The Cricket Magazines: December 1972

 

The first four pages of Playfair are, mystifyingly, devoted to a preview of the domestic season in South Africa, to be contested exclusively by white players, though the political context is referred to only obliquely. More commendably, The Cricketer had a correspondent on non-European cricket in South Africa, A Akhalwaya. He reports on the reaction to the end of Basil D’Oliveira’s test-match career in his homeland, reminding us how much it meant to the non-white population to have one of their own playing at the highest level.

Here in South Africa we found ourselves unabashedly supporting England. Whenever England played no more did we ask: ‘What is the score?’ Instead, it became ‘What did D’Oliveira score?’ or ‘How many wickets did he take?

…One wonders which country the schoolboys will now support.

The Cricketer has a review of the season by Tony Pawson that in structure is strikingly similar to Tony Lewis’s Journal of the Season in November’s issue. Could there have been a miscommunication that led Pawson to think that he was i/c the Journal in 1972? If so, it was a felicitous error, as Pawson was always worth reading. Occasionally, his path crossed with mine, for example in May:

Knott’s bewildering range of quick-footed shots brought him a century in each innings at Maidstone.

I was there for the second of these centuries. It was my first visit to Mote Park, a ground that became a favourite, the English venue that was most like our parkland grass bowls here in New Zealand. Pawson’s own batting for Kent, a generation earlier, was by all accounts similar to Knott’s in its fleetness of foot and scurrying between the wickets. Pawson also contributes portraits of Colin Cowdrey and Donald Carr.

Another day of fond memory is pictured, 10 September when Kent won the Sunday League by beating Worcestershire at St Lawrence. Guardian of the telephone in the Canterbury press box, Dudley Moore (who must have got tired of being asked where Peter Cook was) summed up Kent’s route to the title, culminating in chasing 190, the biggest target they faced all season. A century partnership between Luckhurst and Nicholls took them home.

David Frith made an early impression as Deputy Editor of The Cricketer by conducting an airmail interview with Clarrie Grimmett, the New Zealander who took 216 wickets with his leg spin for Australia. It’s fascinating. Grimmett says that his greatest regret was that he was not selected for the 1938 tour to England.

I had hoped to continue my great association with Bill O’Reilly; this breaking of our partnership was a terrific blow to both of us…The only reason I can think of for my omission is that I was thought to be too old.

As Grimmett was 46 at that time, he probably had a point. Though born in Dunedin, the leg-spinner learned his cricket at the Basin Reserve in Wellington, for whom he made his debut in the Plunket Shield when he was 17, leaving for Australia when he was 22.

Grimmett received an early lesson in the realities of Sheffield Shield cricket from New South Wales skipper Monty Noble, who berated him for getting through his overs too quickly (a six-ball over in a minute-and-a-half!) so not allowing the quickies a rest.

He nominates Stan McCabe as the greatest strokemaker he saw. Grimmett’s choice of the major batsman that he had a strong chance of dismissing is a surprise: Bradman.

          I always felt he was uncomfortable against good-length spin.

On modern cricket, he deplores short-pitched bowling, but blames the batsmen for it.

If they learnt correct footwork instead of ducking (and getting hit in the process) short bowling would die a natural death.

Both publications carry articles concerning Warwickshire’s Championship-winning captain AC Smith (the Edgbaston Smiths AC and MJK were known by their initials). Richard Eaton interviews him in Playfair, while The Cricketer piece carries Smith’s byline. Given his notorious statement to the media years later as CE of the TCCB: “no comment, but don’t quote me”, it is no surprise that Eaton’s is the more illuminating.

Warwickshire’s trip of brilliant West Indians, Gibbs, Kanhai and Kallicharran was supplemented mid-season by Deryck Murray who took AC’s place as wicketkeeper. Naturally, Smith turned to bowling instead.

I am a liquorice allsorts bowler. I think I can bowl cutters when the wicket is soft or broken, but I like to get the ball shone a bit and swing it on a good wicket,

He does not attempt to describe his bowling action, which was as chaotic as any I have seen, and accompanied by a pantomime villain’s grin at the point of release.

Mike Denness, in his Captain’s Column in Playfair, bemoans the travel demands made on county cricketers. One weekend began with a journey…

…from Folkestone on a Friday night to play Somerset at Glastonbury. On the Saturday night we motored up to Derby, returning on Sunday night to Somerset.

On the Tuesday evening we headed north to play Yorkshire at Bradford.

They played cricket on all these days, and the motorway network was nowhere near as developed as it became. It is surprising that there were not more injuries or deaths. As crowded as the fixture  list now remains, it is much more reasonable than it was.

This is the best edition of Playfair that I have come across so far. There is also Cardus on Ranji, Stephen Green on the Treasures of Lord’s and an interesting interview with the Glamorgan player Tony Cordle by Basil Easterbrook. Cordle was then about halfway through a county career that saw him take almost a thousand wickets, often in bowling partnership with Malcolm Nash.

He was one of the Windrush generation of immigrants from the Caribbean, and suffered many of the indignities of that community when he arrived in London. Relatives whisked him off to Cardiff, where, most fortuitously for Glamorgan, a job interview happened to be held overlooking the Cardiff Arms Park cricket ground. He decided to join the Cardiff club, despite, unusually for a Bajan, never having played in an organised game.

There is an interesting video on YouTube of a recent interview with Cordle by Glamorgan historian Andrew Hignell.

 

New Zealand v Australia, First Test, Basin Reserve, First Day, 12 February 2016

Scorecard

The contest for sport’s most unoriginally named prize begins. Australia and New Zealand will contest the Trans-Tasman Trophy over two matches this week and next. Where’s the history, the romance, the inspiration? It should be the Clarrie Grimmett Trophy, after the Dunedin-born, Wellington-schooled leg spinner who bowled thousands of overs on the Basin before crossing the Tasman to play 37 tests for Australia, finishing with a world-record 216 wickets.

There has been much conjecture about the pitch ahead of the game, and at the start of the day it did indeed have about it a sufficiently verdant hue to suggest that it would provide a moderately hungry sheep with a decent lunch. In New Zealand we have fixed on the idea that the Australians are flat-track bullies. By way of reinforcing this notion Wellington’s Dominion Post this morning featured a large-type scorecard of Australia’s first innings at Trent Bridge last August, in which they were bowled out for 60.

Alas, Brendon McCullum lost the toss, so it was the home side who were the laboratory beagles testing how toxic the pitch was.

Fifty-one for five by drinks. It wasn’t one of those sessions where the ball was constantly beating or finding the edge. Most of the batsmen—Guptill and Williamson in particular—looked comfortable until they got out. The run rate was more than six an over for the first six overs. But once the bowlers found their line and length the ball did just enough.

Peter Siddle was outstanding. It is difficult to believe that a vegan can bowl such bustling aggression, but today he put the ball on the right spot time and again. Hazlewood bowled better when he had Siddle’s example to follow. Jackson Bird did not have such a good day, bowling an Australian length on a New Zealand pitch.

Anderson and Watling managed a partial recovery with a partnership that took New Zealand through to lunch. Watling and Bracewell were out soon after lunch, but Anderson batted for almost two-and-a-half hours for his 38. Yet it was not an innings that increased confidence in Anderson as a test No 6. It included six fours, which goes to show how difficult he found it to score singles and rotate the strike. At this point Mitchell Santner (absent with a foot injury here) looks a better fit in this position.

Anderson struck Nathan Lyon over mid on for four when the off spinner returned mid-afternoon, but was succoured by a slight change of pace into chipping the next ball tamely to mid off. Tim Southee attempted to get off the mark by slogging over long on and was caught at backward point, giving Lyon his second wicket in two overs at bargain basement cost.

Why Southee bats above Trent Boult is a mystery to everybody who was at the Basin today. That New Zealand finished with as many as 183 was due to Boult, who hit three sixes—stroked would be a better word, such was the refinement of the shots—and put on 46 for the tenth wicket with Mark Craig.

There was early promise for New Zealand, with Southee dismissing both openers in his first two overs. Smith was dropped by Craig at second slip, and Watling missed a tough stumping chance off Craig when Khawaja advanced down the pitch, but there was an ease about the batting of both men that had been absent from New Zealand’s innings. I was a surprise when Smith hit a low return catch to Craig to be dismissed for 71.

New Zealand’s difficult day was compounded in the final over of the day when Bracewell bowled Voges only to have Richard Illingworth call no ball. Replays showed a heel clearly behind the line.

I remember Colin Cowdrey’s hundredth test, at Edgbaston against Australia in 1968. It seemed an extraordinary feat, and some doubted that it would ever be equalled. Today, Brendon McCullum became the 64^th to achieve the feat, but he is the first to do so with consecutive appearances, something that we may very well not see again. Cowdrey scored a hundred way back when, but McCullum made a duck today, a Bradmanesque response, perhaps, to a standing ovation.

At the end of the day I was waiting for my Khandallah correspondent to pick me up outside the ground when one of a passing group of young fellows pointed at me and said “look, it’s Tony Greig” (I wear a white hat similar to that sported habitually by the late commentator, and am tall, though not as tall as him). Fortunately, I keep at my disposal a Tony Greig impersonation that suffices on such occasions. Doffing the hat, I said “good awfternoon gentlemen, let’s have a look at the pitch here at the Basin, where it will go like a tracer bullet”. I think that I made their day.