7 – 13 June 1975 The First Cricket World Cup is Underway

 In the present there is a world cricket final taking place at Lord’s. There was another one, in Dubai (!) a couple of months ago, and another last year, when part of the tournament was played partly in the USA (!!). And so on. It all began fifty years ago this week, when the first Cricket World Cup began. Not that is was called anything so vulgar. Officially, it was the International Championship Cricket Event of 1975, or, in acknowledgement of the sponsors, the Prudential Cup. The word “World” did not appear on anything official.

There were eight competing teams: the six active test-playing sides plus Sri Lanka (Ceylon, recently renamed) and the composite East Africa. England, India, New Zealand and East Africa constituted one group, Australia, Pakistan, West Indies and Sri Lanka the other. Each played their groupmates once, the top two progressing to the semis. It was a 60-over, which made for long days. There were no fielding restrictions. The whole thing was done in 15 days.

Fitting in with the established pattern of domestic cricket in the UK, matches were scheduled for Saturdays and Wednesdays, with two days in reserve to finish in case of weather interruption. Happily, this was unnecessary. From the time that the first ball of the World Cup was bowled, 1975 turned glorious, the sunniest summer of my lifetime to that point.  

The tournament was covered on television by the BBC, who had cameras at two games on each matchday, but insufficient airtime to cover one from first ball to last, let alone a pair. On Saturday, the cricket had to share Grandstand with the racing from Haydock Park, and BBC 2 preferred to give its afternoon to the Tony Hancock film The Punch and Judy Man rather than offer the possibility of live coverage of both games. The four commentators who would normally have worked at one game were spread between two, Jim Laker and Ted Dexter at Lord’s for England against India, and Peter West and Richie Benaud at Headingley for Australia versus Pakistan.

There was no ball-by-ball commentary on radio until the final. There were BBC commentators at all four games, but they had to compete with racing, cycling and tennis on Sport on 2, presented by Alan Parry, and extended until 7pm, which would not have been late enough to guarantee covering the end of every contest. The Radio Times listed John Arlott, Brian Johnston, Don Mosey, Henry Blofeld and Freddie Trueman as commentators, along with visitors Tony Cozier and New Zealand’s Alan Richards, but does not say who was where. On Wednesday there was no commentary at all, merely reports on the hourly sports desks.

The showpiece of the first day, England v India, is remembered fifty years on, but not in a good way. England showed the value of experience in this form of the game by running up 334, 137 by Dennis Amiss leading the way. This was an immense score. For context, the highest in 12 years of England’s domestic 60-over competition thus far was 327, and that by Gloucestershire against minor county Berkshire.

India had one of the Himalayas to climb. They decided before leaving the dressing room that it could not be attempted. Famously, Sunil Gavaskar batted through the 60 overs for 36 not out of India’s 132 for three. BBC huffily switched to Headingley and included none of the Indian innings on the highlights package. Gavaskar is usually blamed, but there was collective responsibility. None of the other batters were much more aggressive and, as John Arlott noted in The Guardian, Farokh Engineer—hard-hitting member of three Lancashire 60-over champion teams—was not promoted up the order. In The Times John Woodcock made the point that the previous year India had been humiliated at Lord’s, bowled out for 42, and that anything was better than that.

Not all India’s supporters agreed and several entered the field of play to inform Gavaskar of this personally. One felt strongly enough to punch two policemen and on Monday was jailed for six months.

We have to remember that the grammar of one-day cricket was still being learned. Almost every week in this series of articles it has been noted, with a degree of astonishment, how low the scoring was in limited-over games of various durations. The next day only nine sixes were hit across seven games in the Sunday League, and only one of the 14 teams passed 200. To a fair extent limited-overs cricket was approached as if it was a first-class innings with a bit of hitting at the end. The Indians, who as yet played no domestic one-day cricket, opened the grammar primer for the first time that Saturday at Lord’s to find out about a language that they had not heard before. They learned quickly. Just eight years later they fluent enough to win the third World Cup.

The game at Edgbaston followed much the same pattern. New Zealand scored 309 for five, of which Glenn Turner made 171 not out, which remained his country’s highest ODI score until Lou Vincent made 172 against Zimbabwe 40 years later. East Africa made four fewer than India did at Lord’s, their aim not to win but to survive 60 overs, which they did, with two wickets to spare. In 2015 I paid good money to watch the UAE do the same thing (over 50 overs) against South Africa, which is why I am in the small minority who do not want World Cups open to a greater number of teams until there are enough who want to win not just be there.

Pakistan lost to Australia by 73 runs, Lillee five for 34, though his mate Thommo had no-ball issues. West Indies blew Sri Lanka away by nine wickets.

On Wednesday, West Indies v Pakistan produced the first classic World Cup contest, a game that remains one of the competition’s greatest. Pakistan, without Imran Khan taking exams in Oxford and captain Asif Iqbal in hospital, made 266. Stand-in skipper Majid Khan led with 60 and a young man we had not heard of called Javed Miandad chipped in 24 at the end.

Sarfraz Nawaz knocked off the top three and wickets continued to fall until West Indies were 168 for eight. Henry Blofeld told Guardian readers what happened thereafter.

The key was that the run rate was kept up even as wickets fell. Deryck Murray’s experience of the limited-overs game helped as did the intelligence and judgement that later made him Trinidad and Tobago’s representative at the UN.

At the Oval Australia made 328, opener Alan Turner leading with 101. When Jeff Thomson took the new ball, for the Sri Lankans it was more like the Colosseum as Wisden 1976 relates with some distaste.

 

As Australian manager Fred Bennett said in response to criticism of Thomson, “What do you expect us to tell the boy to do, bowl underarm?”. Given that Sri Lanka were 150 for two in good time a little hostility seems not unreasonable. It should be remembered that we are two years away from batsmen wearing helmets for the first time.

The two exponents of slow cricket, India and East Africa, met at Headingley where the Boycott fans no doubt cheered the Africans as they took 56 overs to make 120, a total that openers Gavaskar and Engineer put on without loss in a breathless 30 overs.

England dispatched New Zealand easily enough with Keith Fletcher making 131. For New Zealand it was notable for appearance of three Hadlee brothers together in international cricket, batter Barry joining Dayle and Richard, something that also occurred when New Zealand played England in Dunedin a few months before.

So with a round to play, Australia, West Indies and England were through to the semis with New Zealand and India to play for the last place.

The County Championship continued, though with most sides depleted by the loss of World Cup players. Performance of the week was eight for 73 by Yorkshire off spinner Geoff Cope at Bristol, this three years before being troubled by problems of legality with his bowling action that led to a disruptive young section of the Kent crowd referring to him as “Chucker” Cope.

A young Somerset player was being tipped for future international selection, but not the one you think. It was batter Phil Slocombe who was attracting attention with a run of good scores, stylishly made. 1975 was to be his best year. John Woodcock also observed that “Botham is a robust hitter of the ball, a strong young man, in fact”.

Kent lost in the Sunday League for the first time this season, vacating the top of the table not to return until the following year. It was Kent’s worst season of the seventies, with early exits in both knock-out competitions and falling out of contention in the leagues well before the season’s end.

Alan Gibson was in a mood to reminisce, first at Ilford.

 

And at the Oval for the Australia v Sri Lanka game.

 

This week saw the start of a four-week trial of broadcasting radio coverage of question time in the House of Commons. It so happened that this occurred on the very day that I sat the British Constitution O level exam. I collected obscure subjects, but took no science O levels. French Literature followed later in the week.

Colin Cowdrey announced his retirement at the end of the season, but was to have a glorious curtain call in a couple of weeks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

       

       

Alan Knott at 70

During the recent World T20, Australia played New Zealand. Glenn Maxwell got one to turn sharply past Colin Munro’s outside edge. Wicketkeeper Peter Nevill’s hands started to move only after the ball had passed. I thought what I always think, what I have always thought, on such occasions for the last fifty years: Knotty would have had it.

So he would have too, for Alan Knott was the finest wicketkeeper that I have seen, will ever see.

A while ago, some younger work colleagues who are keen on cricket raised the subject of Geoff Boycott’s selection of a team of the best players he had seen or played against. Boycott’s pick of Alan Knott as keeper rather than Adam Gilchrist, attracted ridicule, identifying the Yorkshireman as an old fogey.

Gather round, my young friends, as I reveal your foolishness to you.

“How would Knott have got on keeping to Shane Warne?” they might ask. “Brilliantly” is the unhesitating answer (a less benevolent blog than My Life in Cricket Scorecards would be tempted to respond with another question: “How would Gilchrist have got on keeping to Derek Underwood on a drying turner?”, but the purpose here is to celebrate one great cricketer, not to denigrate another).

By the way, one of the few things that Boycott agreed with Tony Greig about was that Knott was the greatest keeper he had ever seen. Greig used Knott as the benchmark whenever the Channel Nine commentators were comparing glovemen. Ray Illingworth thought so too. He may have incomprehensibly preferred Norman Gifford to Derek Underwood on several occasions, but he was unshakeable in picking Knott as his keeper. This is the only recorded case of two Yorkshiremen admiring someone from Kent.

Knott’s brilliance behind the stumps is evident from a quick search on YouTube. But it wasn’t the flashy dives and extraordinary catches that impressed the old pros;  it was Knott’s consistency. Wicketkeepers should be judged not by the chances they take, but by those that they miss. A keeper who has one chance all day and takes it has had a better day than one who has six chances and takes five of them. Alan Knott made takes and catches that others would not be thought badly of for not attempting; but what made him better than all the rest was that he missed less than anybody. For Kent, as well as England; not once did he give anything less than his best for the county (the same could be said for Underwood). In this respect he differed from his predecessor in the Pantheon of great Kent keepers, Godfrey Evans, who rarely had an off day in a test match, but would perform indifferently for the county when his heavy social schedule drained him of energy and concentration.

Some will promote the claims of that fine wicketkeeper Bob Taylor as the best of the era. At the time, it was commonly said that Taylor was the better keeper, but that Knott’s superior batting kept him in the England team. The fact that Taylor stood up to medium pacers more than Knott did was incorrectly seen as evidence of the Derbyshire man’s superior skill. In fact, Knott believed that more chances would be offered if he stood back than if he stood up; don’t forget that Underwood was always classified as medium paced, and Knott’s work standing up to his co-assassin was as close to perfection as it is possible to come on a cricket field.

Barry Dudleston believed Knott to be the better keeper of the two. Barry played against both men many times and, as recorded here previously, was himself a county wicketkeeper, briefly but gloriously. He said that Taylor, when standing up, would sometimes move his foot back an inch or so as he took the ball, to rebalance. Knott never had to do this; his balance was always perfect.

Alan Knott averaged 32 with the bat in tests, just one fewer than IT Botham (another noted all-rounder) and respectable for any No 7, whatever else they had to offer. But with Alan Knott, the quantity of runs is not how he should be judged. It was when he made them and how he made them.

Knott was a T20 batsman before his time, his guard merely a point of departure for his journey around the crease as the pinball wizard, sending the ball in all manner of unexpected directions. I had a chat with Dennis Lillee about this once. For reasons that were never clear, the great bowler was flogging photocopiers in Bristol one day in the late eighties and the school I worked at sent me along. I took with me a scorecard of the Oval test of 1981 for him to sign. Lillee took seven for 89, his test best, and I was there to see him do it.  

When I handed him the card, it was not his own figures that took his eye, but Knott’s name. He had forgotten that Knott had played in that famous series (he came in for the final two tests). “He was an awkward bastard to bowl at. He’d hit you where you thought you couldn’t be hit.” One great player regarding another as worthy of the contest.

Look again at that Oval card. In the first innings Knott came in after four wickets had fallen for ten runs. His 36, including a couple of fours off Lillee lifted over gully from outside leg stump to prove the bowler’s point, was the only double-figure score made by anybody below No 4 in the order.

In the second innings he came in at six down for 144, the target of 383 well beyond reach, but half a day left to battle through. Close of play: Knott 70 not out, test match saved. It was his last test innings. Knott did not care to make easy runs. Against a tired attack, expect him to be out quickly for not many. Put his back against the wall against top bowling and the quiet fighter would approach the crease. If there were a measure of the value of runs to the team at the time, Knott would rank above any of the great keeper-batsmen. This was so from his first overseas test tour to the Caribbean in 1968, when his unbeaten 73 in the final test in Georgetown saved the match and won the series, to that last day at the Oval 13 years later. Here is an extract from the Wisden report from the Bourda:

All  seemed lost when Knott joined Cowdrey, but he was there to stay until the end, almost four hours later...Somehow, Knott extracted enough help from the tailenders to steer his side to safety...he was well nigh as assured as Cowdrey and no less courageous.

Delve into the circumstances of any of Alan Knott’s five test centuries or 30 half-centuries (and some of the 30s and 40s too) and you will often find that they were made in times of trouble.

One more example. Trent Bridge 1977, third Ashes test. Knott came to the crease with England at 82 for five on the first day. This rescue job was more complicated than usual, as it involved penetrating the tormented psyche of Geoffrey Boycott. The Napoleon of the Ridings had returned from three-year exile on his personal Elba, only, it appeared, to have met his Waterloo. He was recoiling from having run out local favourite Derek Randall (the only time he expressed any visible regret for dispatching a partner). Refocusing Boycott was essential if England were to pass Australia’s 243. The outcome: a partnership of 215, with 107 for Boycott and 135 (at four an over) from Knott. It was the decisive stand in the series, ensuring a two-nil lead with two to play.

A quality apparently valued in modern keepers is the ability to emit a constant stream of vacuous noise all day. Knott was Trappist by comparison, but volume is not to be mistaken for personality. His career was a slow capitulation to eccentricity. The headware tells the story. At first a regulation cap, Kent’s or England’s as appropriate. Quite early though, the MCC touring cap became the hat of choice, on tour or otherwise, followed by the sun hat, worn at first in sunny places like Australia, but later in locations such as Derby and Old Trafford where it was an excessive precaution. As the years went on, the handkerchief drooped permanently from the left pocket, the pads became ever more baggy and were secured by tape. Touching the bails began as a start-of-innings affectation, then developed into a sort of continuing nervous tick.

And, of course, the calisthenics continued. In an era when the closest to regular exercise most cricketers took was the raising of the right arm in the bar after play, with Knott it appeared that the batting and wicketkeeping were interrupting the main activity, which was stretching. His between-deliveries routine was more entertaining than watching some players bat and bowl.

When Derek Underwood turned 70 last year I wrote that he would be my favourite cricketer until Alan Knott reached that age. That day came last week. Happy birthday Knotty. The truth is that I find it impossible to choose between them. To discover cricket just as these two great players of Kent were starting out, and to have watched them over so many seasons was the most extraordinary good fortune.

Forty years on: Cowdrey beats the Australians, Lillee steals my shoe

Kent v the Australians, St Lawrence Ground, 25 – 27 June 1975

Two of best days’ cricket I ever saw came in the same week in the summer of 1975, when the sun shone from blue skies and the world was full of promise.

The first World Cup final took place on midsummer’s day: ten hours of sparkling cricket to launch the game’s Caribbean era. From Lord’s the defeated Australians travelled to Canterbury to open their Ashes tour at St Lawrence, just as they are now, forty years on.

I got to the ground for the last two hours, straight from the examination hall having taken my final two O levels. The morning was occupied with the deployment of smoke and mirrors in a quantity unseen outside a nineteenth-century mill town or the Palace of Versailles respectively, as I attempted to lure the examiners away from the conclusion that my knowledge of the Russian language was not as comprehensive as they might have hoped.

Two hours of the afternoon were spent stumbling mapless in the foothills of calculus for Additional Mathematics. I passed both subjects, but over the four decades since the benefit extracted from this achievement has never equalled that I would have accrued from the splendid day at the cricket foregone.

By the time I arrived the innings of the day was already done: 156 from the left-handed New South Wales opener Alan Turner made quickly enough to be over by tea. It remained his career-best score.

Some elegance from Doug Walters—who would always return to the field after an interval puffing on a cigarette in the tour games—and biffing from Gary Gilmour and the reserve wicketkeeper Richie Robinson rounded off the day.

At the close we wandered down to the lime tree and started a game on the outfield (it was pleasing the other day to see, on the TV coverage of a T20 game, the new tree within the field of play, as its venerable predecessor invariably was).

I removed my school shoes, which joined a small pile of items used to mark the bowler’s end wicket. Those end-of-play games were joyful, never more so than on a day when the cares of exams were done for two years. They ended only when the groundsman reclaimed the outfield and sent us away.

At one point the great DK Lillee emerged from one of the tents on that side of the ground (usually they were there only during Canterbury Week). A swarm of autograph hunters buzzed around him. Our game paused to let them pass.

Only when play closed half-an-hour or so later did I discover that my right shoe was no longer present. Schoolboy japery eliminated as a possibility, I was forced to recognise that the facts pointed only one way: the great fast bowler Dennis Lillee—who knows for what reasons of psychological turpitude—had stolen my shoe. Forty years later, I am as sure of that as I was as I limped my way down the Old Dover Road that night.

Respectably shod, I was there from the start of the second day. Ian Chappell declared overnight at 415 for eight. The Kent line-up was without the England captain (but not for much longer) Denness and Alan Knott. The great CJ Tavaré was also unavailable, playing for Oxford University. Though they cracked along at four an over (not far off the speed of light we thought then) the wickets fell regularly, not to the shoe thief Lillee, who ambled in only for eight overs of barely-trying medium pace, but to Gary Gilmour, who had appeared from nowhere to swing England out of the World Cup the week before, and the leg-spinner Jim Higgs.

Chappell did not enforce the follow on, choosing to take more batting practice instead, just as Michael Clarke has done 40 years later. I do not remember this being dull, but the scorecard suggests it was: 140 for three declared from 58 overs. The Underwood factor was strong—38 runs from 21 overs—but it was the underrated Graham Johnson who took two of the three wickets to fall, including the Australian captain, bowled for a duck.

The declaration early on the third (and final) day set Kent 354 to win in five-and-a-quarter hours. Ian Chappell told the driver of the team bus to be ready to go by mid-afternoon, which seemed a reasonable request.

But surprise is often one of the ingredients of a great day’s cricket. Just as this year nobody expected Williamson and Watling to break a world record, or Southee to bowl England out for 123, or Guptill to score 237 in a World Cup quarter-final, so then nobody believed that a 42-year-old could take Kent to a famous victory over the mighty Australians.

Colin Cowdrey was as naturally gifted a games player as there can be. It is sometimes said now that he would not have made it in the modern game because he was fat. Well, he was fat because he played in an age when he spent the whole summer at first slip (where he was one of the best catchers of his time). Both of his sons, Chris and Graham, were terrific fielders anywhere, and so would Colin have been in a different age. There are stories of him running people half his age ragged at squash simply by standing on the T and dinking the ball around the court until they could chase no more.

There has not been a batsman with more time or better timing. Only his inhibitions stood between Cowdrey and greatness. Whether from the restrained nature of the times, or personal insecurities, or the burden of captaincy, he was rarely as magnificent as he could be. David Gower is a more recent example of a player who on his best days looked as good as a batsman could be, but frustrated us by putting it all together so rarely, though in Gower’s case it could be that a few more inhibitions might have helped.

On that day though—Friday 27 June 1975—Colin Cowdrey put everything else aside and let his talent take charge. He came in at 77 for two, with Bob Woolmer batting well at the other end. 

Woolmer spent too many years low in the order—he’d have gone to another county these days—but was now taking his chance at No 3 and by the end of the summer would be scoring a match-saving century in the final test. That day he reached 50 in just over an hour with eight boundaries, but was then forced to retire hurt when hit on the elbow by Lillee. Alan Ealham was out for a duck, and at 116 for (effectively) four it seemed that the coach driver should not dawdle.

But Cowdrey found effective support in Dave Nicholls, who did a fine job for ten years as fill-in keeper when Knott was away playing for England for half the summer. Nicholls was a punchy left-hander who was sometimes selected on merit as a batsman. He had made a double hundred—quite a rare feat in three-day cricket—as a 19-year-old, but had never lived up to the expectation that had created. Now he supported Cowdrey admirably with 39 in a partnership of 126.

As the stand grew, the shoots of excitement started to break through, watered by Cowdrey’s excellence. It could be done. 350 to beat the Australians. He worked the spinners around the ground, Chappell filling a gap in one place only to see the ball going through the space thus created.

Though Lillee had barely gone through the motions in the first innings, as the afternoon went on he quickly worked up through his gears. He was offended by the possibility that this old codger, sent out to Australia a few months before to take on him and Thommo, could possibly win the game. Lillee steamed in from the Nackington Road End, shirt billowing, that most graceful, fluent of actions producing pace and wile.

Cowdrey was equal to it all, matching the smooth beauty of Lillee’s bowling with his driving, the ball hardly making a sound as bat caressed it to the boundary. He hooked fearlessly and with time to spare, Lillee’s raw speed compensating for the lack of pace in the pitch. Cowdrey’s century, his 106^th and penultimate, came up in under three hours with 17 fours.

The loss of Nicholls was quickly followed by that of John Shepherd, and 107 were needed from the compulsory final 20 overs that began at 5 pm. The young Charles Rowe, whose status as an ironic folk hero for my Blean correspondent and myself probably dates from this occasion, eased our qualms, outscoring Cowdrey with 30 in a partnership of 49 for the sixth wicket. When Rowe fell to Gilmour, 59 were still needed, so it was reassuring to see Woolmer returning to the crease, elbow bound.

Between them Cowdrey, Rowe and Woolmer accelerated in the final phase to the extent that eight an over came from the first ten overs in the final hour, even with plenty of fielders on the boundary, an eye-rubbing rate from two of the game’s supposedly stodgiest batsmen. One shot in particular is fresh in the mind from this phase of the game. Lillee bowls short and the ball rears towards Cowdrey’s head. He swivels and with perfect timing hooks to the square leg boundary leaving long leg no chance whatsoever of covering the ten yards of so needed to cut the ball off.

Soon it was done and Kent had beaten the Australians by four wickets, their first victory on this fixture since 1899 and still their most recent. My, how we stood and cheered.

Several innings have challenged Cowdrey’s that day as the greatest I have seen, most recently Guptill’s extraordinary World Cup double hundred. I would say that none has beaten it, for technique, for occasion, for quality of opposition, for surprise value, for beauty.

How great it was to have two such days within one week in my sixteenth year.

Pedantry Corner

Incidentally, Kent did not beat Australia that day. Kent have never played Australia. However, they first opposed the Australians in 1882. This year’s contest is the 34^th between Kent and the Australians. Outside internationals, touring teams are correctly identified by their nationality, except England who, since they stopped touring under the banner of MCC, should be referred to as “an England XI”.