Category: Cricket

“Got Roped In To Playing Cricket All Afternoon”, Gentlemen v Players Cricket Match, Keele Festival Week, 24 June 1982

Mike Stephens, caught out

By 1982, the annual Gentlemen (of the right) v Players (of the left) cricket match had become an iconic feature of Keele Festival Week. It was many years later that I learnt that this “tradition” had only started a year or two earlier. Keele traditions were a bit like that back then.

The Roping In

I made a pigs ear of writing this event up previously, combining my memories of the 1982 match with the 1983 match, having forgotten that I ended up playing this match three illustrious times while at Keele; my last appearance being 1984.

My mistake was spotted by Mark Ellicott, whose name I had delicately left out of my previous write up of this first occasion, as it was for an “intoxicated” Mark that I was hurriedly found and roped in as a late substitute. Mark pointed out that it must have been 1982, as that was the summer during which he was caught up in all this stuff and he was involuntarily on sabbatical from the University the following academic year. Mark later went on to be a Students’ Union sabbatical, stretching his Keele duration yet further.

On the topic of this 1982 cricket match, my diary entry merely says, with surprisingly little enthusiasm:

Got roped into playing cricket all afternoon.

Here is the Mark Ellicott substitution bit of the story, as I originally wrote it, before Mark got in touch. Naturally I have now cleared with Mark the idea of attaching his name to the story:

“I got a knock on the door early afternoon…a certain wild-haired student (even more wild-haired than me), who latterly – more latterly even than me – became a sabbatical, had been experimenting with an acidic chemical – presumably something to do with his subsidiary or extra-curricular studies – and had accidentally ingested rather too much of the stuff…

Mark Ellicott two or three years later

…he might have been experiencing something like this:

In short, the accidental acid victim was away with the fairies and I was in the team.“

Mark describes his experience slightly differently, presumably starting the evening before:

It was on Results Day for finalists in the summer of 82. I had scored two tabs previously and was working that day as a waiter in Oysters wine bar serving up bottles of wine etc to celebrating finalists. I dropped one tab whilst working idiotically enough and after ten minutes when nothing was happening even more idiotically dropped the second. Thereafter it all gets hazy, but like you I have kept a diary since I was a kid so can refer back. I must have wandered away from my workplace because the next thing I remember is wrestling with an anonymous young woman outside the Computer Science lab. Then it’s several hours later and I’m sitting in the Union bar with Truda Smith, Mark [Bartholomew], Simon [Jacobs], Anna [Summerskill] etc. I’m completely incapable of speech at this stage. I hear Truda’s disembodied voice explain to people “he’s tripping, keep an eye on him”. Next thing I recall I’m hiding under a bush by Keele Hall and Mark and Simon come looking for me, find me, and gently return me to the Union and a disco where I have a vague recollection of ‘dancing’ to ‘Say Hello Wave Goodbye’ by Soft Cell. Then I’m at a party in Stoke talking to a woman who runs a chippie. Completely brilliant day that was !

When I gently suggested to Mark that I might link his name with my cricket-career reviving incident, he replied…

…please go ahead and use my name. I’ve never been embarrassed about my psychedelic experiments then.

The Match Itself

Under the circumstances, I didn’t expect much of a role for The Players and got pretty much what I expected.

I was reminded of this 1982 match in August 2018, after Adil Rashid had a rare “thanks for coming” (TFC) test match – i.e. he did not bat and did not bowl in the whole match – a very rare event in test cricket – written up here…

…but not quite so rare an event in beer matches. Indeed, both the 1982 & 1983 Gentlemen (of the right) v Players (of the left) match at Keele were TFC matches for me.  I did not bat; I did not bowl, but…

…I did field.

In this 1982 match, I recall The Players captain Toby Bourgein (who sadly died in September 2020) sending me out to graze in the long grass, on the boundary, where he supposed I’d do the least damage. I recall that enabled me to keep a trusty pint of ale close at hand.

But the ball tends to follow the team donkey. I recall the Gentlemen doing rather well against us at that stage of the match, with Mike Stephens (Secretary 1980/81) batting well & properly, along with a beefy, sporty fellow…I think his name is Steve Bailey, who had been the Chair of the Athletic Union, providing some humpty to the innings.

I’m pretty sure the above picture shows “the humpty chap”, Steve Bailey, at the 1980 Christmas Ball – apologies if I have grabbed a picture of the wrong humpty chap.

Three times the humpty chap lifted the ball skywards in my direction. Three times I failed to catch it. One of those misses was a juggled attempt which failed even after several potential reprieves. One I think I lost sight of completely, perhaps even running the wrong way.

Toby sent me to backward point instead, where he suggested that catches were far less likely but I might at least save some runs if I continued to put my body (the only asset I seemed to be bringing to the party) on the line. I think I brought my skiff of ale infield with me.

A few balls later, Mike Stephens executed a firm, albeit slightly uppish, late cut, which should have hurtled to the left of a diving backward point for four…

…but the diving backward point, me, somehow contrived to dive at the correct moment and the ball contrived to stick in my hand. A stunning, potentially match-turning catch.

It might have looked like a left handed version of this one from school a few years earlier, c1979, for which I was the photographer, not the catcher.

I recall Mike Stephens stomping off in an uncharacteristic huff of “it’s so unfair. He can’t catch for toffee…”

…it was a little reminiscent of the James Pitcher “TFC with single moment of glory” match against The Children’s Society 21 years later, almost to the day:

Match Of The Day & Play Of The Day, Z/Yen v The Children’s Society, Holland Park, 22 June 2004

I don’t think my derring-do was enough to help salvage this 1982 match for The Players, but revenge was sweet for the next couple of years.

My Second “Thanks For Coming” (TFC) Keele Festival Week Match, 21 June 1983
O Captain! My Captain! – Gentlemen Of The Right v Players Of The Left – Keele Festival Week Cricket Match, 26 June 1984

I have no photos from the 1982 game, sadly, nor the 1983 nor 1984 ones, but this one from a year or two earlier, thanks to Frank Dillon, should give the reader a pretty good feel for the look of the mighty Players team.

With thanks to Frank Dillon, this picture of an earlier “Players” team, probably 1981

If anyone out there has any more memories and/or photographs of our festival week beer matches, I’d love to hear from you.

Testing Times: Working, Seeing Alleyn’s & BBYO Friends, Then The Headingley Cricket, 5 to 21 July 1981

A Few Weeks Earlier: John Sutton / Trent Bridge Test Match, 1981: Alderman to Gower

Once my placement in the Far East (Braintree) had been curtailed, I was able to resume my more habitual holiday job routine, which seemed to have more to do with seeing friends for lunch and evening get togethers than head down graft in the audit and accounts factory that was Newman Harris.

A Social Whirl, 5 to 19 July 1981

A few mentions of busy days and hard work, but mostly a catalogue of non-work events:

  • Sunday 5 July – “visited grandma [Anne]”
  • Tuesday 7 July – “popped in to see Andrew [Andy Levinson] in evening”
  • Wednesday 8 July – “met Helen [Lewis] for lunch. Met Anil [Biltoo] and Jim [Bateman] for drinks in evening”
  • Thursday 9 July – “met Caroline [Freeman, now Curtis] for lunch”
  • Friday 10 July – “Wendies [sic – Wendy Robbins’s] ->Grannies [Wendy’s granny] for dinner -> Wendies [sic] for night”
  • Sunday 12 July – “met Jilly [Black] in town early evening
  • Tuesday 14 July – “-> Hillel [House] -> Streatham [BBYO}’s installations -> Lauren [Sterling] & Jenny [Council] coffee”
  • Wednesday 15 July – “met Caroline [Freeman, now Curtis] for lunch”
  • Saturday 18 July – “Mays [George and Winifred] came in evening”
  • Sunday 19 July – “visited Grandma [Anne] in afternoon”

A few local/Alleyn’s School friends at the start of this period. Andy Levinson lived in our street, so “popped in” really did mean walking two minutes up the road. Anil Biltoo & Jim Bateman for drinks was probably at UCL (where Jim did his summer jobs) and/or The Sun, as described in earlier articles.

Helen Lewis, a couple of years earlier

I’m pretty sure that lunch with Helen Lewis was the occasion that she presented me with Schubert The Sheep. He was named Schubert because there was some classical music playing in the restaurant where we took lunch. Neither Helen nor I could identify the piece but we both agreed that it was not Schubert.

Schubert still lives with me forty years on…in the depicted cupboard

Schubert’s 15 minutes of fame came a few years later, when he appeared on University Challenge as the Keele Mascot. A story for another time.

Visiting Wendy would have been in part as a fun catch up but also probably to help her plan the impending Streatham BBYO installations. I think she must have been outgoing President at that time. With apologies, I cannot recall who succeeded Wendy, but someone might well be able to help jog my memory.

Wendy, a couple of years earlier, at Nightingale

Lauren Sterling and Jenny Council will have attended that Streatham event in their capacities as Regional Grandees. I would have been there in my capacity as a local elder and former National Grandee, now so far past it, I can’t have offered much insight to the local club.

The Grandma Anne visits on Sundays at that time would have been to Nightingale. She had taken the death of Uncle Manny very badly and I think, from memory, that her cleaner/informal carer went away for a few weeks, so she arranged a temporary stay at Nightingale for respite and also as a bit of a tester for possible future need. The latter didn’t materialise as Grandma Anne died later that summer, but I do have an amusing tale from the end of her respite stay at Nightingale – watch this space for the next “forty years on” piece.

And So To Headingley, 20 & 21 July 1981

Hundreds of thousands of people claim to have been at Headingley for the dramatic turnaround and conclusion to the 1981 Ashes test match there, even though only a few thousand people actually witnessed the events.

I am not one of the people making false claims about my attendance…nor am I one of the people who actually attended Headingley on that Monday or Tuesday.

In fact my diary reads as follows:

Monday 20 July 1981 – Work OK did nothing in evening

Tuesday 21 July 1981 – OK Day. Lazy evening.

But I do remember following the cricket at work very clearly, especially on the Tuesday.

I was working in the large, high-ceilinged, “open plan”, Dickensian-look office at the front of 19 Cavendish Square. In that office, there was always a senior whose role it was to supervise/keep order amongst the junior clerks therein.

By the summer of 1981, Newman Harris had replaced Roy Patel (who I think had been promoted to a more interesting role) and hired instead a bespectacled, middle-aged chap, I think he was named John, who spoke with deep-voiced, nasal tones. I don’t think he much liked the idea of summer students – I remember him taking great pains to let us know that he was, “a graduate from the University of Life” and (although not a qualified accountant) he was “qualified by experience”. His management and mentoring style reminded me of Blakey from On The Buses:

Several people in our office were cricket lovers, but in truth there was little interest in the match for most of the Monday. I think word reached us that Botham was scoring runs for fun towards the end of the Monday, but it wasn’t until the Tuesday, after people had seen the highlights on Monday evening, that the interest levels really kicked off.

There were 10 or 12 of us in the office that day – perhaps half of us were interested in the cricket. John was one of the cricket lovers but was also there to maintain order.

Terry, the errand boy, did not reside in our office and I think he kept a small transistor radio in the cubby-hole where he did reside. Terry kept us appraised of the score a couple of times during the morning.

In those days, there was a telephone number you could call to hear the cricket score. It was a sort-of premium rate line. “Dial The Score On 154”.

As the match started to build to a climax, one or two clerks, unable to control their impulses, dialled the score. As a summer lackey, I was too timid to do that but grateful to the others for the news.

John berated the diallers. He explained that there was expense involved in making those calls and that we should all be concentrating on our work. John said that he would dial the score at suitably-spaced intervals and keep us all informed. I think he had 15 or 20 minute intervals in mind.

But as the match came to its climax, John was “Dialling The Score” compulsively, giving us close to ball-by-ball commentary in terms of the score as it progressed. We cheered when John announced that England had won the match. Then he told us all to put our heads down and concentrate on our work for the rest of the day. Goodness knows what John’s dialling did to the Newman Harris phone bill.

My lazy evening will have included watching the test match highlights…probably in black and white on the spare room TV, as neither of my parents cared a fig for cricket.

In case you are wondering, the denouement of that match looked like this.

This is what it looks like as a scorecard and Cricinfo match resources (lots of super pictures).

Below is the Guardian’s take on the matter the next day – a very rare “front page news” day for cricket.

Brearley Bounces CriticsBrearley Bounces Critics 22 Jul 1981, Wed The Guardian (London, Greater London, England) Newspapers.com

The Day England Lost The Cricket World Cup Final To The West Indies, While I Scored A Different Match, 23 June 1979

I have written up my take on England’s ejection from the first (1975) cricket world cup, click here or below:

A Truly Thrice Awful Day In My School/Sporting Life, 18 June 1975

I did not witness that 1975 ejection, but I clearly had it on my mind that day.

But by 1979, it seems, not only was I (once again) too busy pottering around with actual cricket at Alleyn’s School to witness the match, I don’t even mention the cricket world cup in my diary.

had lazy day (scored) easy evening

So lazy was I, that day, I abandoned capital letters and most punctuation.

“Scored”, on that day, will mean, “scored a school team cricket match”, not the other (chasing girls) type of scoring.

Sociologists of the future will be delighted to learn that, at age 16, I was doing my fair share of the other type of scoring; the page before and the page after in the diary attest to that.

But that week had been an exam week at school.

I have a funny feeling that this particular episode of scoring lazily for the school team was a match at Battersea Grammar School (or I should say Furzedown, as that school had, by then, become) playing fields, which at that time was situated a lazy stroll away from our home in Woodfield Avenue. I say that only because I remember being asked at the last minute to score such a match around that time and the use of the term “lazy” infers that I went to little bother all day, possibly including even an absence of travel bother.

The way that world cup final match turned out is well described on Wikipedia here.

The way the Alleyn’s School match turned out is lost in the mists of time, unless some archivist somewhere kept the scorebooks. Anybody know if such archives are available for inspection? If so, let’s just hope my scoring handwriting was better than my diary handwriting.

The MCC has put up a rather charming half hour highlights package from that 1979 world cup final match – jolly decent of them – in two sections – here they both are:

https://youtu.be/f12h6gWxQzQ
https://youtu.be/iYVam7txqKU

The Day England Won A Cricket World Cup Semi Final On Home Soil, While I Went To School And A Youth Club Committee Meeting, 20 June 1979

No need to hold on to your hats for this diary entry, readers. 20 June 1979 is not one of the more exciting ones:

School OK. Exec meeting – all OK

But like the best Greek dramas, the exciting stuff is all happening just off stage.

This was the year during which I went out with Gillian for many months – several mentions of those activities on the preceding and subsequent pages.

The perceptive reader / interpreter might notice that I describe the youth club meeting the night before as “near revolution”. That can only be to do with the welfare day we were busy organising, with representatives from all around the Southern Region due to descend on our tiny little Streatham enclave on 1 July. I’ll take soundings and write up that whole near-drama soon (he writes in June 2019).

And those keen on drama might note that I sat my AO-level Drama that week. B was the result of that, if I recall correctly.

But the diary is entirely silent about the fact that the England cricket team, who for sure were very much on my mind still that summer, as indeed they were every summer, won a world cup semi-final thriller against New Zealand that day:

Here is a link to the scorecard and Cricinfo resources.

While this link takes you to some video of the match, which I might myself watch some day…but not today.

My First Ever Day At A Test Match, With Graham Majin, England v Australia Day 3, Oval, 27 August 1977

Bob Willis, photo by Brittle heaven~commonswiki, CC BY-SA 4.0

The diary entry is pretty blasé about this momentous day:

Went to test match. Mostly rained off etc. V good what we saw (Graham and I).

I’m pretty sure this was my first ever day at the test. But it seems that I was so laid back in those days, perhaps my first one entirely passed me by.

Graham Majin and I had spent a great deal of that summer together making our second animated film, Speare Trek. More on Speare Trek will appear on Ogblog in the fullness of time. (Including a link to the film once I work out a way of digitally patching it back together again). We’d finished filming earlier in August and I think (reading between the lines of the diary) the last of the rushes had returned to us from the processing lab earlier in the week of this test. Younger readers will need a glossary and a book on the history of film to understand what on earth I’m on about.

Anyway, one of Graham’s uncles was a journalist who tended to be given test match tickets for the Oval. A pair of hot test tickets for the Saturday filtered down to us.

The only problem that day was the rain. Lots of it. I suspect we got about an hour of cricket the whole day – here’s the scorecard.

I have a few good memories of the day. I remember the Australian players wandering around and chatting to the few hardy souls (which included me and Graham) who stuck around in the hope of cricket.

The Aussies had been beaten up in the test series (they were an insurmountable 3-0 down before this test started). They were also, unbeknown to us, riven by the Kerry Packer business, news of which was soon to break. Yet still they did their bit for the attendees. Respect.

I especially remember Kim Hughes as part of that wandering, sociable pack; I also remember some young women, near us, drooling over Hughes. Graham and I wondered what he had that we lacked.

Graham late summer the year before
Me late summer the year before: trophy but no cigar

Despite our extreme youth, the crowd-deprived bar folk of the Oval seemed only too happy to serve us beer. Thems was different times. I do not recommend that 14/15 year old readers try to emulate our behaviour.

But the central character of the day was Bob Willis. Renowned as a terrible batsman (he famously once went out to bat without a bat), he scored 24 not out in this innings, almost his personal best. After the innings break, he then took a wicket before stumps were drawn.

Graham and I still had beers in our hands when stumps were drawn and certainly weren’t inclined to drink quickly or rush away from the ground, so we stuck around a while before wandering down to the Oval tube station.

When we got down to that southbound platform, there, with his cricket coffin, was Bob Willis. We asked him where he was going. Bob explained that he had friends in Streatham and was going to stay with them for the Sunday – a rest day back then.

I don’t remember where the conversation went after that, nor indeed exactly how we all went our separate ways, each to subtly different parts of Streatham.

Graham might remember, but I doubt it. Bob’s even less likely to remember.

Meanwhile, that sighting of Bob Willis on the underground has gone down in King Cricket/Cricket Badger folk lore as the very pinnacle of “cricketer spotted” activity – click here for recent (at the time of writing) validation – an accolade indeed.

The Day I Took A Hat Trick At Cricket, Alleyn’s School, 9 July 1975

Ascent of Man photo ESO/H. Dahle, CC BY 4.0

On 23 September 2016, I was honoured to witness live Toby Roland-Jones taking a hat-trick for Middlesex, sealing the County Championship for my beloved county – naturally I Ogblogged about it – here…

…but that wasn’t the first time I had witnessed a hat-trick live. Indeed, it wasn’t the first time that month, September 2016, that I had witnessed a hat-trick live – I saw Middlesex on the wrong side of one at Trent Bridge, Nottinghamshire – Ogblogged about here – just 17 days before the day of glory…

…but that Trent Bridge one wasn’t the first hat-trick I had witnessed live, although it was the first professional one.

The first hat-trick I witnessed live (and the last one for more than 40 years) was, remarkably, my own.

I don’t have many glorious feats of cricket to report. Let’s be honest about it; I’m not much good at playing cricket. I love it, but I’ve never been much use at it. But on 9 July 1975, the last match of 2AK’s trophy-winning season, I reported with little ceremony in my diary the following:

july-1975-hat-trick

The irony of having watched The Ascent Of Man after such an auspicious sporting achievement is not wasted on me.

I remember the hat-trick remarkably well. I am pretty sure we were playing up on Alleyn’s top fields – not the very top one but the large, “lower top field”. That was mostly used as the second eleven pitch, but for the juniors I recall that field was divided in two, with a couple of strategically located mini-squares, so all four classes could play at the same time.

I can’t remember the name of the master who was umpiring.  I do remember that my first wicket was a clean bowled and the second was a caught and bowled. The master and I then had the following conversation:

“Do you realise that you are on a hat-trick, Mr Harris?”

“Yes, Sir.”

“What are you proposing to do about it?”

“I’m going to try and bowl the same ball again, Sir.”

Which I did.

The “same ball” being pretty much my only ball. A moon ball, ludicrously slow, with an attempt at spin on it; probably a bit of top spin but nothing else in its favour other than being straight.

You see, I was very keen, so I used to practice bowling in the back drive against the garage door for ages. I didn’t get much better at bowling, but I was usually at least able to bowl the ball straight in those days.

Clean bowled.

In my memory (undoubtedly a falsy) the master was rolling on the floor laughing when I took the third wicket in three balls. I’m sure he really did laugh, anyway.

9 July 1975, a truly memorable date in (my personal) cricket history. The ill-fated 1975 Ashes series started the very next day; I don’t think this fact is even faintly relevant to my story, but I wanted to write it nonetheless. I can write what I like on Ogblog.

A lot of very good bowlers have played an awful lot of cricket without ever taking a hat-trick. I know that I’m not and wasn’t ever a good bowler. My hat-trick was at a very elementary level and only has significant meaning to me. But it is a memory I have carried with me all my days since and I shall continue to cherish that memory until I am gaga and/or dead.

I wonder who the hat-trick victim was?  That much has slipped my mind completely. His too, almost certainly.

The Very First Cricket World Cup Final, Australia v West Indies, 21 June 1975

I made three mentions of the very first cricket world cup (which was billed as the Prudential Cup) in my 1975 diary. I have already Ogblogged the very first match…

The Very First Match Of The Very First Cricket World Cup: I Was There (In Our Living Room), As Were Tom And Jerry, 7 June 1975

…and also the day that England made an untimely semi-final exit:

A Truly Thrice Awful Day In My School/Sporting Life, 18 June 1975

Here is my diary entry for the final:

Even I have had to do some Photoshop forensics on that 21 June entry:

West Indies won first P Cup by 17 runs. Had a day off school for founders day. TV: Cannon, That’s Life. Still swotting.

I’m not sure why I got a Saturday off on Alleyn’s School Founders Day. Perhaps it was because my year was still swatting for exams so we were exempted. Perhaps I was exempted on religious grounds, as that Saturday was just a few weeks before my barmitzvah.

In any case, I can’t imagine when I did the swotting boasted in the diary entry. I don’t have any recollection of swotting that day. I only recall being glued to the telly, not least for most if not all of that cricket match.

I certainly recall seeing Roy Fredericks getting out hit wicket, which was very early in the match…and seeing that partnership between Clive Lloyd and Rohan Kanhai…and seeing the Aussies struggle against that West indies bowling attack…

I do also recall the match going on late…indeed past the time that dinner was normally served in the Harris household. There was a golden rule that meal times took precedence over ANYTHING on television.

I remember arguing my corner. This was the first ever cricket world cup final and there would never, ever be another “first ever” and it was building up to a really exciting ending.

I managed to get a temporary stay of execution for the family dinner, much against my mother’s better judgement.

Here is a link to the scorecard and the Cricinfo resources for that match.

Below is a highlights package of the match – I especially dig the floppy hats donned by Fredericks and Greenidge at the start of the innings:

Beyond the final, I know that first cricket world cup had a profound effect on me.

I saved newspaper clippings of the scorecards from the various matches and I remember replaying the world cup with my friends (and on my own) in various formats over the summer:

I especially remember looking at the names of players and trying to understand what the different types of names meant for those different places. The mixture of Portuguese and Southern Asian names from Sri Lanka especially sparked my interest.

I wondered whether I would visit some of those exotic-seeming (judging by the cricketers’ names) places. I have now visited most.

Writing this article on the eve of the 2019 Cricket World Cup Final, I am still wondering when England will win the tournament.

A Truly Thrice Awful Day In My School/Sporting Life, 18 June 1975

The summer of 1975 was my sporting annus mirabilis at Alleyn’s School. This was the summer in which I considered winning a tournament quarter-final to be an uneventful day

An Uneventful Day Playing Fives, 9 June 1975

This was the summer in which I took a hat trick at cricket; at the culmination of a league-winning tournament in which my class, 2AK won all but one of the league matches:

The Day I Took A Hat Trick At Cricket, Alleyn’s School, 9 July 1975

But when you are as sporadic at sport as I am, no amount of enthusiasm nor occasional high achievement is going to protect you from the bad days.

18 June 1975 seems to have been such a day. And not just for me.

Just in case any readers are as sporadic at reading finely crafted handwriting as I am at sport, let me transcribe that 18 June diary entry for you.

We lost in cricket league. Boo hoo. Some hot revision. Had to catch 37 train home. Out of fives competition. TV Ascent of Man, Only On Sunday. England out of Prudential Cup.

That loss in the cricket league will have really hurt at the time. I have all of the scores neatly recorded in the back of my diary (I’ll write up the tournament at some point) so can confirm that we lost that game to 2BM by three runs (90 played 93). They were the other form team in the league – we had beaten them once before in our run of six wins at the start of the tournament. A seventh win on 18 June would have confirmed the tournament for us, but that loss kept our main rivals in the race – we were to face them once more a couple of weeks later.

It appears that I not only had to vice-skipper the cricket team that day but I also had to play my fives tournament semi-final. I dont record who my fives nemesis was that day, but I have a feeling, thanks to John Eltham’s extraordinary memory for our school’s sporting legends, that it was Neil Hodson.

The 18 June 1975 diary entry, I must say, is extraordinarily bleak, even in its brevity. “Some hot revision”, I sense, was my juvenile attempt to record that sense of being hot and bothered all day at Alleyn’s. Clearly even my preferred route home from school on that day of sporting disaster was confounded.

Then, to cap it all, “England out of the Prudential Cup”, that first cricket world cup that I had been following avidly since the very first day of the tournament.

The Very First Match Of The Very First Cricket World Cup: I Was There (In Our Living Room), As Were Tom And Jerry, 7 June 1975

And let’s be honest about it. England hadn’t just been knocked out. England had been soundly thrashed by Australia of all teams. Soundly thrashed – click here to see the scorecard.

England’s nemesis that day – a left arm swing bowler named Gary Gilmour. 1975 was to be his annus mirabilis too. But Gilmour’s sporting heights were mirabilis electi while mine were mirabilis ordinarius.

The Ascent Of Man was clearly compulsory television viewing in our household that summer and quite right too. But what was Only On Sunday? I had to delve deep for this one, but Only On Sunday turns out to have been a comedy pilot for a sitcom set in the world of village cricket. I don’t suppose that screening the pilot on the day England were thrashed out of the cup did much for its chances, despite the top notch writing team and cast. Others cashed in years later with a similar idea, Outside Edge.

I wrote the words “boo hoo”, cynically I suspect, but I wonder whether or not the 12-year-old me really did cry at some point during that day or evening. I must admit that, writing this up now, aged 56, I welled up a little imagining my much younger self going through and then reflecting on that awful sporting day.

The Very First Match Of The Very First Cricket World Cup: I Was There (In Our Living Room), As Were Tom And Jerry, 7 June 1975

I witnessed the very start of world cup cricket from the comfort of our family living room in Woodfield Avenue.

How do I know? Because my diary says so.

It’s just possible that you cannot read the first two lines of the 7 June 1975 diary entry – allow me to help:

Saw Prudential Cup. England won, Old 51 not out.

I described the match as Prudential Cup, not Cricket World Cup. David Kendix – Middlesex CCC treasurer, international cricket scorer, ICC guru on rankings/statistical stuff and “Man From The Pru” would no doubt approve.

At that time, the tournament was not being promoted as, nor (as I understand it) was there an express intention to initiate, a regular cricket world cup. It was simply billed as an eight team international one-day cricket tournament, sponsored by Prudential, to help fill the scheduling gap created by South Africa’s apartheid-induced suspension from international sport.

But in my mind at the time it most certainly was a world cup and I remember being absolutely captivated by it. I’ll write more in subsequent pieces about how that captivation manifested itself in me over that summer of 1975. This article will focus only on that very first day.

Here is a link to the scorecard from that televised match.

My diary comments on the score are quite interesting, more for what they omit than for what they say. True, England won the match. True, Chris Old scored 51 not out.

I did not remark on Dennis Amiss scoring a magnificent 137 – perhaps in honour of my favourite bus route at the time; the route from our house to Grandma Jenny’s flat.

Nor did I remark upon the England team score of 334/4, which was a very high score in those days, albeit in 60 overs rather than the now-standard 50.

Even more remarkable, but absent from my comments, was the paltry India score in reply, 132/3 in 60 overs, with Sunil Gavaskar on the mother of all go slows, scoring 36 not out in 174 balls. He must have decided that India stood no chance and he would have a bit of batting practice instead.

Below is a highlights reel from that match, upon which you will hear the voices of Richie Benaud and Jim Laker:

https://youtu.be/Uwuq1FxMQKI

My focus on Chris Old will have been, in part, as a result of my having met the Yorkshire team some six years earlier and thus adopting my Yorkshire friends for the duration of my childhood:

A Short Holiday In Brighton, During Which I Met Geoffrey Boycott & The Yorkshire Cricket Team, 3 September 1969

But also, to be fair on myself, I was probably awestruck by my childhood hero Chris Old’s batting at the end of that one day innings – you didn’t see anyone score 51 runs in 30 balls in those days – it is commonplace now.

The rest of my diary entry for that day relates to something completely different:

Dad heard from insurance – got two films -Jerry and the Goldfish, Dr Jekyll and Mr Mouse

There had been a flood at dad’s shop and a fair chunk of stock got damaged; some beyond use, some beyond looking merchantable. I had helped dad clear up the place and my reward was to be some damaged stock that might still be useable. It turned out that these two Standard 8mm Tom and Jerry cartoon films were that reward.

If I recall correctly, both films were more than a little water-marked and also subject to snagging in the movie projector, so I don’t think I watched them all that much. No wonder the insurance company’s loss adjuster told dad that he could scrap them.

I wonder whether dad’s commercial insurance was with Prudential back then? Weird coincidence if it was.

Anyway, we can all watch those animated movies now, easily, on YouTube:

Jerry and the Goldfish – click here.

Dr Jekyll and Mr Mouse – click here.

Back When I Didn’t Know My Asif From My Sarfraz, Cricket On Tooting Bec Common, Summer 1974

Although I started keeping a diary at the beginning of 1974, after just four months of that daily routine I then took a sabbatical for nearly seven months. I must have been exhausted from all that scribbling.

So May to November 1974 is a bit of an unrecorded blur, which is a shame.

But my memory tells me that much of that blur revolved around cricket. Further, my chance encounter with a charming chap named Michael at Lord’s on the second day of the Pakistan Test in May 2018…

Three Days On The Trot At Lord’s For England v Pakistan, 24 to 26 May 2018

…triggered a flurry of memories.

Michael, like me, had grown up around Tooting Bec Common. Lord’s might be our field of dreams now, but back then, the only cricket pitch we were likely in any way to experience live once school was out for the summer, could be found on that common:

Open-air exercise class, Tooting Bec Common - geograph.org.uk - 1316311
Tooting Bec Common – our field of dreams back then

1974 was the second summer of my proper cricket awareness – avidly following the major games on the TV and/or radio, wanting to catch a bit of the Sunday League match on telly if I could…

…but probably was the first summer that I and my entourage summoned the courage and sufficient equipment to venture onto the common to play.

If some of the bigger, older teenagers wanted the pitch, at that age it meant game over for us little-uns. I recall us challenging this pecking order once and returning home with bruises for our trouble. So our lot was sometimes reduced to trying to play on a relatively flat, well-shaved but ordinary patch of grass on the playground side of the common.

Tooting Bec Common (1) - geograph.org.uk - 285916
Just beyond the right hand side of this photo. I fancy a bowl on that.

I don’t suppose the pitch (or lack thereof) made much difference to our games back then, when we were 11 on 12. We weren’t yet physically equipped to use the full length of a pitch properly, nor were we playing with a proper cricket ball. I seem to recall using a rubber ball – heavier than a lawn tennis ball but nowhere near the weight and hardness of a cricket ball…mercifully.

I have a very clear memory of trying to emulate the players who had captured our imagination that summer; the players of England and Pakistan in 1974. The commentators had made much of Sarfraz Nawaz and the prodigious swing he was able to achieve with his bowling. We wanted to do that. Here’s a clip of one of his finest hours, the following year, against the West Indies:

My strongest memory, though, does not involve using any technique that the cricket coaches might deem helpful in making the ball swing…or for that matter in bowling with any form of accuracy or purpose.

No.

My strongest memory involves doing a little sideways jig at the start of the run up and then lolloping towards the crease to bowl. False memory had combined this unusual approach with Sarfraz Nawaz. His was a most memorable name; by the early 1980s expert marketeers were naming pop groups in similar rhyming style because such couplets are so memorable.

But I digress.

My research for this piece reveals that it was another Pakistan bowler whose run up had us “class of 1974” kids jigging hither and yon before bowling: Asif Masood. Here’s a clip of him bowling that year (at 2’56” and possibly other places) – dig the jig:

I would like to analyse Asif Masood’s run up a bit more. Wikipedia describes it thus:

a backward step before a loping approach to the wicket which John Arlott likened to “Groucho Marx chasing a pretty waitress”.

Whereas his Cricinfo entry describes it differently:

a bizarre start to his run-up in which he turned sideways to the wickets and leaned backwards before starting his approach.

You can judge for yourselves, dear readers, by watching the above clip. I am reminded of a Lancashire expression, which Asif Masood himself would no doubt understand now, as he married and settled in Bury after his cricket career:

‘Ere’s mi yed, mi arse is cummin.

The premature arrival of my upper torso and limbs does nothing but harm to my performance at ball sports – I’m pretty sure that the same applied to my friends on the common – but that didn’t stop us from becoming convinced that the secret of success was to emulate that run up. I’m here to tell you that we were mistaken.

Of course we didn’t want to BE these Pakistan stars; we wanted to BE the England stars. Geoff Arnold, for example, with his furtive look of teeth-gritted concentration as he ran up – we emulated that too. I cannot find a clip of Geoff Arnold bowling, but he is still hanging around at Surrey, would you believe, so you can find recent interviews and all sorts by clicking here.

Chris Old was my England bowling hero at that time. Not least because he was part of the Yorkshire team that I met five years earlier

A Short Holiday In Brighton, During Which I Met Geoffrey Boycott & The Yorkshire Cricket Team, 3 September 1969

Chris Old’s days of glory against Pakistan came four years later – this was the only fairly relevant clip of him bowling I could find – don’t blink or you’ll miss it:

https://youtu.be/j9KgmiGBWA8

Quite lollopy too, Chris Old’s run up. Not as lollopy as Asif’s, obviously, but enough lollop to enable the 11 year old impersonator to switch from being Asif to Old by the simple expedient of eliminating the sideways jig.

So who were the heroes of that summer of 1974? I’m not talking about the actual test match and ODI heroes – you can look them up through the above links for pity’s sake – no, I mean the Tooting Bec Common heroes. The 11/12 year olds who were performing far more exciting feats of glory. No “three test matches – all drawn” for us.

I’m struggling to remember, so will simply brain dump what little remains in my brain in the hope that it triggers some memories in others. Apologies to those forgotten or misrepresented through inclusion.

Andrew (now Andy) Levinson lived in our street and was a perennial companion in those games. Stuart Harris (no relation; one of the “Naff Harris’s” from the posh end of the road) would sometimes join us, for sure, although my diary has more to say about Stuart in the context of tennis than cricket:

I Didn’t Just Learn Tennis In The School Easter Holidays Of 1974, I Smashed It

I recall getting into a scrape with David Pavesi, Andy and others, when some bigger boys thought we were on their patch, but I think that might have been Clapham Common nearer to the Pavesi house, as I recall Mrs Pavesi nursing our bruises and egos after the incident. I don’t recall David venturing to join us at Tooting Bec but he might have done.

Alan Cooke would often come around to my place and I suspect that some of those games involved him.

Other Alleyn’s folk, such as Paul Deacon and Jonathan Barnett, were certainly cricket lovers with whom I watched and talked cricket, but I don’t recall playing cricket with them in the holidays. I also remember talking cricket a lot with Richard Hollingshead that summer term (another story for another day), but I don’t recall playing with him.

Lloyd Green might have joined us occasionally, as might Stuart and Jeremy Starkin, Richard and Graham Laikin…although I remember those lads for football on the common, not cricket.

I don’t ever remember playing cricket with girls, not since Mandy Goldberg got hit accidentally by Richard Dennis in the primary school playground the previous year, which led to cricket being banned at Rosemead for the rest of the school year.  Click here to see the scene of the crime – that former Rosemead site now n. Family Club Balham.

What better way to get a kid like me enthused about a sport than to give it a sense of danger and prohibition. Thank you, Miss Plumridge.

To summarise, in the summer of 1974 we wanted to play cricket and we wanted to look the part. Roll the clock forward several decades and I think the following photo proves that I did indeed acquire a fair chunk of that “look the part” skill, without acquiring much, if anything, else that could be described as skill.

With thanks to Charles Bartlett for this deceptive picture of me circa 2004

But a love for a game like cricket is also a gift. I might not have been born with talent, nor could I acquire very much skill through graft or imitation, but the love of the game is certainly also a gift. And part of that love for cricket was formed as a kid, playing those silly games, emulating our heroes, on Tooting Bec Common.