31 May – 6 June 1975 Snow returns

 On Monday, famously, play between Derbyshire and Lancashire at Buxton was prevented by snow, enough for a covering of the field. Snow also fell at Colchester and it was cold and wet almost everywhere. Both Alan Gibson at  Edgbaston and, more unusually, John Woodcock at Lord’s began their reports on Monday’s play with a weather report.

 

Derbyshire were having a rough time. They quit the County Ground in Derby after the opening game, for good it was thought, though they were to return two years later. The second XI had been disbanded for financial reasons. By the start of June they had already changed captain, from Brian Bolus to Bob Taylor. They began the Buxton game equal bottom of the Championship and were without their first-choice opening attack of Ward and Hendrick. Their replacements, Stevenson and Glenn, both fell ill on the first day and were unable to bowl a reasonable quota of overs, leaving Philip Russell—who many spectators of the time will remember for the glint of his gold tooth in the sun—to bowl 34 overs of a possible 50 at one end.

The outcome was the highest first-innings total since the 100-over first-innings limit was introduced at the start of the previous season: 477 for five, Hayes 104 and Clive Lloyd 167 not out including a 50-run spell that included seven sixes spread about the Peak District.

The loss of the second day to the snow might have been expected to save Derbyshire, but that was not their luck at that time. Its damp residue left the pitch so treacherous that it might have been at Cambridge in the thirties. All out 42 in the first innings (Lee four for ten) and 87 (Lever five for 16) in the second.

Snow also returned to the England team, with John of that ilk named in the World Cup squad, his first selection fo the national team for two years. There was a reluctant acknowledgement that the limited-overs game required different talents by the inclusion of Frank Hayes, John Jameson and Bob Woolmer, who in June was seen as an accurate medium-pace bowler who could make the ball do a bit and by September as an Ashes centurion and match saver. He would be the only one of the 14-man squad not to get a game.

Jameson had scored a sackful of runs in the 55 and 40-over competitions so far in 1975, and took three for 16 in the quarter-final against Essex on Wednesday. Playfair described his bowling as RM/OB, the indecision because it was rarely seen and possibly hard to tell even then. He was Knott’s reserve as keeper in the World Cup squad should the great man suffer an injury, which did about as often as Captain Scarlet.

Preparation for the tournament was no more than a couple of warm-up games in the few days before it began. Asif Iqbal made 94 of Kent’s 154 as they lost to Championship leaders Hampshire on Tuesday, and on Wednesday led his country against the county at Canterbury, bowling Colin Cowdrey. Alvin Kallicharran and Rohan Kanhai guided Warwickshire home in the 55-over quarter-final against Essex and the next day both made fifties for the West Indians against Nottinghamshire.

In that quarter-final Essex could not recover from 16 for five. At Lord’s, Boycott and Richard Lumb took half the overs on their opening partnership of 68, the rest of the line-up taking the score to 182, two more than Lancashire reached at Leicester. It seems to have been a convention that the team chasing a such modest totals would take up as many of their overs as possible. Leicestershire did so with five balls left, Middlesex with nine. Only Hampshire breached 200, their 223 giving them a comfortable 50-run win. It was a round of unremarkable cricket.

The referendum on whether Britain should continue its membership of the European Economic Community dominated the week’s news. The result was declared on Friday, votes counted by administrative area (in England  mostly counties). Only Shetland and the Western Isles voted against. David Dimbleby anchored a BBC results programme for the first time, while Robert Kee led ITV’s coverage, which was interrupted by the racing from Epsom. George Scott presented on Radio 4.

 

As we know, the conclusive result was far from the end of the argument, but served Harold Wilson’s purpose in resolving divisions in the Labour Party (or one of them at least). The precedent of deciding a great constitutional question was an unfortunate one, particularly when left in less politically skilled hands than Wilson’s.

The Observer’s cartoonist Trog, aka Wally Fawkes, saw that the idea might catch on.

 

Daily updates of the 1975 season on X @kentccc1968 and Bluesky ‪@kentkiwi.bsky.social‬

 

The Cricketer, November 1973

 

The cover has action shots of two young cricketers who had done well in 1973 and were both off to the Caribbean with MCC and England. For Bob Willis, his home debut in the last test of the summer was an early step on the path to 325 test wickets, the England captaincy and Headingley ‘81. For Frank Hayes, the best was already past. His century on debut at the Oval accounted for almost half his test-career runs, made in nine tests, all against the West Indies. 

The November edition of The Cricketer was the Winter Annual, the centrepiece of which was always the Journal of the Season. Over the years, this was the work of, among others, John Arlott, Alan Gibson and Tony Lewis. In 1973 it was in the hands of Mike Brearley, in his second year as captain of Middlesex after returning from academia, and not yet the deity that he was to become. The rules for the Journal were its author wrote a weekly reflection on the cricketing events that were then posted to The Cricketer so as to prevent the application of hindsight.

Brearley isn’t quite in the class of those other writers as a stylist, but we go to him for insight, of which there is plenty, for example this analysis of Ray Illingworth upon his loss of the England captaincy.

He is very open, a lover of argument; he will have a dispute out with anyone, face-to-face. He supports his players, but expects 100% at all times. He is a devoted captain, never losing concentration, confident in his own ways; he has done marvellously at critical moments. He respects hard work in others, having worked hard himself. He has been a symbol for many cricketers and cricket followers in a still class-infected game.

Brearley, along with Peter Walker and Jack Bannister, had negotiated the first disbursement of TV rights money to the Professional Cricketers Association, all of £3,500 per annum for four years. More significantly, they persuaded the TCCB (the predecessor of the ECB) to initiate a non-contributory pension scheme for county cricketers. 

They were not afraid to deploy the confrontational approach to industrial relations typical of the seventies. 

,,,it was also decided, after a ballot of all members, that if we did not reach agreement we should take action to prevent televised cricket from being as attractive to the public as it normally is.

In this light, we must reassess the career of Geoffrey Boycott. We have clearly been wrong to see him as self-serving accumulator, grimly placing  his own average above the interests of team or paying public. In truth, this son of the People’s Republic of South Yorkshire was waging class war with the willow, making the bourgeoisie regret their colour TVs. 

Boycott is the recurring theme of the Winter Annual. Alan Gibson writes, in his Cricketers of the Year piece:

I cannot help wondering whether Boycott will ever make a good captain. He does not seem able to capture and control the inner man.

BI Gunatunga, on the letters page, disagrees, and thinks that Boycott, not Denness, should lead MCC to the Caribbean. Like many another fan of the Fitzwilliam’s finest, he does not go in for shades of grey in his assessment.

I consider Boycott to be a much-misunderstood cricketer mainly because he appears to be so different from other players. He is an immensely gifted cricketer, whose constant striving after perfection bespeaks a character well-suited to leadership. 

Geoffrey Boycott is the brightest star in the cricket firmament. Is it not, to say the least, a short-sighted act to deny the honour of leading England to a man whose present role in the England team has a classical parallel in that of Aenas in the destiny of Rome?

Mr Gunatunga wrote from Sri Lanka so may not have had his opinion tempered by the experience of watching Boycott bat too often. 

Boycott also turns up in Irving Rosenwater’s survey of 1973’s statistical oddities. During the second test against West Indies, he retired hurt from separate injuries from two successive balls, which Rosenwater thought to be unique. 

Back to Gibson, who was summoned for a nightcap with EW Swanton during the Headingley test.

This turned out to be a delightful occasion, though abstemious and informal. I am pleased to report that his theological position is still sound.

Gibson’s selections as Cricketers of the Year include a British Rail employee. 

…on a crowded train between Bristol and London, I was pleased, but surprised to find myself adopted by one of the buffet car attendants, who plied me with food and drink throughout the journey, when I never stirred a step from my seat. When I thanked him afterwards, he said, ‘Always a pleasure for you, Mr Arlott’.

There is an interview with Bishan Bedi, poignant given his recent passing. The tributes presented him as a man of firm views and strong principles, characteristics on full display here. 

Cricket should be an exciting game with batsmen playing their shots and bowlers trying to get them out. In England, however, too many captains want to keep the game tight. They keep the fielders back to save singles when they should have them up for catches. 

Bedi would have approved of Bazball.

On Sundays we see bowlers like John Snow bowling without a slip. This is ridiculous. Even I must have a slip. Sunday cricket is rubbish in my view. It is not real cricket. People come to watch it because it is Sunday and they have nothing else to do. It is not attacking cricket at all, but defensive cricket. 

No fines then for criticising the product (as he would never have called it). 

David Foot writes about Gloucestershire, focusing not on their Gillette Cup final win against Sussex, but on their Championship game against Glamorgan, a week later. I often finished the season at the County Ground in Bristol, and recognise it from Foot’s description.

It was the last afternoon of the season at Bristol, a ground which had been likened to a mausoleum a little too often for comfort, and more recently to the sands at Weston (by Somerset’s captain Brian Close). You don’t expect stirring sport on the final day. 

The home team were chasing a target of 267, but when the ninth wicket fell at 210 it seemed that the season’s end was only a few balls away. No 10 John Mortimore was capable enough, but he was now joined by Jack Davey, perhaps the only genuine challenger to Kent’s Norman Graham for the title of worst No 11 in county cricket. Davey’s 13 innings thus far in 1973 had produced 29 runs. Yet he had become something of a cult figure for the locals, particularly in the Jessop Tavern. Alan Gibson would leave the press box to shout “put them to the sword Jack” when Davey approached the crease. How fortunate that Foot was there to immortalise his heroics that day. 

The first one he received was right on a length, doing a bit off the seam. He stretched forward and pushed the ball back. The classic defensive forward stroke. Feet and bat positioned exquisitely, elbow up for the gods to see. The MCC coaches could have been inspired to poetry on the spot.

Davey equalled his career best of 17 in a partnership of 57 with Mortimore to take Gloucestershire to victory, and they “returned to an ovation as genuine as anything in the Gillette final”. The win moved Gloucestershire up two places to fifth in the table, but short of the prize of £500 for fourth place. It meant nothing, yet it meant everything and if any of the few that bothered to make their way to the cricket on a dank autumn day are still above ground, they will treasure the memory yet. 

The summarised scores of the Indian Schoolboys tour is replete with names that were to become familiar in the decade to come: Briers, Gatting, Hignell, Parker, Slocombe, DM Smith and the great CJ Tavarḗ,What a treat it would have been to be at Bristol to see 150 by VJ Marks. A King’s School batter name of Gower made 50 against visitors from South Africa.

Geoffrey Howard who was about to retire after a quarter of a century of first Lancashire, then Surrey, provides an informed summary of the changes that he had seen and, in some cases, instigated. More than that, he looks forward with some prescience, foreseeing—

• a sponsored, 16-match County Championship of two divisions (though he doesn’t approve of the latter; for some years he put together the fixture lists and says that this would become “a nightmare”)

• ODIs with every tour

• world cups in England

• neutral umpires.

Scyld Berry writes about lob bowling. I don’t recall seeing Berry’s name in The Cricketer before this, so it may have been the start of one of cricket journalism’s most distinguished careers. He gives us an entertaining history of the art of lobbing, which he suggests has some science to it, with greater variety than overarm can offer. After running through the options for seam, swing and spin, Berry lists more exotic alternatives. 

Then there is the second-bounce yorker, and of course the daisy cutter; the full toss straight to the shoulder…and as a first-ball speciality the harmless low full-toss to the off-stump that is tentatively driven to extra-cover.

GH Simpson-Hayward of Worcestershire took 23 wickets with lobs against South Africa in 1909-10.

With his low trajectory and ample turn off the matting he could not be “lofted” with safety or even driven along the ground with confidence; pushes and pokes were the best means of resistance. 

Did not Brearley once turn to lobs on the last afternoon of a county game? I suppose that Trevor Chappell might be regarded as the last international lob bowler if the daisy cutter is in the lobber’s armoury. 

What I miss about the seventies is how easy it was to infuriate those who deserved to be infuriated. Here is JF Priestly of Kent on the letters page.

I was appalled at the general turn-out of the two teams in the Varsity match at Lord’s. Only one Cambridge player was wearing his coveted light blue cap when fielding…one player had an unruly beard, long hair generally was the vogue, some of the players had not even bothered to clean their boots, flannels were different shades, and the only good thing to say about them was their good bowling and most excellent fielding.

No doubt when Mr Priestly went to the cinema he judged the film by the straightness of the ice cream seller’s tie. 

The Last of the Cricket?

Wellington v Central Districts, Plunket Shield, Basin Reserve, 1–3 March 2020

Scorecard with video clips

The last of the cricket of the season is forever poignant, the more so as the years pass by. There is a question mark added to the heading of this piece, because nobody knows how cricket will emerge at the far end of all this. Already there is talk of counties folding and of England’s test and one-day teams playing concurrently. Not even the most Blimpish of us could argue that the T20 should not have priority in the English season, to keep the people coming through the gates and the money going into the bank.

The immediate consequences for cricket here in New Zealand will be fewer than for the UK, as the suspension here came at the end of the season, costing only a T20 series against Australia and two rounds of the Plunket Shield. The national team has had a series in Ireland cancelled, but is not scheduled for test cricket until Bangladesh in August.

The game against Central Districts just over a month ago was my last cricket for the season anyway, Wellington’s final three fixtures all being away. I was able to attend only on the first day. Central were top going into the game, and Wellington were second, so we knew that the game would go some way to deciding the Plunket Shield, but we didn’t realise quite how far.

The pitch was greener than that for the test, and a degree more helpful, but not nearly as much as what ensued might suggest after Central were put in. It demonstrated the principle that I have just heard expounded once more by Richie Benaud as Sky Sports New Zealand start their rerun of the 2006/07 Ashes (the whole match, not just highlights—first day at Brisbane and it’s not going well for England)—that the ball only has to move an inch, not a foot, to get a batsman out. 

No assistance whatsoever was needed from the pitch for the first Central wicket, a gorgeous yorker from McPeake to remove Worker.

Had he been fit, Will Young would have opened for New Zealand in the Boxing Day test, just as he would against Bangladesh at Hagley Park last March had the test not been cancelled following the 15 March atrocity. He is Tom Hanks in Sleepless in Seattle, continually just missing Meg Ryan playing the role of his unborn test career. Young was soon lbw shuffling across to Neesham, the pick of a strong seam attack.

It was a day on which the bowling was more intelligent than the batting, the verdant pitch an unconvincing defence for unconvincing defence. The fifth-wicket partnership of 28 between Hay and Cleaver was the biggest of the innings.

It was when Cleaver was dismissed that it first occurred to me that I had a chance of ticking off one of my unfulfilled ambitions in cricket watching: to see an opener carry his bat, that is to bat all through an innings, remaining not out when his side is all out.

I have seen batsmen on their way to this achievement, but have never seen it completed. At Canterbury in 1987, Neil Taylor, an underrated Kent opening batsman, was five not out at the close of play of the first day against Nottinghamshire, but I was back at work in Bristol when the bat carrying was done on the Monday. Ten years later, on what remains my most recent visit to Lord’s, I watched Mark Ramprakash get Middlesex’s second innings under way; he also went on to get an unbeaten hundred the next day, unperturbed by the foot traffic at the other end.

But the closest I had previously come to seeing an opener carry his bat was at Folkestone in 1977. When the Yorkshire team awoke and looked out of their hotel-room windows on the third morning they would have experienced the sinking feeling felt by a soldier about to go over the top, a pilot as an engine fails or, in their case, cricketers who find that it has rained overnight and that Derek Underwood is in the other team, for this was the time of uncovered pitches, with no protection permitted after the first ball of the game was bowled.

The opening batsman concerned was Geoffrey Boycott, in the very week in which he ended his self-imposed exile from the England team. If mention of Boycott fosters the notion that this was some sort of masterclass in batting on a drying pitch against Underwood, think again. Boycott did indeed show immense command and skill, but only in manipulating the strike. He spent so much of Underwood’s spell watching from the non-striker’s end that he might reasonably have been charged admission.

No 11 Mike Bore somehow broke Boycott’s bubble (as we would say these days), whereupon the Great Resistor became Underwood’s seventh victim. He was caught behind by Knott, with whom, just two days later, he was to put on 215 for the sixth wicket on his test return, though not before he had run out local Trent Bridge hero Derek Randall.

Logan van Beek stoked my hopes with three quick wickets. Now only two tailenders with only two previous first-class appearances between them stood between Greg Hay and his achievement (though by now I was regarding it as much my achievement as his).

There remains confusion about the identity of the debutant No 10. On the day, the board had him as Hook, as does the NZ Cricket scorecard linked to at the top of this piece. But CricInfo says that he is Stefan Hook-Sporry, possibly a friend of Bertie Wooster’s. What seemed clear on the day is that he is no batsman. He scooped a ball from off stump to behind square on the legside, where he was caught by van Beek off Sears.

Ray Toole was Central’s last man. Surely a man whose batting ability could promote Hook-Sporry to No 10 could not divert the course of history? But he was good, or lucky, enough to survive nine deliveries, at which point Hay was late with the shot to Neesham and was hit on the pad. The umpire thought for a moment, then decided that it would have hit leg and so Hay failed at the last, just as Boycott had at Folkestone. As things stand, I can still have the words “He never saw anyone carry their bat” on my headstone.

Central’s total was just 96. It was unusual in that only Hay reached double figures, his 62 constituting 65percent of the whole.

Ninety-six looked a fair score after the first over of the Wellington innings in which Colson and Conway were both dismissed without scoring. Both fell caught behind to testing deliveries that moved away just enough. The bowler was Blair Tickner, whose exuberant celebrations rile an element of the Basin faithful.

There was no need for concern. Just one wicket fell in the remaining 52 overs of the day. Left-handed opener Rachin Ravindra led the recovery. Ravindra, still only 20-years-old, was identified as a future international at an early age. He made his first-class debut for New Zealand A before he had appeared in the Plunket Shield. Here, he showed why. It was a composed, classy innings, made as if he was at a different venue from the rest of the batsmen. Look out for Ravindra in the Black Caps team very soon.

He was well supported, first by Troy Johnson then by the captain Michael Bracewell, who has had a season good enough to have placed him in international contention (if there is any international cricket to contend for). My cricket watching for the season finished with Wellington 79 ahead with seven wickets standing. It was a day that had settled the question of the Plunket Shield.

Next day, the lead was extended to 202. Though Central did better in their second innings, Wellington had to make only 53 to win the game by nine wickets. In the next round, sixth of a scheduled eight, Wellington beat Auckland by an innings while Central lost to Otago. This left Wellington with a 26-point lead (with 20 the most attainable in any one game). Thus when Coronavirus forced the cancellation of the final two rounds Wellington were declared to be champions, an odd way to achieve their first title in 16 years, to add to the T20 trophy won in January.

It has been a good season for me, the most enjoyable since 2014–15, which I picked as my vintage summer. Three test matches were at the heart of it, in Hamilton, Sydney and at home in Wellington. Fine batting by Latham, Burns, Labuschagne, Warner and Williamson; excellent bowling from Wagner, Boult, Southee, Cummins and Lyon, amongst others.

The domestic schedule was kinder to me than for some time, particularly in providing four 50-over games early in the year. I didn’t have time to blog on these, but they were most enjoyable. There was some good Plunket Shield too, notably Devon Conway’s triple hundred early on the season. Also, Wellington’s T20 victory.

What will it be like when we next meet at the cricket? The current emergency will change all sorts of things in all sorts of ways. Cricket, more than many sports, has international contests at its core. It will suffer from the restrictions on international travel, which may last much longer than is generally recognised, with 14-day quarantine periods at either end even when the planes start taking off again. I’ll be happy if I’m wrong, but England will be fortunate to see any international cricket in the coming season. When domestic cricket begins it is to be hoped that the ECB sticks to its promise to put domestic T20 at the heart of the schedule. If there are no tests, what about a little imagination to keep the longer form going? I suppose that Smokers v Non-Smokers might be a bit one-sided these days, perhaps less so if what was being smoked wasn’t specified. North v South would be pretty good. Or Born in England v Born Somewhere Else.

Here at Scorecards Towers we feel very fortunate. Both of us are working full-time from home in a large house with a well-stocked library in a country that is doing much better than most at dealing with the virus. You do so much better if you have a good captain.

My main concern at the moment is that this year’s Wisden won’t get here for a while. As mentioned above, Sky Sports New Zealand is running a stack of old cricket in full, (but with most of the ads edited out so it moves along at an old-school over rate). It’s now lunch on the third day at Brisbane 2006 on my timeline, and England are in a tricky spot.

See you at the cricket, sometime.

Single wicket in Kent; single-minded from Boycott 3 – 9 June 1967

Middlesex v Kent 7 - 9 June 1967

England v India, first test, Headingley

Anybody in need of reassurance that the world is a better place in 2017 than it was fifty years ago need only read this report of a match between the England women’s team and the Lord’s Taverners, played at the Oval.

Where to begin? For a start it is in the news pages, rather than sport, a bit of colour at the bottom of page two. To add to the disappointment, it was written by Philip Howard, later a distinguished literary editor of The Times, and a fine writer for the paper until his death in 2014. He tries to be nice, but the allure of a rolling pin metaphor becomes too much. One might have expected more of a former women’s lacrosse correspondent of the Glasgow Herald. 

Perhaps most grating is his use of first names. Who would guess that opener “Enid” is Enid Bakewell, named by Wisden as one of the five best women cricketers for all countries? I expect that the bowlers were ungainly compared to Statham. Roughly 98% of male bowlers were, after all. And perhaps WG Grace would have been less scandalised by women playing cricket than Howard believes, given that the great man was taught the fundamentals of the game in the orchard at Downend partly by his mother, Martha.

In the first half of the week, for the first time this season, Kent had no fixture. But instead of a much-needed day off, the playing staff had to report to St Lawrence for a single-wicket competition. It was appropriate that Kent should participate in a revival of this once-popular form of the game as at its peak in the first half of the nineteenth century its most famous practitioners were all Kent players: Alfred Mynn, Nicholas Felix and Fuller Pilch. Perhaps the most famous contest of all took place at Lord’s in 1846, a two-innings contest. There were just two fielders available to the bowler, but no runs could be scored behind square, and to score a run the batsmen had to make it to the bowler’s end and back. Shots had to be played with at least one foot behind the front crease. Felix batted first and was bowled for a duck. Mynn replied with five. In his second innings, Felix faced 247 balls from which he scored three runs (one a wide) before being bowled, leaving Mynn the victor by an innings and two runs. The crowd that packed Lord’s loved it.*

By 1967 the rules of single-wicket had evolved so that it more resembled a normal game of cricket. Each player had the full complement of fielders available and matches were limited to eight overs a player. But out was out, so when Derek Underwood was out for a duck, Alan Dixon scored a single to progress. Scheduling must have been a nightmare. 

As might be expected, the all-rounders Dixon and Shepherd got through to the semis, joined by fast bowler Alan Brown and batsman John Prodger, who was in his last season (though he may not have known that at the time) after ten years as something of a bit player. He was renowned as an outstanding slip fielder. In the final, Prodger made an unbeaten 41 in his eight overs, which Dixon overcame to win the competition. He would represent Kent in the national competition at Lord’s later in the season.

The following day, again at St Lawrence, Kent played the International Cavaliers, a match I was present for. As I have written before, the extent to which the Cavaliers have been forgotten is reflected in the fact that my piece on them comes up second in a Google search behind a brief Wikipedia entry. The Cavaliers played against counties and other teams on Sunday afternoons live on BBC 2. As can be seen from the scorecard, the Cavaliers consisted of a mix of the best contemporary players—Sobers, Close, Boycott, Gibbs in this case—some famous names in or near retirement—Evans, Bailey, Trueman—and a few others to make up the numbers. The Cavaliers opener C Smith is Cammie Smith, a Bajan who played one test and later became an ICC match referee. Mohammad Younis became better known as Younis Ahmed during a long county career.

It was cricket designed for TV, a progenitor of World Series Cricket and T20 and it packed out Canterbury that afternoon as it did around the country every Sunday. The world’s best cricketer dominated the game: Sobers four for 18 and joint top scorer with 33 against Kent’s modest 120.

It was an unpredictable week in the Championship. Champions Yorkshire lost twice, and badly at that, at Lord’s and Bath. The top two, Hampshire and Leicestershire, both lost but kept their places. Tom Graveney “struggled” to a century against Warwickshire, according to the headline. Graveney struggling would be a better watch than most batsmen at their best. Middlesex followed their victory against Yorkshire by clinging on against Kent thanks to a two-and-a-half hour unbroken seventh-wicket partnership from Eric Russell and Harry Latchman. Mike Denness scored his first century of the summer, but it was an innings from Colin Cowdrey that had Vivian Jenkins purring in The Times.

Jenkins was a Welsh rugby international and former Glamorgan cricketer who had covered the MCC tour of Australia in 1946/7 and was rugby correspondent of the Sunday Times for many years. He was sensible enough to spend his retirement winters in New Zealand according to his obituary in The Guardian.

Cowdrey was, unusually, not in the test team for the first test against India at Headingley. It was the scene of Geoff Boycott’s most notorious innings, one that John Woodcock laid into in his report.

Nobody, I am certain, has scored more than Boycott’s unbeaten 246 and then been dropped, as he was for the second test.

The Middle East had descended into what we know as the Six Day War, the short duration measuring the degree to which the Arab alliance underestimated the Israeli military. Israel took over the Sinai, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the Arab sector of Jerusalem, all of which except Sinai and Gaza it continues to control to some degree to the present day. Reporting from Beirut for The Times was Norman Fowler, still claiming expenses half a century on, now as Lord Speaker, having spent much of the interim as a leading Conservative politician.

*This account of Mynn v Felix is based on John Major’s More Than a Game. Major may not have been much of a prime minister but he’s a cracking cricket historian.