12 - 18 July: Chaos at the Crabble

 

Mike Denness’s England captaincy came to an end on the damp grass of Edgbaston. His fortunes had changed. At first he was a lucky captain, drawing a series in the Caribbean that he deserved to lose, followed by an easy summer against weaker opposition. He became unlucky as soon as the Ashes began in Brisbane, when, without warning, Lillee emerged from a long period of injury and Thomson from obscurity to form one of cricket’s most deadly pace-bowling combinations. Let us remember that later that year Clive Lloyd’s West Indies did even worse in Australia than Denness’s England, losing five-one. His winter nemeses both took five-fors in Birmingham, Lillee in the first innings, Thomson in the second, in the intervals between another piece of Denness bad luck: the rain.

The selectors were quick and merciful. The announcement that Denness was to be replaced by Tony Greig came on what would have been the fifth day of the test match, had it lasted that long. Many names had been mentioned, but Greig was the only candidate who did not fall over any of the hurdles that eliminated the rest.

The only other regular member of the test XI who was a contender was John Edrich, Denness’s deputy in Australia. The Surrey man had the grit and quality as a batter, but his county had a reputation of being disunited under his leadership. Keith Fletcher was developing a good name as Essex captain, but was thought to suffer from traumatised batter syndrome after the experiences of the winter. Of his shaky half century at Edgbaston John  Woodcock said “Fletcher’s second-innings fifty was a mixture of desperation and defiance. He will have to stay, whether he likes it or not”.

Any return to old favourites such as Illingworth or Cowdrey was agreed to be retrograde. Resorting to a county captain outside the team—Richard Gilliatt of Hampshire was mentioned more often than Mike Brearley—was how Denness had got the job. So it was Greig, despite a brashness that was a bit much for some of the establishment figures. Knott and Underwood, wisely, held no ambitions for the captaincy, though Knott stood in for Greig for an ODI in 1976.

John Arlott gave Guardian readers a shrewd and balanced assessment of what the new leader had to offer.

 

 As it happened, the Australians played Sussex at Hove this week. Greig made a strong statement by scoring a century then  blasting Greg Chappell for not declaring on the final afternoon. Things had changed.

I followed the unfolding disaster at Edgbaston on Saturday on the radio at the Crabble Ground in Dover where I was watching the first day of Championship game between Kent and Nottinghamshire, who made 328 for eight in their 100 overs, with Mike “Pasty” (he was from Cornwall) Harris making 116. He was making plenty of runs despite having taken on the keeper’s role. Harris would have been a candidate for our imaginary MCC winter touring squad that never happened. As I post this I hear that Pasty Harris has passed away (my Blean correspondent keeps me informed about the expiration of cricketers). RIP.

The Crabble was a lovely ground, set into the hillside of the North Downs as they prepared to burst out as the White Cliffs of Dover, but was in its penultimate year as a county venue. When I was back in the UK in 2011 I visited the Crabble, in the company of my Blean correspondent. Here is my account.

Fast forward to September 2023. I was spending a few days in Melbourne and take a day trip to Geelong, a pleasant coastal town an hour south of the city. In a bookshop I came across a title that I had not heard of, Brian Levinson's Cricket Grounds Then and Now. Flicking through it, I saw a piece on the Crabble and was surprised to find my name in it, referring to the piece on Scorecards. What’s more, I was in the index, sandwiched by two of the greats, George Hirst and Jack Hobbs.

 

 I was not present for the final two days of the Championship game, a pity as there was fun to be had on both. Canterbury’s St Lawrence Ground was, I’m pretty sure, the only venue on the county circuit that operated two full scoreboards, the white one where the café is now and the black one that still tops the length of the Leslie Ames Stand. Not all the test grounds provided two full boards.

Provisions at the outgrounds were not as efficient. I have forgotten what the arrangements were at the Crabble, or even where the scoreboard was, but it almost certainly involved lots of individual metal sheets hung on hooks with operators who were not as familiar with the process as those at headquarters. On the second day of the Nottinghamshire game there confusion about the visitors’ first-innings score, which became crucial when Kent were in danger of following on. Happily, Alan Gibson was present to record the chaos.

 

Two years later a similar scoreboard fiasco occurred down the road at Folkestone. With 15 left to get in five overs and six wickets in hand, Kent contrived a collapse that left that epitome of No 11 batters Kevin Jarvis on strike with three balls remaining. To quote the Kent Annual “the scoreboard suggested that two were required and Fletcher set the field accordingly, thus when Jarvis scored the winning run off his first ball confusion reigned as the batsmen left the wicket with the fielders and umpires believing the scores were still level”.

On the third day of the Championship match back in 1975, Kent chased down 330 in 72 overs, a good chase now, then an improbable one. From Gibson in The Times:

 

Nottinghamshire lost despite losing only ten wickets to Kent’s 17, but that was in the nature of three-day cricket.

I was at the Crabble for the Sunday League match that also ended in a successful Kent pursuit, an unbroken sixth-wicket stand of 60 between Dave Nicholls and Alan Ealham.

After the Championship game finished at 6 20pm on Tuesday the two teams got in their cars and drove 210 miles to Nottingham where they began a 60-over Gillette Cup game at 11 am on Wednesday. Tell the young people of today that you could get 120 overs into a day’s cricket and they won’t believe you. Kent did well to recover from 47 for five to reach 216, but still lost by 31 runs.

Alan Ealham was twelfth man for that game and fielded for the injured Norman Graham. I doubt that there has ever been a greater disparity in the quality of fielding between the replaced and the replacing. It makes the difference between Gary Pratt and the England bowlers he subbed on for in 2005 look as nothing. Ealham took two catches described by Peter Marson in The Times as “splendid”, a level of fielding proficiency of which the gangly bowler could only dream.

My future skiing instructor Barry Dudleston was in fine form, completing his third century in a month. Barry was 80 this week; going round a golf course in less than his age may be a realistic prospect some time soon. Happy birthday to him.

 

 

 

The Green Pitches of Dover: 26 August to 1 September 1967

Kent played their final two Championship games of the season at the Crabble in Dover, as attractive as any ground in the county. It has not hosted county cricket since 1976, but on a visit to England in 2011 I returned there for a look around: In Search of the Crabble.

Kent finished on the charge, with two wins, the first with just two minutes remaining, the second with a day and a half to spare. We will begin with Peter West’s report on the half day’s play that ended the week. 

It’s funny reading that report now, fifty years after I watched West write it. As recorded in the earlier piece, that day the Crabble became the second ground on which I watched county cricket. With game over in mid-afternoon and my Dad not picking us up until later (in our brand new Ford Cortina: I had watched him write a cheque for £700 for it at the start of the month and could barely believe that there was so much money in the world), hanging about for autographs passed the time satisfyingly. Norman Graham signed after passing a hundred wickets for the season while taking 12 for 80. Bob Wilson also did so, but was rueful when asked by another hunter if he was playing at Lord’s in the final on Saturday. “I don’t know” he said, but he did, and he wasn’t. In fact, a second-innings duck in the Warwickshire game had been the last of 647 innings that brought just short of 20,000 runs with 30 centuries.

With the players gone, my attention turned to the press box, a standalone hut on one of the terraces, painted in green and white stripes. West politely rebuffed someone trying to have a chat, explaining that he had a report to write. So I observed as he wrote the piece in longhand, then listened as he phoned it through to the copy desk at Printing House Square. Work done, Peter West (one of television’s best-known faces in 1967) was happy to add his name to the autograph collection (which I still have but can’t find). 

The thing that did for Dover in the long-term, besides the reduction of Championship fixtures, was the poor quality of the pitches. West’s judgment that the pitch for the Essex match “cannot have failed to implant a sense of insecure tenure” identifies him as the Ishiguro of the sports pages in his use of understatement. Its nature may be gleaned by the fact that Underwood—the country’s leading wicket taker—bowled not a single ball in the game. Six of the second-innings wickets that I saw fall on the second day were caught either behind or at first slip as the ball seamed as if from Saville Row. Not many matches are won by as comfortable a margin as nine wickets by a team that has not scored 200 in the match. 

The pitch for the Warwickshire game was also green, more of a risk when the opposition included Tom Cartwright, who duly took ten in the match. A fine 86 not out by Mike Denness got Kent home. The schedulers were, as discussed last week, either sadists or geographical ignoramuses; Warwickshire finished at Dover later on Tuesday afternoon then had to drive to Middlesbrough to start a new game against Yorkshire the following morning.

Leicestershire also won twice this week to finish their season, but in vain as Kent’s extra win kept them ahead with the teams level on points. Alan Gibson described them as the team that had most the most of its talent, thanks to the captaincy of Tony Lock, who bore a strong resemblance to Brian Close, both physically and in his bugger-them-all approach. Lock did not return in 1968, but Leicestershire made another from the same mould when Ray Illingworth joined them in 1969. 

Yorkshire’s draw at Trent Bridge early in the week mean that Kent finished the week at the head of the table, hoping either that bottom-of-the-table Gloucestershire would gather themselves for a redemptive win at Harrogate the following week or, more likely, that the northern weather would wash the Championship pennant to Canterbury (a pennant was all the winners got, by the way; there was no trophy then). 

Brian Close’s 98 put Yorkshire in a winning position against Warwickshire in their second game of the week, a heroic performance on the day that he was defrocked from the England captaincy. If a Times leader couldn’t sway the establishment in his favour, nothing could. Later in the week one of his businesses went into liquidation.

Given Colin Cowdrey’s fortuitous inheritance of the captaincy it is odd that The Times ran this headline on Wednesday:

It is interesting that the selectors supported Close, but it was the MCC Committee—a body including six knights of the realm, two of whom were generals—who signed the execution warrant, declaring the future MCC President as his successor. Amateurism may have been abolished on the field, but it remained the creed of the committee room, in all its senses.

Derek Underwood was the surprise omission from the touring party, despite taking eight wickets at a cost of 16 each in the two tests in which he had played. Titmus, Pocock and Hobbs were the selected spinners. Perhaps Underwood suffered from being regarded as not a proper spinner. John Woodcock continued to him as a cutter, and EW Swanton was forever saying that he should give the ball more air. A season’s haul of 136 wickets at 12.39 were not enough. Geoff Arnold’s fine performance in the final test was also ignored.

The final day of the test series produced the most entertaining international cricket of the season: a joyous world-record partnership of 190 for the ninth wicket between Asif Iqbal and Intikhab Alam. I recall watching this on television and wanting it to go on and on. It was the first time I watched Asif’s Road Runner footwork, enjoyed from slip by Colin Cowdrey. So when it became known that each county would be able to recruit an overseas player without a qualification period for 1968, it was Asif Iqbal that Kent went for, and joyously so.

Outside cricket the story of the week was the death of Brian Epstein at 32. 

The letter of the week in The Times (for me anyway) was this reminiscence of WG Grace:

And so to Lord’s for the Gillette Cup Final.