South Africa, his later inclusion as a replacement for Tom Cartwright and the cancellation of the tour.

I have discussed previously the importance of these events of the development of my own political consciousness. Looking at the TV listings, I realise that another strand of my political development was taking place at the same time. BBC 1 had breakfast time coverage of the Democrat Convention in Chicago. I had no interest in American politics but was nine-years-old, so would have watched grass grow for the novelty of having the TV on at that time of the morning. Nor did I know that President Johnson and Mayor Daley had sown up the nomination for Vice President Humphrey. So the theatre of the state-by-state voting (“on behalf of the great state of [insert name here] I am proud….” etc) drew me in. For the first time I understood the thrill of the concept of having the numbers, something that passes the time for me half a century later, on days when there is no cricket to watch.

There is colour footage from the Oval test on YouTube, but according to the television listings in The Times, the fourth test, at Headingley was also in colour, making it the first test match to have live colour coverage, in Britain or anywhere else. Colour TV was restricted to BBC2 at that time, so only the post-tea session would have been seen in its full colour glory. For the rest of the day, the cricket had to share monochrome BBC1 with other sports, or be subject to the random whim of the schedulers.

BBC2 was where the Sunday International Cavaliers games were to be found, so, if The Times listings are accurate (and I am not convinced that they are), the first cricket match anywhere in the world to be covered live in colour was the International Cavaliers v Cambridge University Past & Present. Feel free to take this information and win bets with it.

The other day I caught myself flicking up the collar of my polo shirt as I have for years, so long that I had almost forgotten that the habit started in imitation of Garry Sobers.

Colour cameras had not yet found their way to Wales, so Sobers’ six sixes on 31 August at St Helen’s, Swansea are recorded in grainy black-and-white from over fine leg, Wilfred Wooller combining secretarial and commentary duties. At least they were there. Outside the principality, 1968 seems to have been the year when the BBC gave up covering Championship cricket outside the Roses games, though the ITV regions still took some interest.

As in 1967, Kent finished in the Championship and won one more game than chamopions Yorkshire, but didn’t get the hang of the new bonus points system as well as the northerners did. A good last week at Folkestone reduced the final margin to 14 points but that was closer than it had been for some weeks.

The year before, the Canterbury Week clash between the two had decided the title. This year’s repeat of the same fixture was washed away like so much of the 1968 season, though on the first day Tony Nicholson, who may have asked for the Canterbury pitch to be relaid in his back garden, so partial was he to it, took eight for 22, still the best statistical bowling performance that I have seen in its entirety. The second day was completely rained out, and the visit of the Duke and Duchess of Kent failed to console me. Play resumed only later on Friday, a draw inevitable.

I will recreate a season of the past at some point when I have more time; 1970 or 1978, both Championship years for Kent, would be obvious choices. In the meantime, the domestic season here in New Zealand begins later this week. If I can muster sufficient circulation in my fingers to scribble a few notes, watch this space.