The Cricket Magazines: March 1973

What a treat to find two articles by Alan Gibson in The Cricketer. The first is a profile of Tony Greig, England’s outstanding player on the tour of South Asia at the time of publication. I maintain that Greig has never been given quite the recognition he deserves for being one of the best of his time, and one of England’s finest all-rounders across the eras.

Gibson hints that Greig was undervalued at this early stage of his international career too. After two years in Sussex Seconds while he qualified as an overseas player, Greig was an immediate sensation, with 156 on Championship debut. It should be remembered that he committed to playing for England before South Africa’s exclusion from international cricket, yet it seemed that English cricket, presented with such a gift, was unwilling to unwrap it, fearful that it might be a bit showy or extravagant.

Greig eventually made his test debut (or so we then thought) in 1970 against the Rest of the World. Gibson reports:

In the second match at Nottingham, which England won (probably the best performance by an England side since the Second World War) he had as much as anyone to do with the victory, taking four wickets in the first innings and three in the second. The batsmen whose wickets he took were Richards (twice), Sobers (twice), Kanhai, Engineer and Barlow. 

Despite topping the bowling averages, and scoring a fifty in the third match, Greig was omitted from the Ashes tour party that winter, and left out throughout the 1971 season, the selectors’ preference being for the more pedestrian Richard Hutton. 

Both players were selected for the Rest of the World squad that toured Australia the following winter.

No doubt both were chosen in the first place because of Australian determination not to pick a Rest of the World side that approximated to the real strength of the Rest of the World: but it did not turn out to be so pointless a series as was intended, and of the two English all-rounders it was Greig who made his mark.

Gibson concludes by reporting the opinion of his colleague at The Times, John Woodcock, to whom he refers by the usual sobriquet.

The Sage of Longparish is not himself a tall man, and has not always been enthusiastic about Greig in the past. What he really feels is that all the best cricketers are five foot three. A judgement from this quarter is therefore convincing.

Gibson’s second piece is titled Cricket in Fiction. It is an amiable ramble that touches upon, among others, Richards, de Selincourt, Dickens, Sayers and, of course, Wodehouse. Also JL Carr, whose recently published A Season in Sinji is mentioned in the opening paragraph, and to which Gibson returns near the end.

I would have enjoyed it if he had left out the cricket.

He forces his analogies, he strains his language, to show that life is just a game of cricket, which is neither more or less true than that life is just a bowl of cherries, some of them going bad, or a sack of potatoes, or – well, whatever analogy happens to come to you. 

Mr Carr is very strong on breasts and lavatories, which I suppose is mandatory in the modern novel. Just as I was beginning to get interested in the bosoms, there was a piece about cricket; and just as I was beginning to get interested in the cricket, back came the bosoms, and the dirt, and the violence. No doubt life is like that : but since we all have to experience it anyway, I doubt if we have any obligation to read about it as well.

Both The Cricketer and Playfair Cricket Monthly reported on the third and fourth tests between India and England. The hosts took a two-one lead in the third, but only by four wickets. England could not cope with the most renowned of spin trios, Bedi, Chandrasekhar and Prasanna. Fletcher’s unbeaten 97 apart, no England batsman made more than 20 in the first innings, and none more than 21 except Denness’s 76 in the second. These were notable innings by both future England captains, but they went almost unnoticed. Pat Pocock took four wickets as India made hard work of their target of 86. As the Sage writes, “With another 50 runs in the bag [England] would probably have won it”.

One thing that I learned was that Derek Underwood could not play in this game, having awoken with a temperature on the first morning. I had thought that Underwood, round-shouldered smoker that he was, had never missed a test match for fitness reasons, but this was illness, not injury. “If any wicket in India was likely to be suited to Underwood’s many talents it was this one in Madras” said Playfair’s anonymous correspondent, who had probably cobbled the report together from press reports, given that the magazine was now an issue away from oblivion. 

In the fourth test, England achieved a lead of 40, but India’s first innings occupied the whole of the first two days on a slow pitch that offered bowlers little, so a draw was the outcome. The highlight was captain Lewis’s 125, his sole test century. The Sage:

Having said that the time had come to attack the Indian spinners, Lewis, in Kanpur, did something about it. When he came in Bedi had bowled nine overs for eleven runs and England were 48 for two…Lewis at once jumped out to hit him over mid-on for four. He had got 70 against Bedi on a turning pitch in England last season by using his feet, and this is what he did now.

Tony Lewis might have been picked for England at any time in the previous decade. The list of batsmen no better than him who were is long. As Woodcock says, the innings showed what Lewis might have achieved “had he had the advantage of playing on better pitches than those in Glamorgan”. 

Another tour is featured in both magazines, that of Kent, as Sunday League champions, to the West Indies. I have written about this tour before but was unaware that both The Cricketer and Playfair carried extensive reports on it, by Michael Carey and Howard Booth (of the Daily Mirror, if memory serves) respectively.

In my original article I called out Wisden’s description of my former skiing instructor Barry Dudleston’s bowling as “chinamen” as wrong, given that the Playfair annual consistently listed him as “SLA”, but it seems that it was indeed wrist spin that he purveyed on this tour.

According to Booth, Colin Cowdrey “rated him a more effective bowler than Ken Barrington on these pitches”. He got Rohan Kanhai out first ball, although it needed a brilliant catch by Alan Ealham off a full toss.

One promising Antiguan batsman was noticed in both reports. This is Carey’s description:

The locals made an entertaining fight of it, largely due to Vivian Richards, a 23-year-old batsman of sound technique and bold method. Cowdrey felt he would play for the West Indies soon.

In Playfair, Cardus laments “the virtual disappearance of the spin bowler”, which was to overstate the case when most counties still went into matches with two slow-bowling options. He tells a story about SF Barnes (and we must remember that in matters of factual accuracy Cardus was the Fox News of his day) and a match that celebrated his eightieth birthday. Barnes was to bowl the first ball and was asked what he intended. “I’ll bowl the first ball but I don’t know about a full over. I can’t spin now, my fingers are too old. I suppose I’ll have to fall back on seamers—any fool can bowl ‘em”.

The Cricket Magazines: February 1973

Both The Cricketer and Playfair Cricket Monthly featured reports on England’s first two test matches in India. Print media were the way in which we learned what had happened in this series. There are short, grainy highlights packages of the second and third tests on YouTube, but I do not recall any of it appearing on television in Britain, even on the news. There was no radio commentary. BBC Radio, without a cricket correspondent following the compulsory retirement of Brian Johnston at 60, did not even send a reporter, relying on Crawford White of the Daily Express to phone in reports to Today on Radio 4 and at the close of play.

The two tests were terrific contests that followed a similar pattern, with low scores on turning pitches—238 was the highest of eight innings—with England chasing targets of around 200 in both. They succeeded in the first test, but failed in the second.

The absence of sound and pictures meant that some fine performances barely registered at the time and have been forgotten about since, most notably Geoff Arnold’s nine wickets in the first test, in which India’s quicker bowlers (if Abid Ali and Erinath Solkar can be so described) delivered only 12 overs. 

At 107 for four chasing 206 and the ball turning like a cornered viper, the match looked to be India’s for the taking, but an unbeaten century partnership by Tony Lewis and Tony Greig took England home. John Woodcock, reporting for The Cricketer, called Greig “the outstanding English cricketer”. Like nobody else until Ben Stokes, the future England captain thrived when the odds were stacked high on the side of quality opposition. 

Lewis was captaining England on test debut, the first to do so since Nigel Howard twenty years before, also on an India tour that the established captain didn’t fancy. None have done so since, for England, at least. Lewis made a duck in the first innings,and came in for the second with the match in the balance, so his unbeaten 70 was quite a performance, unnoticed by most as it was made on Christmas Day, with few papers printing on Boxing Day. England’s victory “was worth all the mistletoe in the world” according to Woodcock, who gives us a sense of how India was consumed by cricket, more specifically test cricket, by describing the aftermath of their win in the second test.

The streets around the hotel where the Indian team was staying had to be closed to traffic; thousands of those inside the ground kissed the turf and performed cartwheels of delight. The result may have been a setback to England, but it was a marvellous thing for cricket in India. Had India lost I would have hated to be Wadekar, so short are people’s memories.

Ajit Wadekar had led India to their first test and series win over England fewer than 18 months before, but his house was attacked when his team lost three-nil in 1974, so Woodcock is not being alarmist. 

Playfair was now on its last legs, three issues away from oblivion, a pity as there is some fine writing in the February edition. Basil Easterbrook’s piece is entitled How a Cricket Writer Can Cope With Wet Days. 

You can of course dash off a feature article, which might fill in half an hour, or compile your expenses account, which will take all morning.

Easterbrook then embarks on an entertaining survey of some of the public houses near cricket grounds in which he has passed wet days. 

Neville Cardus was in the final two years of his life and not terribly well but his piece on Sussex is a late glimpse of a craftsman capable yet of top form atthe tail end of his career, like Cowdrey’s winning century for Kent against the Australians in ‘75. 

In the first paragraph he describes turn-of-the-century Manchester as “a city of begrimed solid dignity” and follows with a word—ratiocinative—that I had to look up, which is always fun. Here it is. 

Both titles carry pieces by former players on the contemporary game, which always have the potential to become a bog of better-in-my-day self-justification. 

In The Cricketer HL “Stork” Hendry, who played 11 tests for Australia in the 1920s, starts with a paragraph that swallow dives into heart of the morass, rescue improbable.

Cricket-lovers are disappointed and disturbed that the great game of cricket, hitherto regarded as a character-builder, is losing some of its attraction to the public.

He dismisses the counter-attractions of other sports as a factor, as they had always been around, but concedes that “the craze of young people to own motor cars has been a contributing factor”.

Hendry’s explanation is “Averages”, his shorthand for batsmen paying too much attention to their own statistics, and not enough to the needs of the team or the crowds. 

Decades ago the goal of the batsman was a century; having attained this they usually proceeded to get out.

The introduction to the piece records that Hendry scored 325 not out against the New Zealanders in 1925-26.

In The Cricketer Charles Barnett, whose Gloucestershire career also began in the twenties, is altogether more understanding of the challenges faced by the modern cricketer, with whom he sympathises for having to adapt between different forms of the game and back again over a single weekend. It does seem astonishing that counties would begin a Championship game on a Saturday, play a separate 40-over match on a Sunday (sometimes in a different county), then resume the three-day game on Monday morning. 

Barnett puts forward a common proposal of the time, that young batsmen of promise should be omitted from one-day teams in their formative years. He even takes the trouble to suggest that counties make arrangements with golf clubs so that these youthful flowers might be fully occupied on their days off, presumably lest their unoccupied minds strayed to unclean thoughts of reverse sweeps.

Barnett is dismissive of the orthodox view that the influx of overseas players to county cricket is a bad thing, 

Their very example is now there for every young player to see and if wise try to copy.

He also has the good idea that run outs from direct hits should be recorded as ‘thrown out”, with the fielder credited.  

The Magazines: November 1972

Cricketer’s November edition was always the Winter Annual in these years, a double-sized volume (though about 20 fewer pages than a standard copy these days) at the cost of 50p, or, as our grandmothers would have said at the time, ten shillings (the normal price was 20p). It is worth every p or d, with plenty of fine writing.

The centrepiece of the Winter Annual was always the Journal of the Season. A prominent figure would write a weekly summary of events, posting it to the offices of The Cricketer so as to avoid augmentation with hindsight. In 1972 it was in the hands of Tony Lewis, captain of Glamorgan but starting the transition into his subsequent career of commentating and writing.

Lewis followed the Ashes on television, declaring that he had become “a fan of Benaud, Laker and Dexter”, fortunately given that he was to spend almost 20 years in the professional company of the former. He had the distinction of recording his own appointment as captain of MCC and England on the winter tour of South Asia. Already, he had a pleasing turn of phrase. Dennis Lillee running in to bowl was “like a Welsh wing three-quarter in full flight”, high praise from a man of Neath. With the moustache in common, he must have had Gerald Davies in mind.

Some of the issues that Lewis discusses remind us of how much has changed. He describes seeing Ken Higgs playing for Leicestershire, and Bob Cottam for Northamptonshire as an “unreal” experience. Now, players shifting counties happens routinely from week-to-week. Both Cottam and Bob Willis (who had gone to Warwickshire from Surrey) had to miss the first couple of months or so of the 1972 season as their moves were contrary to the wishes of their former counties, a ruling that deprived the England selectors of two possible options for the Ashes.

I had forgotten that Fred Trueman turned out for Derbyshire in the Sunday League that year. If memory serves, he was joined by Fred Rumsey in a partnership that was redolent of the era of round-arm bowling.

The best Journals of the Season came in the late seventies when they were in the hands of Alan Gibson, who is given a page to reflect on the season in this edition. Gibson aficionados will be pleased to find that the first paragraph is devoted not to the cricket, but to his travails in getting to and from the cricket. Train strikes are not a new thing in Britain.

On several occasions I had the alarming experience of having to drive a car, something I do about as readily as riding a buffalo. At Pontypridd, I spent an hour and a half trying to find the ground. When I did get there, there was no play, and on departing I took a quite spectacularly wrong turn, and found myself some while later climbing a precipitous Welsh mountain…The following day, after triumphantly driving from Bristol to Swansea and back, I took a wrong turning within a quarter of an hour’s walk from home, and managed to cover another twenty miles before I arrived. The God in the machine is too strong for me.

Much of the article is a defence of three-day Championship cricket. A four-day Championship was being mooted, though it was not until the late 80s that it became more than talk. Gibson uses the Championship cricket he saw in 1972 to mount a case. I am a sucker for a Wilf Wooller anecdote and he refers to one of the best, Wooller’s offer over the PA system at Swansea (as Secretary of Glamorgan) to refund spectators their admission money as Somerset under Brian Close were being so boring.

The problems with three-day cricket were evident in 1972, and I think that its abandonment was correct, but we would all throw our hats in the air in celebration of Gibson’s final paragraph:

I do not get too depressed about the future of the championship, because however they pitch it, it has already shown itself to be a nine-lived sort of cat.

The Cricketer maintained an extensive network of international correspondents, the only source of news of overseas domestic cricket in the pre-internet age. RT Brittenden was their man in New Zealand. Later, it was Dave Crowe, father of Martin and Jeff. When he passed away suddenly soon after I moved to New Zealand, I emailed The Cricketer offering my services. They replied saying that they were wondering why they had not received his copy, and appointed Bryan Waddle.

In November 1972, Brittenden’s column was a profile of all-rounder Bruce Taylor. Hindsight can make fools of us all.

Taylor dearly loves a little flutter on the horses. When he takes a bet, the other runners might as well stay in their stalls. If there is a team sweepstake, Taylor will win it. In a mild sort of way, he has a Midas touch.

That may have been Taylor’s own view. Some years later he served a prison sentence for fraud as he attempted to service his gambling debts.

The Indian correspondent, KN Prabhu, has some advice for Lewis and his tourists that remains good today: “it is good to remember that what is funny in Coventry may not be as funny in Calcutta”.

The appointment of David Frith as Deputy Editor of The Cricketer was announced. Fifty years on, Frith described the circumstances of that appointment in the most recent edition of The Nightwatchman. It was partially due to Richard Nixon. A few months previously, Frith had written about tracking down the old Australian pace bowler Jack Gregory, who he located in Narooma, 100 miles south of Sydney.

Gregory was suspicious of journalists, having been stitched up years before. He was about to go fishing when Frith cold called, but was watching live TV coverage of Nixon’s visit to China, which gave Frith the chance to stay and interview Gregory without the subject being quite aware of it.

John Arlott secured Frith an interview/audience with EW Swanton, held behind the broadcasting boxes at the Oval during the final test. It turned out that Gregory was a boyhood hero of Swanton’s, and when the penny dropped that Frith was the man who had found him, the matter was settled.

Frith was the most significant figure in the world of cricket magazines for the next generation. He soon became editor of The Cricketer, and later founded the Wisden Cricket Monthly. I particularly enjoyed his book reviews, in which he would hunt down factual errors like a dog sniffing out truffles.

Tracking down fast bowlers was his speciality in 1972. In this edition it is Eddie Gilbert, the indigenous fast bowler who played for Queensland in the 1930s, but not Australia, despite being described by Bradman as the fastest bowler he ever faced.

This time, Frith thought that he was undertaking historical research; he visited a psychiatric hospital in Brisbane in the hope of settling the date of Gilbert’s death. Instead, he was astonished to be told that the bowler was still alive, and resident at the facility, to which he had been committed because of mental illness that was the consequence of alcoholism. This was a common fate among people who were treated deplorably by the Australian Government.

This was not a nostalgic meeting like that with Gregory.

He shuffled into the room, head to one side, eyes averted, impossible to meet…Five feet eight with long arms: the devastating catapult machine he must once have been was apparent.

‘Shake hands Eddie,’ his attendant urged kindly.

The hand that had propelled the ball that had smashed so many stumps was raised slowly; it was as limp as a dislodged bail. He was muttering, huskily and incoherently, gently rocking his head from side to side.

There is plenty more good writing in the Winter Annual. Alan Ross carries off the tricky job of reviewing the editor’s autobiography, Sort of a Cricket Person, with balanced aplomb. The farceur Ben Travers recalled his friendship with Vic Richardson, Australian captain and grandfather of the Chappells. Humphrey Brooke analysed Hammond’s tactics in the Oval test of 1938 (what distant history that seems, but the same in time terms as a feature on the 1988 summer of the four captains would be today). Chris Martin-Jenkins profiled David Steele, three years before he became the bank clerk who went to war and defied Lillee and Thomson.

Sir John Masterman, academic, spymaster and novelist, contributed a piece entitled “To walk or not to walk”. After a page of entertaining reminiscence of appalling umpiring, Masterman’s refreshing conclusion is that it should be left to the umpires. He calls walking “mistaken chivalry”.

Playfair, now only five issues from extinction, is thin by comparison, in both size and quality, though it does have Neville Cardus, who writes about cricket reporters, past and present. Cardus, somewhat improbably, claims to have been assiduous in recording the facts, making notes after each delivery, until…

I was observed by Samuel Langford, senior music critic of the Manchester Guardian, a Falstaffian man, unkempt, ripe with humour, and indifferent to the fact that frequently his flies were not buttoned. He saw me taking notes every ball. ‘What’s all that for?’ he asked. ‘Tear it up. Watch the game looking for character’.

This was advice that Cardus embraced with a convert’s enthusiasm.

Myself, I never once used the words ‘seamer’ or ‘cutter’ in all my Press Box years, writing 8,000 words every week, from May to late August.

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.

       

       

Bong! Two centuries for Majid Bong! Boredom at Neath Bong! News at Ten Begins: 1 to 7 July 1967

Kent v Pakistanis 1 – 4 July

It was a week off for Kent, in Championship terms at least, though the first half of the week was occupied by a game against the second touring side of the summer, the Pakistanis. Unlike the earlier game against the Indians, the opportunity was taken to rest three bowlers: Graham, Sayer and Dixon. David Nicholls came in for his first game of the season. A punchy left-handed batsman, Nicholls started with a roar in 1963 with a double century, but had not reached three figures since. He made a duck in his only innings in this match and might have been contemplating the possibility that this would be his last season, but an opportunity for a change of role was about to present itself that would keep him in the game for another 13 years.

Majid Jehangir scored a century for the tourists. We know him better as Majid Khan and he was to make another hundred in the second half of the week, against Middlesex. John Arlott-Silchester described him there as a “pleasantly extrovert batsman”. Unfortunately, Majid also opened the bowling, revealing that Pakistan would be no more able to field an opening attack of test class than India had been. At Lord’s Eric Russell and Mike “Pasty” Harris rattled up a Middlesex first-wicket record of 312 against them. The most significant action of the game at Canterbury was a breezy 41 from Majid’s new ball partner, one Asif Iqbal. That day may have been when the idea germinated that here might be a player who would enhance the Kent team and please its crowds when the overseas player rules were liberalised for the 1968 season.

Majid Khan became as popular at Glamorgan as Asif Iqbal was to be with Kent. They could have done with his strokeplay to liven up proceedings at Neath this week. As was so often the case, Alan Gibson’s report contained more to please than anything that happened on the field of play. 

On this occasion the Glamorgan secretary Wilf Wooller did not take to the public address to offer spectators their money back as he was to do on a later occasion when Brian Close was captain of Somerset. The game looked a certain draw when Tony Lewis put himself on and won the game with a little filthy legspin.

The big match of the week was at Grace Road where Championship leaders Leicestershire hosted second-placed Yorkshire, who reclaimed what everybody from Middlesbrough to Sheffield believed was their rightful place on top of the table. Ray Illingworth took 11 in the match to follow 14 over the first two tests, though John Woodcock was about to describe him as having a “limited future” as a test cricketer. Mike Brearley is the standard example of a player picked as a captain rather than on his own playing merits, but Illingworth would do just as well. Leicestershire were to wait another eight years for their first Championship, led by Ray Illingworth.

John Newcombe became the last amateur men’s singles champion at Wimbledon with an easy victory over Bungert of Germany. The men’s final was always played on a Friday in those days, with Ann Jones to play Billie Jean King in the ladies’ final on Saturday.

The first News at Ten was broadcast on ITV on 1 July 1967 presented by Alastair Burnet and Andrew Gardner. This was the first nightly news programme that had the space for longer reports and analysis, with journalists, rather than announcers, as presenters. It began the golden age of ITN during which it set the style of British TV news with the BBC catching up as best it could. 

Of course, news and current affairs were regarded as altogether different things then, and the BBC still had the lead in the latter field. Panorama was presented by Robin Day with a reporting team that included Richard Kershaw, James Mossman and Michael Charlton (who had been the guest Australian radio commentator on the 1956 Ashes series). The nightly Twenty-Four Hours programme was delivered by as rich a collection of presenting and reporting talent as there has been in a British current affairs show: Cliff Michelmore, Ian Trethowan, Robert McKenzie, Kenneth Allsop, Julian Pettifer, Fyfe Robertson, Michael Barrett, Leonard Parkin, and even the young Michael Parkinson (it was of Fyfe Robertson that Clive James once wrote “he described himself as an intelligent man in the street, which he proved half right by standing in a street as he said it”).

The reviewer of the first News at Ten in The Times was Michael Billington, also deputy to Irving Wardle as theatre critic. In 1971 Billington became the Guardian’s theatre critic, a position in which he serves still. Few have spent the half-century more enjoyably than Michael Billington.

This week, Leo Abse’s private member’s bill that decriminalised homosexual activity between consenting males over the age of 21 completed its passage through the House of Commons. It was read a third time at 5.50 am after eight hours of filibustering from the backwoodsmen, mining deep into their considerable reserves of malice and ignorance to keep proceedings going. Some of these splutterings might seem amusing now, but this week in 2017  here in New Zealand the House of Representatives passed a motion of apology to those men convicted before our law was changed, almost twenty years later than in Britain. The debate reminded us that thousands of decent men lived their lives in secrecy and fear because of the kind of ridiculousness that these fools expounded. So not funny at all.

Even Roy Jenkins, the epitome of the liberal Home Secretary whose initiative the bill was and who ensured that it was given sufficient parliamentary time to pass, referred in his third reading speech to “those who suffer from this disability” showing that the passing of the bill by the Commons was a beginning not an end.