1967 or 2017: which is better?

These days the County Championship is the supply teacher of the fixture list, its role to fill gaps in the timetable and occupy the discontented, success measured by the lack of bother caused, so as not to draw attention away from the showcase class in the best room. The frustration of the Championship’s almost total absence from the height of summer is clear enough from the work of Backwatersman, Cricket Nick and others on whom I depend for the vicarious experience of following county cricket from New Zealand. 

How enticing the 1967 schedule looks in contrast. Twenty-eight three-day games per county plus a tourist fixture or two. Cricket every Saturday. And the chance to watch at places that have long forgotten that they ever hosted first-class cricket. They should be set to music, just as Flanders and Swann sung a list of railway stations axed by Dr Beeching: Harrogate, Portsmouth, Pontypridd, Nuneaton, Kettering, Coventry, Bath, Basingstoke, Buxton, Lydney, Ilkeston, Glastonbury, Dover, Folkestone, and more.

But how good was the cricket at these lost venues? The players and commentators of that era and those before present their cricket as a sort of Socratic dialogue in which the skills of batsman and bowler were constantly honed until they reached levels of technical accomplishment now unknown. It was an intellectual exercise as much as a sporting one; Freddie Ayer perpetually bowling to Bertrand Russell. 

Uncovered pitches were a foundational belief of this creed, the test that would expose the heretics of the cross bat and of the leaden footwork.

I have always bought into this interpretation of cricket’s past, partly as a result of watching cricket in such conditions and seeing how interesting it is. But the string of low scores that pepper the 1968 Wisden are by no means all due to drying pitches. Many taxed batting without help from the rain. A few, such as that at Mote Park on which Hampshire were bowled out for 31, were so explosive that they would now be outlawed by anti-terror legislation. More pitches were simply slow and tired. 

There were days when the cricket lived up to the image of halcyon struggle between champions, but more often it was simply dull. Their batting techniques may have been superior, but were deployed almost completely in defence. Boycott’s monastic 246 in the Headingley test against a weak attack was the most renowned example of the timidity that captured most batsmen of the era, but we have discovered many others on our journey through 1967.

A match between, say, Yorkshire then and now played on a difficult 1967 surface might lead us to admire the impeccable straightness of Boycott’s bat, but would likely result in a win for 2017 as Bairstow, Root or one of the others, not being content to await their fate in the crease, would manufacture an ugly 40 that would be the difference. It would be a better contest to watch too.

This isn’t the present being wise about the past either; exasperation was the default tone of John Woodcock’s reports in The Times that summer. In the 1968 Wisden Denis Compton bemoaned the attitude of cricketers: “The safety-first outlook has bedevilled professional cricket far too long and like the traffic in our big cities the three-day game has come almost to a full stop.” Had the expression “political correctness” been current in 1967 one fears that Compton would have given it a hammering.

Colin Cowdrey is an interesting case study in the cricketing mentality of 1967. In the Gillette semi-final he made 78 in 59 balls, a rate of scoring that would be respectable today. “Better than his best” said Woodcock. Yet a couple of weeks later on the same ground he was diffidence personified, to Woodcock’s despair:

I’m with Woodcock; more exposure to one-day cricket earlier in his career might have liberated Cowdrey from his inhibitions and allowed him to become a great player rather than one who had greatness within him.

Weekly one-day cricket, in the form of the 40-over Sunday League, was still two years away, but inevitable and necessary. The International Cavaliers have not featured as much as they should have I my recreation of 1967, as I spent most Sunday afternoons watching them on BBC2, with Learie Constantine commentating. But The Times ignored them, as did Wisden, so the only record of the Cavaliers’ matches in 1967 is behind the Cricket Archive paywall. It could be argued that those games were the most important cricket played that year, the start of a half-century long shift towards shorter forms of the game. For me, the ideal fixture list would always contain one-day cricket; fine dining is all very well but a burger once a week does no harm. 

Not that the County Championship was without appeal to spectators. The Kent grounds were packed at weekends. Woodcock wrote that it seemed that the whole of Kent was at Gillingham for the Sunday of the Glamorgan game. Weekend after weekend it was said that 10,000 were there, and Kent was not the only county to benefit from the introduction of Sunday cricket. Unfortunately, in most Kent grounds there was nowhere for the great majority them to sit comfortably. If they found a place the chances are that they would have been breathing in a fog of cigarette and pipe smoke. The catering was either lamentable or non-existent, real ale a future dream. Whatever was happening on the field, there is no doubt that off it spectators are better served in 2017.

The frustration that Woodcock and Compton expressed with the reticence of the cricket meant that 1967 was the last season of its kind. The following year saw two changes designed to promote “brighter cricket” (a phrase that was a synonym for “Holy Grail” at that time). 

First, in 1968 the bonus points system replaced points for the first-innings lead, an innovation that has remained with us, though often tinkered with, ever since.

Second, in the same year each county was allowed one overseas player without a qualification period. Those in the county game in 1967, such as John Shepherd and Keith Boyce, had undergone a two-year qualification period during which they could not play international cricket, a condition that deterred current test players. From 1968, a generation of the world’s finest cricketers would be seen on county grounds. There were incessant complaints about this, of course, mostly about a supposed block on English talent. But how helpful would it be for selectors attempting to discern which batsmen are up to test cricket in Australia and which are not, to be able to watch them play in the County Championship against some of the world’s best fast bowlers? 

Despite the batting torpor of 1967, I do regret that the tricky (for batsman) pitch is now a rare phenomenon. The terminology for the state of pitches is determined by batsmen, who use words—“good” and “bad”—that measure how easy it is for them to practise their art. Ideally, over a series or a season pitches will range across the continuum of favouring the bat or the ball (and in the latter case sometimes seam, sometimes swing, sometimes spin). 

How pleasing it was that relegation from Division One of the County Championship in 2017 was decided on a Taunton turner, though the pitch was marked below average (apparently a similar mark next season will put Somerset at risk of a points deduction; yet when England batsmen in India look like an infant class trying to solve The Times crossword there will still be some who are surprised). How much better than the contrived declaration game that Middlesex won to clinch the Championship in 2016. Pitches should spin in England at season’s end. Presumably the Beckenham surface on which Kent scored 701 and Northamptonshire 568 was considered average or better.

It was the pitches becoming more batsmen-friendly and regulated that did for three-day cricket in the end. Without a bit of help most teams could not take the 20 wickets necessary to win a match without artifice in three days. Perhaps—though nobody thought so at the time—the best structure for the Championship was the mix of three and four-day games that existed from 1988 to 1992, though the three-day matches should be played on 1967 pitches and the four-day on contemporary ones.

Following events day-by-day revealed the rhythm of 1967. Kent’s season began hopefully, became expectant, then confident, finally triumphant. It was a wonderfully optimistic time that captured the imagination of the Kent sporting public that for decades had had only the Ryanair of sporting stock, Gillingham FC, in which to invest its hopes.

By the end of May both Norman Graham and John Shepherd had secured places that were theirs for 10 and 15 seasons respectively. Mike Denness and Brian Luckhurst became likely England players. Graham Johnson and Alan Ealham did not achieve much in 1967 but were on their way. It was pleasing to discover what a tremendous season Alan Dixon had.

Best of all, it was becoming clear that Alan Knott and Derek Underwood were world-class performers in the making. In Knott’s case every reporter who followed Kent produced a paean of praise about his keeping, usually invoking Godfrey Evans as a point of comparison. As I have said often enough, Underwood was regarded by some as being not quite a proper spinner, but it was enough that he was Underwood. How much would each attract in the IPL auction, particularly Knott who batted like a T20 player half a century ahead of time?

Knott played in every home test match for the next ten seasons, Underwood in most of them. There was usually at least one other Kent representative in the England XI. Had this not been the case perhaps more Championships would have been won. Kent finished second to Yorkshire once more in 1968, before slipping back into the bottom half of the table in 1969. The Championship was won, at last, in 1970.

One more piece on 1967 to come, reflecting on the process of recreating a cricket season 50 years on.

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.

Richie: Cricket's Finest Team

International Cavaliers v Rest of the World, September 1967

What was cricket’s finest television commentary team?

In the UK, Channel Four’s was pretty good, particularly when Richie Benaud, Ian Smith and Mike Atherton were together. Sky UK play at a decent level, with Atherton, Nassar Hussain, David Lloyd, Mikey Holding and the rest providing pleasing contrasts of attitude and accent. The BBC, often retrospectively maligned as stuffy and old-fashioned, were strong when Benaud, Tony Lewis, Jack Bannister and Ray Illingworth were together in the late eighties and early nineties.

Even Channel Nine has to be mentioned. Not the incumbent cheerleaders obviously, but in the days when Benaud and Ian Chappell led the team, and they were more willing to use overseas commentators, particularly Tony Cozier. I still rate Chappell with Ian Smith as the best contemporary commentators.

Our own Sky New Zealand panel takes a lot of beating, particularly when Grant Nisbitt takes a break from the rugby to join Ian Smith, Simon Doull, Mark Richardson et al. If Jeremy Coney were to re-enlist, they would be non-pareil.

But all these teams had weaknesses, commentators who were not necessarily bad—though sometimes they were—but who averaged in the mid-thirties rather than the high forties or above. Benaud or Atherton on one side of the scales, a tracer-bullet spotting Tony Greig or blustering Ian Botham on the other.

I know of only one team that was without imperfection, and it worked together on only two or three occasions on Sunday afternoons in the sixties, the first of which that I can trace was 3 September 1967, when the International Cavaliers (captained by Ted Dexter) played a Rest of the World XI (led by Garry Sobers). Other players included Kanhai, Barlow, Hunte, Gibbs and both Pollocks. A treat for those present, but more so for those who stayed at home to watch in grainy black-and-white.

For the commentators on BBC 2 that afternoon were Richie Benaud, John Arlott and Learie Constantine, three of cricket’s greatest men.

Constantine began life in a poor working family on a plantation in Trinidad and ended it as a member of the House of Lords (that was still to come, but in 1967 he was already a knight). He had been a pioneering professional in the Lancashire League for Nelson, him and his wife the only black people in the small northern mill town (until CLR James turned up to become a somewhat tiresome lodger, judging from his own account in Beyond a Boundary).

Constantine was an electrifying cricketer. He bowled with pace and aggression, delivering what was to become known as “bodyline” against the MCC tourists in 1930, which may have planted the germ of an idea. As a batsman an accurate modern parallel might be Shahid Afridi, and he was the best fielder that Bradman ever saw. Michael Parkinson tells how Constantine had the trick of having the ball thrown hard at him from behind as he walked back to his mark, only to catch it without looking at the last moment. Of course, he never captained the West Indies, as that privilege was reserved for white men. He spent the rest of his life fighting against discrimination of that kind.

I was too young to offer a critique of Constantine’s commentary, but remember a degree of wry humour. How could it have been anything other than wise?

No commentator has distilled cricket’s truth more purely than Arlott, nor had its perspective in better focus. However sumptuous the shots or brilliant the bowling, Arlott’s words would have been their equal.

And then there was Benaud. Cricket has never been as unified in mourning as it has been for him. When Dr Grace died in 1915, there were plenty left to step forward with tales of chicanery on the field of play and the lining of pockets with “expenses” off it. Fingleton and O’Reilly reached eternity before Bradman, but left enough negative stories behind them to ensure an element of rebuttal to the woe.

You would have to be pushing 70 to remember cricket without Benaud. He made us think that cricket had what he did: dignity, wisdom, wit, humanity. That it was civilised. He shared his experience with us, yet never said that the old days were better than the present (this he had in common with Arlott and Constantine). I never saw him play, but nobody did more to help me understand cricket; millions would say the same.

You will be wondering where a match with such a parade of talent was played. Lord’s probably, or the Oval, you will be thinking. A test match ground certainly. Not so. It was played at Ascott Park at Wing in Buckinghamshire (a minor county!). Aside from this match and the same fixture the year before, the ground’s claim to fame has consisted of staging the annual contest between the old boys of Eton and Harrow along with the odd minor counties match. Many of the Cavaliers games were played on small country grounds, for reasons that are no longer clear. Bigger grounds usually filled for Cavaliers games (Canterbury certainly did) but TV was the priority. The Cavaliers presaged World Series Cricket in that respect.

And you may also be surprised that there was such a thing as a Rest of the World XI in 1967. It was the summer of love, and those of us who were too young to get to San Francisco to wear flowers in our hair surely deserved some decent cricket as compensation. A Rest of the World XI appeared in the last couple of weeks of The English season for several years in the second half of the sixties. I saw them play a three-day game against Kent at St Lawrence in ’68. They played tournaments against England and the tourists of the year that there is a fair case for regarding as the first one-day internationals, but that is a discussion for another day.