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…
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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:
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.
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:
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.
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 possibly his finest hour, a few years later, against the Aussies:
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’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:
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.
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.
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.
Sitting at Lord’s in August 2018, watching what is now a relatively rare Indian batting collapse in a test match, I was reminded of the first Indian cricket tour of England that entered my consciousness, in 1974, which also included an historical collapse at Lord’s.
But in 1974 I was not at Lord’s, I was on the South Downs, at the end of my first year at Alleyn’s, on a 1S field trip led by the Head of the Science Department, John S Clarke.
“Who were 1S?”, I hear you cry. The following diary extract/piece explains:
Several people on that list might have better, or at least different, memories of that field trip. I’d love to learn those recollections.
I remember the trip, on the whole, as an unpleasant experience for me. I don’t think I needed much to put me off camping more or less for life – that field trip did most of the job.
I recall I got stung by a wasp early in the trip and had a nasty reaction to the bite, not only in terms of the wound swelling & the resultant pain/discomfort, but also no little fear. John Clarke was a precautionary fellow who insisted that we keep a close eye on the toxic wound and who, as an educationalist, left me in no doubt and spared me no detail about how serious it could be if the toxins got out of control in my body – which in the end they didn’t.
I also (perhaps as a side effect of the sting – possibly exposure to some rare South Downs pollen I have never encountered since) suffered the symptoms of quite severe hay fever for the only time in my life, which lingered throughout the trip.
I do recall that the actual walking on the South Downs bit, which was the field trip’s main purpose, was nevertheless most enjoyable. The trip probably did as much to forge a lifetime’s love of hill walking as it did to put me off camping.
My other abiding memory of that trip was the test match radio commentary, provided, second hand, by Richard Hollingshead, who had a portable transistor radio held firmly to one ear, on the Monday of the trip, while we walked the Downs.
Those of us who straggled towards the back of the walking party probably looked a little like the following Bergman film extract, with Richard the character at the rear, listening and then calling out the astonishing events from Lord’s.
India metaphorically collapsed and died in a heap that day. 42 all out in 17 overs – the joyous listening session can’t have lasted all that long. Richard Hollingshead was seemingly ecstatic each time another wicket fell and was full of the stats (presumably being fed to him by the BBC cricket commentary team) of the records that were tumbling and might tumble along with the tumbling of wickets.
I have found a little video that shows that ignoble Indian batting performance/ glorious England bowling performance. Geoff Arnold and Chris Old became my heroes; not just for one day.
But when I got home that evening, there was no point telling my parents about the wonders I had enjoyed, vicariously, on that broadcast from Lord’s. They had no interest in cricket.
I did need to explain the swelling on my body and the precautionary observations and applications still needed (just in case), plus the hay-feverish sniffles. I probably had blisters and muddy clothes to explain too.
I remember my mum saying that the whole episode made her think of the song “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah” by Allan Sherman; I think she had a point:
Other recollections or corrections about that trip will be most gratefully received.
Playing cricket in the back drive behind our houses in Woodfield Avenue.
There was nowhere suitable to erect my stumps. Propped against the garage door was unsatisfactory.
There was one vaguely suitable pot-holey area but that meant bowling up hill with little run up and the holes were not well placed for the even distribution of stumps.
That same yard some 50 years later, with thanks to Ayres Treefellers for the picture
Until, one day, the kindly gentleman next door in 3a, Cyril Barnett, proudly produced for me a piece of plywood with three holes in it specifically designed for the insertion of the stumps.
This device – which was a rudimentary version of the above Salford loo stump device and which bears some resemblance, in design terms, to the beer-carrying device King Cricket has named The Device…
…worked brilliantly for yard cricket, enabling the stumps to be placed wherever made sense – which was different placement depending on whether it was simply bowling practice or a game of yard cricket with a mate.
The best thing about this form of stump device was the ability to make the entire thing fall over if you really did hit the stumps flush and with reasonable force. This I rarely managed myself with my floaty donkey-drops – it was more a thing that my opponents might do to me with a bit of medium pace, full and straight.
Sadly no photos survive of Cyril Barnett’s device but I have found a picture of Cyril, probably taken two or three years after he manufactured my stump-thingie.
Cyril teaching me pancake making while my dad was teaching me a bit about photography.
What a kindly neighbour he was. He would have appreciated the two night visit to Manchester in March 2019 that triggered this memory, in part because Cyril was from Manchester himself. Also because I went there to see Rags The Musical and the rag trade was precisely the thing he was in…when he wasn’t doing carpentry or pancake making with and for me.
Election cliff hanger. Water polo, good. Drama, good.
Saturday 2 March 1974
School morn, good. Penalty prize good. Exam tomorrow – prepared.
Sunday…Visited Motel In Hospital…
Motel was someone my Grandma Anne had picked up along the way. Goodness knows where she found him…probably in a kosher hotel in Bournemouth. Or in central casting having asked for “an alte kaker from the schmutter trade”.
“…even a poor tailor is entitled to some happiness!”Presumably Motel, Fiddler On The Roof, Otterbein University Theatre & Dance from USA, CC BY-SA 2.0
Grandma Anne’s friend Motel was always nice to me but consistently promised more than he ever delivered. On one occasion he told me that he was going to make me a little velvet suit…I’m still waiting. Not that I think, in retrospect, that I was or am the little velvet suit type.
I’m pretty sure it was on this occasion, in hospital, wired up to a cardiogram machine, that Motel, hand shaking, “gave me a little something”, probably 10p, which, according to my father, sent Motel’s cardiogram readings haywire. Perhaps my dad exaggerated for effect.
Monday…The Banson Mystery
Until this week, my cricket training reports had been either pithy – “good / v good” or explaining my own derring-do such as taking catches or wickets. This week I mention something pertaining to Mr Banson and I cannot for the life of me read the word. Here’s the entry blown up and enhanced as best Photoshop can:
So what was “Banson in…?” My memory of him is mostly as an impatient, old school games master whose motivational technique was primarily based on applying his hand to the boys’ heads with some force.
I would really appreciate it if the hive mind of Alleyn’s alums were to transliterate the offending word/words.
Rest Of the Week
A rare mention of loss in the fives on Wednesday. The unnamed warrior who beat me was almost certainly Alan Cooke.
Thursday and Friday I am clearly pre-occupied with the general election. I have no idea what 440-700 means in that context on the Thursday – possibly the number of people they estimated to have voted at that Synagogue-annex-cum-polling-station in Brixton. Marcus Lipton prevailed in that constituency, which will have pleased my mum who always spoke very highly of him.
No idea what “Penalty prize” means. I don’t think it was a TV show – perhaps it was something we did as games on a Saturday at school.
Sunday, 3 March 1974
Exam went well. Andrew [Levinson] came for lunch, editing learned how to splice.
Monday for March 1974
Cricket good. HEATH RESIGNED.
Tuesday, 5 March 1974
Art papier-mâché. Classes good. Okay walk.
Wednesday, 6 March 1974
Fives, v good. Instruction from elderly man – played in old and new courts.
Thursday, 7 March 1974
Physics 9 out of 10. Classes paper. Purim at Bolingbroke – female singer.
Friday, 8 March 1974
Water polo scored and saved goal. Drama v good.
Saturday, 9 March 1974
School morning. Typed play in afternoon. Doctor Who v good.
I’m a little surprised to see “learned how to splice” at such an age – I thought I’d been editing tapes from an earlier age than that. But on reflection, I realise that the splicing method required for reel-to-reel tape included an open blade and my guess is that my dad needed convincing that I was ready to use something as potentially dangerous (to myself I hasten to add) as an open blade.
I love the fact that “Cricket Good” is trumped by, in block capitals, HEATH RESIGNED on the Monday.
Tuesday: Spelling Bee
My attempt to spell papier-mâché has to be seen in the original to be believed. Still, how would you have spelt it, dear reader, had you not seen my spell-checked version in this article?
Wednesday: Rugby Fives Tuition From Elderly Man, Aged 41
When I raised the matter of this “elderly man” with Mike Jones a few years ago, he informed me that it must have been John Pretlove, a name that rang a bell. A fine county cricketer and doyen of Rugby Fives, John was, at that time, often at a loose end and would come down to his alma mater, Alleyn’s, to watch and give informal instruction to the boys.
I was a little shocked when Mike told me that John was 41 in early 1974.
“But I seem to remember having to help the elderly man down from the viewing bench when he offered to help me”, I said. “He was already not in good shape by the early 1970s”, said Mike, “he’d worn out a lot of parts playing multiple sports”..
This might have been the occasion that Barry Banson had clipped me around the back of the head and called me “uncoachable” in front of John. I was upset, as I had been humiliated in front of this senior fellow. But after I helped John Pretlove down from the viewing bench he showed me what he thought Banson was trying to show me – getting my front leg well forward, getting right down to the ball and using my shoulder to give the ball some humpty around the walls. It became my best shot, both left and right-handed.
Rest Of The Week
I’m not sure which was the greater miracle – me scoring 9/10 in a physics test or me scoring and saving a goal at water polo. Several of the people in my year who really were good at water polo might read this piece at some point. Please let me know what you think…as if you guys need any encouragement to let me know what you think.
I’m not sure which of our “plays” this might have been, but this was the fruit of our drama class so it is just possible that this “typing of play” reference is about the Greek classics piece I have previously written about.
Sir (Ian Sandbrook) certainly won’t remember, but he might just be able to make out what I was saying about Mr Banson on that first Monday of this fortnight. After all, Mr Sandbrook had a lot of practice trying to make out my scrawl 9and that of others) 50 years ago. Here’s the extract again, in colour this time.
That short holiday in Brighton was one of the least memorable of my childhood, but for the fact that we happened to be staying in the same hotel as the Yorkshire cricket team.
I’ll explain the context of the holiday after I relate this seminal moment in my lifelong love of cricket.
Dad and I were in the lobby of the hotel, probably waiting for mum, at the same time as the Yorkshire team were preparing to set off from the hotel to the Sussex CCC ground; I’m guessing this was the morning before the start of the three-day match.
Our coinciding will simply have been happenstance. Dad had no interest whatsoever in any sport, let alone cricket.
But Geoffrey Boycott was a big name in those days – one of very few cricketers who might find himself on the front pages of the paper or on the television news, not just the back pages. Dad knew who he was.
So, as we found ourselves in such close proximity to a big name, dad thought he would introduce me to Geoffrey, along the following lines.
This is Geoffrey Boycott, one of the most famous cricketers in England and indeed the whole world.
Being pretty well trained for a seven-year-old, I looked up at Geoffrey and said words to the effect of:
Geoffrey responded well to these polite enquiries. I’m told that this is not always the Geoffrey way, so he must have been in a decent mood and I guess we came across as suitably deferential, fellow hotel guests.
What a polite young man.
Geoffrey patted me on the head. He might even have added
I do like polite young men.
He then explained the teams presence to me and my dad, half-introducing us to some of the other players. For reasons I cannot explain, Phil Sharpe, Geoff Cope and Chris Old’s names stuck in my head for ever. Perhaps it is to do with the minimal number of syllables to those names.
From that holiday onwards, for many years, I thought of Yorkshire as my team. After all, I knew them. I’d met them. They were my friends.
My family took that unusually short and proximate break, because I had my adenoids and tonsils removed a couple of weeks earlier, so mum and dad felt that a short break (sea air, ice cream, that sort of thing) not too far from home was the safest option and might aid my convalescence.
There is a short home movie from that holiday – not one of dad’s best:
A few transparencies too – below is a link to the highlights of that, which includes some pictures of me in school uniform when we got home and possibly my earliest efforts with the camera – a couple of pictures of dad:
Mum and dad clearly put a lot of effort into trying to keep me amused – frankly that holiday must have been deadly dull for them.
But I met the Yorkshire cricket team on that short Brighton break and my love of all things cricket was surely sparked there.
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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.
