23 – 29 August: Cricket in the Sun

The cricket ground at Cheriton Road, Folkestone was functional, with a concrete crescent of a terrace forming a stand about ten rows deep that spread out either side of the brick pavilion and around half the ground. Most of the other half  was occupied by the marquees that moved around Kent from cricket week to cricket week, temporary homes for men in suits and (fewer) ladies in hats. Put it in a city and it would be forgettable. Located as it was with a view of the North Downs, rolling down towards Dover where they became the White Cliffs, it was one of my favourite grounds.

Peter Marson’s scene setting of the second day of the match against Surrey in The Times tallies with my recollection of that week as something close to idyllic.

“Here was the perfect summer’s day, sunny with a light breeze to caress furrowed brows. Undulating Kentish Downs, etched against the palest blue skies, completed the picture”.

I got a lift from Canterbury to Folkestone in a Morris Traveller driven by a man called Frank in which a passenger was Harold Warner, something of a historian of Kent cricket. Even in this hot summer he was wearing his traditional waistcoat, jacket and mac, topped by a Homburg. As boys they watched Freeman, Woolley, Ames and Chapman, perhaps even Wilfred Rhodes who played in the nineteenth century. I have seen Brook, Bethall and others who may be active into the 2040s.

We went via the route that the Romans designed, arrow straight down Stone Street, then across the Kentish countryside to Rhodes Minnis and Lyminge and on to Folkestone. That was the way I used forever after and still do whenever I return to Kent.

Asif Iqbal, who always enjoyed Folkestone, got the week under way with a glittering hundred. Many a swordsman have not been as fleet of foot or flashed a blade as proficiently as Asif at Cheriton Road. Three years later, after he launched a similar onslaught against Gloucestershire, causing cover fielder Jim Foat to miss the following day’s Sunday League game with bruised hands.

The other contender for innings of the week was by Viv Richards, who made a rapid, fierce 122. Brian Luckhurst could not compete aesthetically with these two overseas players but scored more runs than anybody else that week with a hundred, a ninety and a sixty. It was good to see him getting past the trauma of the previous winter. Graham Johnson rediscovered the early season form that had him talked about as a possible test-match selection and made a hundred in the win against Somerset.

The decisive bowling that won that game was by Bernard Julien who had gone into the game as a batter only because of injury. In Underwood’s absence he reverted to slow bowling in the final stages of the game and took five for 55 to finish things off. As a slow bowler Julien could bowl in both orthodox and unorthodox mode. When he joined Kent he was, most unfairly, touted as the next Sobers, because of promise and his ability to bowl in different styles. Kent did not make the most of Julien’s ability, batting him low in the order even after a Lord’s test century and not providing the structure that would have enabled him to get the most from his ability. Bob Woolmer, this week batting at No 5 for England, was another who should have been higher up the order much earlier.

Here is Henry Blofeld’s report on the first day of the Somerset match.

 

I missed Julien’s decisive bowling on the final day of Folkestone week as I was at the Oval for the second day of the final test. As was (mercifully briefly) the custom for unresolved Ashes series at that time, a sixth day had been added. As we will see, this did no more than act as a sedative, a disincentive to moving things along.

As John Woodcock described “Yet again it was fiercely hot and beautifully sunny” as I took my seat in the open section of the Vauxhall Stand. I saw 271 runs for the loss of eight Australian wickets, pretty standard for for a day’s test cricket at the time, but possibly the most entertaining of the six days, which gives you a picture of the game as a whole. It began unusually with two centurions resuming. McCosker scored only one more before being caught by Roope in the slips off Old, but Ian Chappell added another fifty, finishing with 192. Doug Walters made a rare English half-century but never looked comfortable. He was stuck on 49 for so long that a wag near me shouted “I have a ticket for Tuesday if anyone wants to see Walters get his fifty”.

As was the case through much of the seventies, the Oval was geologically slow, making scoring runs and getting out equally challenging, the worst of all pitches. It took the genius of Mikey Holding the following year to produce a win in such conditions. In 1975, a draw was assumed to be the denouement from early on. John Arlott was moved to quote Andrew Marvell in his report on the second day:

“Yonder all before us lie / Deserts of vast eternity at least it must feel like that to more English batsmen than read him regularly”.

 Spare a thought for Keith Fletcher, whose treatment by the selectors in 1975 would be regarded as cruel and unusual these days. Picked for the first test when he deserved a break after the travails of the Australian tour, he was then dropped despite scoring England’s only fifty. He was then recalled at Headingley, a venue at which he had never fared well after a disastrous debut when he was picked ahead of local hero Phil Sharpe. Then he was dropped again for the Oval, a ground on which he had made 122 in similar conditions the year before. Instead, he was leading Essex against Northamptonshire with Alan Gibson watching:

“They do not seem pleased with Fletcher in Essex at present, or perhaps it is that so many Yorkshiremen take their holidays at Southend”.

Yorkshiremen were more cheerful than at most times in the seventies as they led the Championship, but had only two games to play when all their pursuers had three, so would inevitably be overtaken unless a national deluge intervened.

Performance of the week was Robin Hobbs’ hundred for Essex against the Australians. It took him 40 minutes, the fastest since Percy Fender took 35 minues for Surrey against Nottinghamshire in 1920.

Curiosity of the week occurred at Lord’s where Middlesex suffered two bowlers taking eight wickets in an innings against them for different sides on successive days. What’s more, both were career bests for international players, first John Snow with eight for 87 for Sussex, then David Brown, eight for 60 for Warwickshire. Snow ridiculed reports that Middlesex had been blown away by his pace, claiming that he had mostly bowled off spin (Snow took six of his wickets on the second day, for the sake of accuracy).

Sunday found me among 10,000 spectators at Mote Park, Maidstone, a ground that could accommodate no more than a fifth of that number comfortably. If I was lucky, I got a seat in the pavilion or on the small area of concrete terracing. Otherwise, it was a piece of four-by-two perched improbably on ill-suited logs, if at all. Kent were beaten comfortably by five wickets, ending our chances in the Sunday League in 1975. The trophy was delivered to us by helicopter at the same venue a year later.

It was a wonderful week.

10 - 16 May 1975 The Good and Bad of Geoffrey Boycott

 

Geoffrey Boycott was the focus of much attention this week, as he was so often in these years. Against Worcestershire, he made an unbeaten 152 and thus became only the third Yorkshireman (after Sutcliffe and Hutton) to register a century against the other 16 counties also his fiftieth in the cause of the white rose. Wisden said “Few of these previous efforts can have been technically better”. Nobody else passed fifty, except a bludgeoning Chris Old when the game was dead on the third afternoon.

The excellence of Boycott the batter was universally acknowledged, even by those who thought that he might speed up in his interest of his team from time to time. The following day the praise turned to blame, as it so often did. Boycott refused to respond to Norman Gifford’s declaration 101 in arrears by setting a meaningful target, an approach that John Woodcock did not care for:

 

These were more cautious times; later in the season I was at Canterbury when Richard Gilliatt of Hampshire was booed off the field for failing to set a target in similar circumstances.

Boycott had not yet answered the question of the day: would he play for England this season? As Woodcock records, he had been absent more than present for several years.

 

The great man’s reluctance to don the England cap has sometimes been put down to a reluctance to face the fast bowlers of the time. This is unfair. He had dropped out after the first test against India the previous year when there were runs to be harvested despite his habit of falling to the pedestrian left-arm seam of Erinath Solkar. When he pulled out of the tour to Australia in the winter Lillee was widely considered to be finished because of his back and Thomson was never mentioned. It was because Denness (and before him Tony Lewis in 1972/73) had been preferred to him as captain. Had he grimaced and borne it, Boycott, rather than Greig, would probably have succeeded the Kent man in 1975. Woodcock had a bit of a blind spot re Greig, even pre-Packer, but his appraisal of the Sussex captain’s chances of leading the national team: “His appointment would have to be conditional upon his renouncing altogether the law of the jungle” would have been widely shared in the St John’s Wood area.

The only opener who might claim more renown than Boycott was Barry Richards, probably the best in the world in 1975. His unbeaten 96 took Hampshire to victory and the top of the Championship table. Alan Gibson was at St Helen’s to rhapsodise.

 

I was at Canterbury on Saturday to see Kent lose to Sussex in the 55-over competition, a vengeful John Snow (11-4-11-3) keen to demonstrate to Denness the foolishness of his omission from the winter’s tour. I recall a spectator who was right behind the arm describing on the bus home the late swing of the ball that trapped our beleaguered leader lbw for one. Snow was at the crease to guide Sussex home in the 55^th and final over. Two hundred and fifty-two runs in 106 overs would have the marketing people these days phoning the Samaritans, but the low scoring games are often the most fascinating. “Kent’s golden touch has deserted them” wrote former Kent player Tony Pawson in The Observer. This was to be the case for most of this season, the worst of the seventies for Kent.

Sunday saw fewer overs but more runs, including a record aggregate for the Sunday League with Somerset’s 270 topping visitors Gloucestershire’s 255 at Bristol. Here, it was the other great Richards, (IVA), who set it up with 126 not out (six sixes and 13 fours). Sadiq Mohammad made 131 in reply, but with insufficient support.

Who said “there’s a mistake there, Gloucestershire would be at home in Bristol”? Not so. This was at the Imperial Ground in Knowle, south of the River Avon that marked the historic boundary of Somerset. I watched a Sunday League game there four years later.

That Sunday I was at Folkestone, or at least assume that I was, though I recall nothing of the game, even after reading the report in The Times by Gerald Sinstadt, better known as Granada TV’s football commentator. He highlights two things: the cold, but there have been so many cold days at the cricket that they stick to each other like buns too long in the freezer, one no more memorable than another. Also the running between the wickets of Mike Denness and Brian Luckhurst. When I see murmurations of  starlings performing their swooping impeccably synchronised displays, I think of Denness and Luckhurst stealing singles with wordless understanding.

 

Off-the-field cricket news concerned the standoff between the BBC and the TCCB (forerunners of the ECB) over the TV rights for the four test matches against Australia. The BBC had increased its offer to a “final” £116,000 (the equivalent of about £890,000 now according to the Bank of England’s inflation calculator). The ECB’s current arrangement with Sky TV for all cricket is said to be worth £220 million a year. Of course the BBC had an effective monopoly. ITV, now with a daytime schedule, would not contemplate a rival bid.

The Godfather Part II was released that week. “Few movie sequels are as good as the films they follow and even fewer have about them an air of necessity. Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather Part II is a rare exception” was the verdict of Philip French in The Guardian.

Most chilling headline of the week: “Inflation in Britain running at over 30%”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lord’s Finals I Have Seen: 1981

Somerset v Surrey, 55 overs, Lord’s 25 July 1981

Derbyshire v Northamptonshire, 60 overs, 5 September 1981

Nineteen-eighty-one.

One of those special cricketing years, the mention of which bursts a dam of memories, like 1947 did for John Arlott, and 2005 and 2019 do for many in England. Willis coming down the hill at Headingley like the wrath of God, Botham like God himself, at Edgbaston, Old Trafford and in and out of the confectionary stall at Headingley.

It was a very good year for me too. I watched no cricket until June, laudably focusing on my history finals at Bristol University, Henry Tudor rather than Henry Blofeld taking my attention. I more than made up for it thereafter. Looking through the scorecards in Wisden, I am surprised by how much cricket I watched that summer, possibly more than any before or since, except those years early this century when CricInfo paid me to watch here in New Zealand. Full weeks at Maidstone, Canterbury and Folkestone, Championship games at Lord’s and the Oval (a day return to London from Herne Bay with a student railcard cost less than two pounds in 1981), first visits to Bath and Cheltenham, an ODI at Lord’s and a day at the Oval test all part of my schedule.

It would take too long to give a full account of that summer; 1981 would be a good choice for a day-by-day reconstruction like that for 1967 that I did a few years ago. One day, when I have more time. For now, I’ll stick to the brief of the Lord’s finals, for which this was also a memorable year, one featuring an individual performance of brilliance, and the other providing the closest finish yet.

My academic exile meant that I saw none of the group games in the 55-over competition. Instead, I caught up with the competition in unusual circumstances at the quarter-final stage. 

Kent were having a better season than they’d had in 1980 (it would have been difficult to have had worse) and had won their group, earning a home quarter final, but there was so much rain at Canterbury that the game did a moonlight flit to the Oval before the third of the three days were set aside for knockout games in those days. Kent won, thanks to Chris Tavaré’s 76 and a good all-round bowling performance led by John Shepherd’s three for 24. But Warwickshire probably still haven’t worked out how they lost, from 133 for two chasing 193. I have written about this game before. It was the day I made the acquaintance of Allen Hunt, with whom I was to spend many happy times watching cricket up to the time I left the UK 16 years later. Allen remains one of the small number of readers I keep in mind when I write these pieces, even though he has been dead these 20 years.

The semi-final draw sent Kent back on the road to the hell that was Taunton. Batting first, their 154 was a huge improvement on the 60 of two years before, but as difficult to defend as an A-level algorithm, despite Richards and Botham being dispatched for two each. It was a day when cussed determination was the premium quality, and it was cricket’s arch contrarian Peter Roebuck who took Somerset on the slow-road home with 51 not out spread over 38 overs.

I wasn’t at the County Ground that day because I was receiving my degree from the Chancellor of Bristol University, Dorothy Hodgkin, Nobel Prize winner, feminist, disarmament advocate, and the only Labour supporter whose portrait Mrs Thatcher requested be displayed at No 10 Downing Street. Readings from Hodgkin’s letters are available on BBC Sounds, and make a fascinating listen.

Somerset took top billing for the final at Lord’s, their third appearance in four years. This was a little unfair on opponents Surrey, for whom it was three in three, but they had all been losses, so they were that actor who is in everything, but whose name you can’t quite remember. I know what I wanted when I took my seat at the Nursery End: another Lord’s century from Viv Richards. But would Surrey make enough batting first for that to be able to happen? It seemed unlikely when Surrey had made only 15 from their first 18 overs, and lost two wickets in the process.

That they got as far as 194 was largely due to their captain. Unusually for the era, RDV Knight played for three counties, starting with Surrey, moving in turn to Gloucestershire and Sussex before returning to the Oval as skipper in 1978. Knight was an establishment figure, later becoming first secretary, then president of MCC. But he received no selectorial favour from this; Knight was one of the better players of the era not to receive a test cap. His judicious 92 here gave Surrey what little chance they had. Second-highest scorer was Monte Lynch with 22.

The three finals in which Richards scored hundreds have his name eternally associated with them, but they might more appropriately be known as Garner’s matches. His combined analysis over these three games was 32.3–8–81–16. Garner’s record for Somerset in first-class cricket was good, though not as destructive as Malcolm Marshall was for Hampshire or as consistent as Courtney Walsh at Gloucestershire. But like Richards, he rose to a Lord’s occasion like an actor on a West End first night, finding an extra gear of pace without compromising the laser-guided accuracy, and all delivered from that acrophobic angle.

Garner was largely responsible for Surrey’s slow start, and, as on the two occasions in 1979, returned at the end of the innings to seek and extinguish anything with the slightest scent of hope about it.

Pete “Dasher” Denning was a fine county cricketer, and it is no disrespect to him that of the crowd at Lord’s that afternoon, all but those who were closely related to him were pleased to see him bowled by Sylvester Clarke for a duck, for that meant the early entry of Viv.

Just as he had in the 1979 60-over final, Richards began with exaggerated care, as if the wellbeing of everybody from Porlock to Frome was dependent on his staying at the crease, which, in a way, it was. Gradually, the shots unrolled, helped by left-armer David Thomas’s strange belief that Richards would be vulnerable to the short ball on leg stump, a misapprehension that led some in the Mound Stand to regret that they had left their tin hats at home. As ever, it was magnificent. Richards’ Lord’s final centuries will ever remain among my best cricket memories.

He had perfect support from Peter Roebuck, which, as we now know, would not always be the case. Roebuck fed Richards the strike like Ernie Wise setting up Eric Morecambe’s punchlines. He contributed just 22 to their third-wicket partnership of 105. He was followed by Ian Botham, greeted with acclaim at the end of a week that began with the miracle of Headingley. The rest was showing off, and very enjoyable it was. Somerset won by seven wickets with more than ten overs to spare.

The first round of the 60-over knockout competition earlier in July had Yorkshire coming to Canterbury for the only tie that pitted two first-class counties against each other. By this time, the poisoned chalice of the Yorkshire captaincy had passed to Chris Old, who put Kent in upon winning the toss.

Martyn Moxon went early, caught behind off Kevin Jarvis. Bill Athey joined Boycott, reuniting the partnership that had put Kent out of the previous year’s competition with a stand of 202 at Headingley. They seemed to be heading the same way here as they added 72 off 22 overs. As so often, it was Derek Underwood who restored order, the Metternich of his time, restoring obedience in the provinces through ruthless control. He bowled 12 overs straight through for just ten (10) runs. The scorecard says that he took no wickets, but does not count those he dismissed at the other end.

Here, Chris Cowdrey was the beneficiary, as the Yorkshire batsmen tried to take off him the runs they lost by focusing on staying in against Underwood. Cowdrey kept his nerve, maintained good control and was rewarded with four for 41, including Boycott and Athey. A rapid partnership in the last ten overs between Hampshire and Bairstow took Yorkshire to 222 for six, a total that would win considerably more such games then than it would now.

The chase started badly for Kent with the loss of Woolmer and Johnson for single figures. Both fell lbw to Old, who was among the best of his time in probing weakness with accuracy and movement off the pitch. Nevertheless, it is no surprise to find that Ray “Trigger” Julian was officiating.

This was the summer of the two Tavarés. For England, the gritty professional Tavaré CJ, holding back the Australian attack at Old Trafford while scoring at a rate that caused the scoreboard to rust. For Kent, the dashing amateur CJ Tavaré, dominating county attacks and cover driving like Hammond reborn. Yorkshire did not mistake one for the other as so many were prone to do; a couple of months earlier he had taken them for 97 off 16 overs in a Sunday League game at Huddersfield. This was one of three centuries (plus a 99 not on a Sunday) that I saw him make that year. All of them started calm and became destructive, like the Beaufort Scale expressed through the medium of cricket. Never mind the slowcoach stereotype, Chris Tavaré was a very fine batsman, and this was his best year. He is No 3 (and captain) in my XI of Kent favourites. On the day in question he was supported by Mark Benson, who had just established himself as a first-team regular, in a third-wicket stand of 142 that secured the game.

Nottinghamshire came to St Lawrence for the second round. They were champions that year, playing on home pitches that bore the hue of the Lincoln Green of the men of Sherwood. The game was scheduled for the day after the miracle of Headingley. Graham Dilley returned from there to Canterbury; most of the England team, including Botham and Willis,  played for their counties that day, something that would be greeted with incredulity now (though on the day that I write Joe Root has turned out for Yorkshire the day after playing for England, but may not have been able to name all of his young teammates).

It was cold, wet and dark. The start was delayed until 2pm and it was no surprise when Clive Rice put Kent in, though he quickly sent Woolmer and Tavaré back to the dressing room. Rice and Hadlee were the hot act that summer, and for a few to come. Here they finished with five for 35 between them. Batting was a struggle, the 58-run partnership for the third wicket between Johnson and Benson by far the biggest of the innings. Another weather delay with ten overs left did not help. The innings finished three overs short of the 60 for 154. Nottinghamshire knocked off 21 of these in eight overs before play finally ended at 8 25pm.

Peter Marson, reporting for The Times, describes the crowd for the second day as a “paltry few”. We may have been few, sir, but we were far from paltry. We were in the unusual position of hoping for weather as grim as that of the day before, so that batting would be as challenging. I don’t remember any great shots—there weren’t any—but have clear recall of extraordinary tension of that day. It went well for Kent for first 90 minutes or so. Kevin Jarvis removed both openers, then Graham Dilley took the vital wickets of Randall and Rice. Chris Cowdrey weighed in with those of Birch and Hassan to leave Nottinghamshire with 76 to get, four wickets standing and most of Derek Underwood’s overs to come.

Richard Hadlee and Bruce French were in. Hadlee took 105 wickets in the Championship that year was well on the way to being recognised as one of the great quartet of all-rounders of that era. He is usually thought of as a bit of a swashbuckler, but this innings was the epitome of judgement and prudence, matched by the 21-year-old wicketkeeper. Underwood conceded only 12—making a total of 22 runs off 24 overs across the two games—but unlike the Yorkshire batsmen, these two knew that they had the overs left to get the runs off other bowlers without too much risk. They worked away at it, as French would at a sheer mountainside as he climbs it. For an hour we thought that he would fall with the next step, but he never did. They won with three-and-a-half overs to spare. It was a terrific game of cricket, as low-scoring matches can be.

Faced with a similar total in the quarter-final, Nottinghamshire fell short against their neighbours, Derbyshire, who beat Essex in the semi-final by losing fewer wickets in a tie. Their opponents at Lord’s were Northamptonshire, like Surrey back for a third final in three years. Now that counties change their line-ups radically from year-to-year it seems extraordinary that Neil Mallender coming in for the retired Jim Watts was the only change from the XI that had been at Lord’s in both the two previous years.

A couple of names in the Derbyshire team surprise. There is David Steele, now finishing a three-year spell at Derby before returning to Northampton. And the captain, Barry Wood, whose seventh September Lord’s final this was. As I’ve written before, in a later era Wood would have played a hundred-plus ODIs rather than the 13 on his record.

It was always pleasing when one of county cricket’s supporting cast moved to the front of the stage at Lord’s. Colin Tunnicliffe was as archetypal an English seamer as could be. He approached the bowling crease with an unhurried gait that said the season is long and energy must be conserved. He put it there and thereabouts, using the novelty that being a left-armer offered, and was grateful for as much help the pitch offered. When he bowled the second over of the match it would have been the biggest moment of his career. It did not go well, at first. Geoff Cook and Wayne Larkins were aggressive, more so than was usual for openers then, but it was a clear, warm, blue-skyed morning free of the customary Lord’s September new-ball wobble. Tunnicliffe went for 21 in three overs and was taken off, something of a humiliation in those times; opening bowlers would invariably bowl half their allocation at the start of the innings, then come back with the rest at the end.

They had put on 99 for the first wicket when Larkins was caught at deep square leg. Cook went on to make a century. The selectors in those pre-digital days when statistics were collected slowly and rarely, placed undue emphasis on single performances in late season, particularly the final test and the 60-over final. Cook’s 111 earned him a place in the touring party to India and Sri Lanka, while Paul Parker’s test debut duck, for which I had been present at the Oval the previous Saturday, meant that he was omitted. Larkins had also played in the test, making a respectable 34 and 24. Presumably, had he, not Cook, got the hundred here, he would have been on the plane instead.

Perhaps the most important piece of action that day came when Allan Lamb set off for an unwise single to cover. Geoff Miller’s throw beat Lamb’s desperate return to the crease and he was gone for nine. Lamb, now in the last year of his qualification to pay for England, had made 78 and 72 in his earlier appearances in Lord’s finals, so this was a big blow.

Williams was spectacularly caught by Alan Hill at long on, in front of us at the Nursery End, but Northamptonshire still reached 200 with seven wickets standing and eight overs to go. Even with seven or eight fielders on the boundary, it seemed that 250 would be the least that Derbyshire could restrict them to.

That the final total was only 235 for nine was down to two things. The first was terrific fielding. After Hill’s catch, Barry Wood ran out first Peter Willey, with a direct from square on, then Jim Yardley. The second was Tunnicliffe, who conceded only 21 from his remaining nine overs, the same as had gone from his first three. He ended Cook’s innings leg-before, then frustrated all remaining batsmen with bowling that was accurate, canny and a triumph of resilience.

You can date old footage that features Peter Willey by the angle at which he is facing in his batting stance. It shifted a few degrees each year, and by the time he finished it was tempting to shout “he’s behind you” as the bowler approached.

Derbyshire started well. Hill was part of an opening stand of 41 before he was bowled by Mallender. Peter Kirsten now joined John Wright.

Between them, Kirsten and Wright played for Derbyshire for 17 years. They were typical of the overseas players of that era; they attached themselves to a county and stayed with it, Wright for long enough to qualify for a benefit (though he had a season for Kent Seconds before going north). The quality of English domestic cricket improved as a result, and put it on a more level footing.

Wright and Kirsten put on 123 for the second wicket, but at a speed that left no horses frightened. Both were leg-before to Mallender in the 48^th over (Trigger Julian was not present; Ken Palmer was the umpire). This left Derbyshire needing 71 from 12. Six an over was a much taller order then than now—fielding circles started for the 55-over competition this year, but did not apply to this competition, so there were routinely seven on the boundary in the later stages of the innings.

Wood and Kim Barnett were both going well until the captain was bowled, quickly followed by David Steele, for a duck heaving across the line.  Barnett put on 23 for the sixth wicket Geoff Miller, when he was run out, having had to divert across the pitch to avoid crashing into his partner.

Two overs were left, with 19 still needed and Sarfraz Nawaz to bowl the 59th, a situation that made the fielding side strong favourites. If the tension for we neutrals was high, for supporters of the two teams it was becoming a medical event. The new batsman was Tunnicliffe, whose day was to continue to get better.

Twice in the next over he found the boundary, both with assured shots, one to square cover, the other straight. That left seven needed for a clear win, but at the start of the over Derbyshire had lost six wickets compared to Northamptonshire’s nine, so would win in the event of a tie. It was also very dark, which in this situation could work against the fielders as much as the batsmen. Jim Griffiths, another English seamer out of central casting, was the bowler.

With most fielders on or near the boundary, the strategy was to get them in ones and twos. Miller drove the first ball into the space between long on and deep mid-wicket for two. The next was a single to third man. Griffiths got away with a full toss from the third, hit back to him by Tunnicliffe off a leading edge. An edge to third man brought another single. A squirt to deep square leg from the fifth left one needed for the tie.

The instruction from Miller to Tunnicliffe was not to get bowled. He complied, the running off the pad into the legside. Lamb picked it up and a footrace between him and Miller began. I doubt that Miller, who was in the crease as Griffiths released the ball, ever moved faster. His dive secured the trophy for Derbyshire.

Cook got the man-of-the-match medal from Viv Richards. I thought that Tunnicliffe should have had it. He was largely responsible for reining in the closing stages of the Northamptonshire innings and those two boundaries off Sarfraz set up the win. A few months ago Tunnicliffe, Hill and Miller did a You Tube watchalong on the highlights of the game. The production is a bit rustic, but it’s well worth a look. The link is below.

So Derbyshire won by fewer wickets lost in a tied game. That’s the proper way of deciding a tied one-day game, and everybody here in New Zealand agrees.

Watch the highlights of the 60-over final with Geoff Miller, Alan Hill and Colin Tunnicliffe

Highlights of Viv Richards’ century in the 55-over final.

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

1979: Forty years on—first wins for Essex and Somerset

                             

I was pleased that Somerset won the last Lord’s one-day final. It seemed fitting that a county outside the metropolitan elite (in whose number Hampshire, by their own choice, are counted these days) should enjoy county cricket’s last day on the biggest stage of all. There was a certain personal symmetry about it too. I was at Lord’s for Somerset’s first final in 1967, and for their first win, in 1979, the year that we have reached in this series of posts on Lord’s finals about which I can say “I was there”.

Britain had recently emerged from the Winter of Discontent, and Mrs Thatcher was in Downing Street, but the state of the nation is never representative of all its people; my own levels of content, at the end of my first year at Bristol University, were at a record high.

I can’t quite remember why I decided that I would go to both the Lord’s domestic finals that year, whoever was in them. It may have been an afterthought when applying for tickets for the World Cup final. Clearly, the price of tickets was within a student’s budget; Mrs T had not yet taken our grants away.

Essex played Surrey in the 55-over competition in July, while Somerset opposed Northamptonshire in the 60-over final in September. It was a good year to be a disinterested observer in St John’s Wood and a privilege to be present when both Essex and Somerset won their first trophies in more than a century of existence.  Tears in the eyes of grown men…“if only Dad had lived to see this, how happy it would have made him…” etc. And there were centuries by two great batsmen, though the greatness of only one of them was apparent by 1979.

What John Woodcock thought of all this I don’t know; The Times was in its year-long shutdown and missed the 1979 season completely, so there are no extracts from its archive in this piece.

I had watched two games in the 55-over competition before the final. My season began as it did for many of the next 19, in the bracing April breezes of the County Ground in Bristol. Gloucestershire despatched Minor Counties (South) with ease, Procter 11-5-18-2 and 82 not out. Two weekends later I returned to Kent for the visit of Middlesex. John Shepherd took three wickets for one run early on, and the Londoners reached 178 only because Mike Gatting and Phil Edmonds put on 75 for the sixth wicket. Knocking it off would be, we thought, a matter of routine, and I felt superior in already having my final ticket when everybody else would be scrabbling for theirs later. Kent were all out for 73, their lowest List A score (but, as we will see, not for long).

So to the final. I got to Lord’s, as I did for most of these finals, soon after the gates opened at nine. My basic ground admission ticket gave access to the lower tier of around much of the ground.  For all the finals in which Kent were not involved I watched from the stands at the Nursery End at long on for the right-handed batsman. No seats were allocated, so it was first-come-first served, but that worked well as like-minded spectators grouped together. In my area the ratio of people to Playfair annuals to pork pies was as near to 1:1:1 as makes no difference. Those there to drink and chant went to the Tavern Stand (this group was bigger for the July finals, outside the football season). Short people could choose not to sit behind tall people. The insistence on sending us all to particular seats was one of the reasons I stopped going so regularly, particularly after I found, in 1985, that my seat was directly behind the sightscreen.

I still like to get to grounds early, especially on big occasions. I’d go into the museum, walk around the ground, watch the players in the nets, and be back in my seat for the toss, won that day by Surrey’s Roger Knight, who did what most one-day captains did then and put them in, perhaps unwisely given that Sylvester Clarke was missing through injury and Robin Jackman playing despite struggling for fitness.

Opening the batting were Mike Denness and Graham Gooch. It was good to see Denness back at Lord’s, the only Essex player to have played in a previous county final, though Gooch had been there just a month before at the World Cup final (as had I). There he made 32 batting at No 4, but had been left in a hopeless position by Brearley and Boycott’s adoption of appeasement as an approach to chasing 286 (on the day of writing this, New Zealand adopted the same method in the World Cup to chase Australia’s 243, with equally disastrous results). Gooch had also—along with Boycott and Larkins—been a third of a fifth bowler against Richards, Lloyd, Greenidge and the rest, but a month later did not bowl a ball against Butcher, Roope and Lynch.

 

Gooch’s promise was universally acknowledged, but at that point unfulfilled. It was four years after his disastrous double-duck debut at Edgbaston, the last test in England where an uncovered pitch changed the course of the game. He had returned to the England team in 1978, filling a vacancy caused by the absence of the Packer players. In the winter’s series against a second-string Australia he had played in all six tests but reached fifty only in the last of them. Thirteen tests so far, but no centuries. There were those who thought that he was another English batsman—Hampshire and Hayes two recent examples—whose promise was no more than a mirage.

Nobody who saw Gooch bat under the July sun that day took that view. For the first time on a big stage we saw the foreboding backlift, the stop-motion movement, the most reassuring front foot in cricket plonking down to send extra cover into retreat. His 120 was one of the four finest hundreds I saw in Lord’s finals: Clive Lloyd in the first World Cup final, Richards a few weeks before and Aravinda de Silva’s losing effort against Lancashire in 1995 complete the list.

When the names of overseas players who graced county cricket in the seventies and eighties are reeled off, that of Ken McEwan is rarely included, which is an omission. He played for Essex for 12 years, in every one of which he topped a thousand first-class runs, and was as consistent in the one-day game, good enough to bat at any tempo. Here, he outscored Gooch in a third-wicket partnership of 124, his 72 including ten fours.

McEwan always seemed to make runs when I was in the crowd. The day of Princess Diana’s wedding was memorable for me solely for his century at Canterbury. Perhaps the community of cricket bloggers could collect famous days in history that they recall more for cricketing reasons.

Essex reached 290, the second-best domestic final score at that time, beaten only by the 317 that Yorkshire made in 1965, on the day that hard-hitting aliens took over the body of Geoffrey Boycott.

The Essex supporters around me couldn’t have been more nervous had all their mortgages been put on the win. Openers Alan Butcher and Monte Lynch went before fifty was on the board, then Geoff Howarth and Roger Knight put on 91 for the third wicket. But it was just a beat too slow, and the pressure that put on the later batsmen meant that wickets fell regularly, the winning margin of 35 runs making it look easier than it felt, to everybody on the northern banks of the Thames Estuary, at least.

Essex followed up by winning the Championship later in the year, the first of seven titles secured with four games in hand. No county has represented the soul of county cricket better than Essex in the four decades since that first happy day at Lord’s.

A few days before Essex’s victory, Lancashire visited Canterbury for the second round of the 60-over knockout. Kent had beaten Glamorgan at Swansea in the first round, Underwood 12-5-11-1.

Chris Tavaré has been attracting some attention on social media this week having been photographed at the launch of Vic Marks’ book (which is on the list of purchases on our September visit to the UK—we always arrive with light suitcases and leave with heavy ones, all books). It was good that his appearance prompted universally positive comments, admiring of the stoutest defence since Leningrad in the forties. Even more pleasing were the one or two who remembered him as a Sunday dasher, Clark of Kent, the mild-mannered blocker transformed into flayer of one-day attacks. It was this persona that turned up at St Lawrence that day, top scoring with 87 when Kent batted first, and putting on 101 with Asif Iqbal for the third wicket. Some late hitting from Ealham, Shepherd and Cowdrey took Kent to 278, a score that would win many more 60-over games than it lost in that era.

Lancashire’s reply was interrupted by the weather at 35 for one. A surprise here for younger readers: we all went back the next day to finish the game. Cricket was not controlled by the accountants and marketing people to the extent that it is now, so a loss-making second, or third, day to finish the game properly was considered worth the expense.

Day two did not start well for Lancashire, with opener Barry Wood retiring hurt a shoulder injury on 24. Wood was good enough a batsman to play 12 tests, mainly as an opener. He had a fine reputation as a player of pace, but suffered, as so many in that era did, from never being given a real run. The same applied to ODIs, of which he was selected for 13 over a decade. If had started just a few years later he might have played ten times that number as specialist one-day selections became more of a norm, his quality batting supplemented by scheming medium pace.

Here, he returned to the crease with Lancashire in trouble at 124 for five and reached his hundred in under an hour, supported by keeper John Lyon in a stand of 76 for the sixth wicket. They never quite caught up with the required rate though and fell well short of the 22 needed from the last over.

It was Asif Iqbal who swept away the Lancashire top order with a spell of four for five in 17 balls, probably the most decisive spell of his Kent career. Because of a dodgy back he was never a regular member of the attack, and some years hardly bowled at all. The scorecard of this game suggests that he only came on because Chris Cowdrey was getting tonked, but in heavy conditions such as those that day he could get the red ball to swing.

It was off to Taunton for the quarter-final. It was another of several days in 1979 when Kent folk spent the first half of the game thinking that things were going much more swimmingly than they actually were. Dilley removed openers Rose and Slocombe early. Richards (44) and Botham (29) were two of four victims for Bob Woolmer’s deceptive medium pace. Somerset were 45 for four, then 128 for eight, but Graham Burgess led a rally of the tail that produced 62 for the last two wickets.

Burgess’s appearance and demeanour gave the impression of his having left his blacksmith’s forge to play, though in fact he was a ex-Millfield schoolboy. He was the only survivor of the team from the 1967 final, and had held his place as the journeymen were replaced by superstars.  In 1979, he knew that his time was running out and walked out to bat that day with determination borne from the thought that his last chance of a trophy could be gone if he failed.

Even so, a target of 190 did not seem daunting. If the last two pairs could bat with such ease, we reasoned, then the pitch must have detoxed, making a sub-200 target an administrative matter.

What occurred was a cricketing recreation of Wall Street in the late October of ‘29: panic, helplessness and collapsing numbers, the Kent batsmen reduced to penury by Joel Garner. It was the second of three occasions that summer when I watched Garner bowl an irresistible spell that finished off the opposition, the previous occasion being the World Cup final. Chris Tavaré went more square on when he found the pace uncomfortably quick; here his feet pointed straight down the pitch, but he still got one of five ducks in the Kent innings. Kent’s 60 all out remains their lowest List A score to this day.

Watching a World Cup game from Taunton the other day, I realised a sign of the passing years is that what is now referred to as the “old pavilion” wasn’t built when I first went there.

An easy victory over Middlesex in the semi-final took Somerset into the final, where they were favourites against Northamptonshire, just as they had been against Sussex the previous year, only to go down by a comfortable five wickets. Just four years before, Northamptonshire had beaten Lancashire against the odds, so the Somerset fans were every bit as inclined to read the runes as pessimistically as their Essex counterparts had been a few weeks before.

Viv Richards was there to reassure them, in the same way as Gooch had, with a century. It contained many of the same fine shots as his World Cup final hundred, but was of a different tone, as if he had been given custody of a fine but fragile piece of priceless china that he had to deliver safely. Watching Richards bat has been one of the greatest joys of my cricket watching, a combination of elegance, power and pride that was quite wonderful. Brian Rose’s 41 was the next highest score, but most of the rest chipped in for a total of 269.

Garner started as he had at Taunton, removing Larkins lbw in the first over, then trapped Richard Williams hit wicket as the batsman wisely tried to put as much distance between himself and the bowler as possible. It seemed that an early train was again an option, but Geoff Cook and Allan Lamb put on 113 for the second wicket. Wisden says that this took just 13 overs, but this has to be a mistake. Nine an over at any stage was unheard of in those days, and it would etched on the memory and often written about, surely. Lamb was three years off qualifying for England and this was the first time that he showed his class on a big occasion. Cook was to secure a winter in the sun on the back of a Lord’s final performance two years later, but here was run out for 41, the beginning of the end for Northamptonshire. Garner returned not so much to mop up the tail as expunge all traces of its DNA, finishing with six for 29, the best bowling I saw in a final.

Somerset’s first trophy in 104 years was followed by a second fewer than 24 hours later. The team, the whiff of cider in the air all the way up the M1, made their way to Nottingham for the last day of the Sunday League, which they went into placed second. Their modest (but in the circumstances commendable) 185 did not suggest that a double was in prospect, particularly as leaders Kent had three fewer to chase against Middlesex. At 40 without loss in ten overs, to us at Canterbury it looked pretty much in the bag. We were the Habsburgs of our time, thinking ourselves magnificent while bits of our empire were quietly seceding.

All ten wickets fell for 86 runs. News of this inspired Somerset to induce an even more precipitous collapse, with the last eight Nottinghamshire wickets falling for 46. A slightly surprised looking Brian Rose accepted the trophy as if he had been doing it all his life.