Category: Cricket

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:

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.

Start Of The School Holidays Of Summer 1976, Including A Visit To The Oval & Members Seats…But With Whom And Why? A Belated Alleyn’s School Field Trip, Perhaps?

Nano Banana 2.1 (AI) Depiction Of Surrey v Kent, Midweek, Oval, 1976. (My “small crowd, plenty of kids” description has been taken too literally – I love it!)

Saturday 10 July 1976 – went to A[nil] Biltoo for afternoon. TV Joan Crawford film [probably The Command, which was Joan Weldon, not Joan Crawford!].

Sunday 11 July 1976 – all OK. Lunched at Il Carretto. TV Once You Kiss a Stranger

Monday 12 July 1976 – went to Oval: members seats!! TV Star Trek, Get Some In.

This is Anil Biltoo’s first mention in my diary. In truth, I don’t remember our friendship forming until the following academic year, but clearly we had initiated our friendship towards the end of the 3rd year and saw each other more than once during the holidays that summer.

This photo of Anil from the summer of 1979, in Mauritius. The stick he is wielding is sugar cane.

Not a mystery, just one of those temporal slips that my memory tends to make.

The main memory slip mystery item from those first few days of the summer holidays is the visit to The Oval.

I most certainly remember the visit and I remember being shown around the pavilion, walking around no doubt open-mouthed at the pictures of great players and events from days of yore.

So stuck in my brain was the memory of being shown around, that it returned to me by way of a dream the night before my next visit to that pavilion – 21 September 2005.

Of course I had been to The Oval many times between those visits – not least nine days earlier, to see the magical 5th day of the 5th test of 2005. Other Ogblog pieces will/already do cover such other visits.

But the night before my visit to see Surrey v Middlesex, secure in the knowledge that my reciprocal member’s rights would enable me to use the pavilion, I dreamt of walking through that building. When I awoke, I wondered whether my dream had been an accurate representation of the place or just a dream-like replica. But when I got to the Oval and actually started walking around the pavilion, the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, as I realised that my memory, in sleep, had accurately dredged almost every permanent detail of that building. It wasn’t a sense of deja vu – because I HAD been there before; more than 29 years before. If you had asked me 24 hours before that second visit to describe the inside of the building, I could not even faintly have done so.

The memory really is a weird thing.

Irritatingly, my memory has entirely suppressed…

…and my diary is no help with this…

…the answers to the following two questions:

  • WHY did I have members’ access on Monday 12 July 1976?
  • Who was I with for that visit?

My gut feeling is that it was a sort-of end of term Alleyn’s School field trip, organised a few days after the end of term to coincide with a match that was worth visiting. That sort of field trip has Colin Page’s fingerprints all over it.

Micky Stewart – after whom that pavilion is now named, is, of course, an Alleyn’s School alum. He might have been a helpful conduit for such a visit.

But in truth I don’t recall. I just remember the open-mouthed pavilion tour and watching what I thought to be some very good cricket. It cemented my view that I wanted to bowl like Intikhab Alum, if only I could work out for myself how to deploy leg (wrist) spin. Spoiler alert: I NEVER worked out how to deploy leg spin.

Here’s the scorecard from the match we saw in July 1976. I’m hoping the hive mind of the Alleyn’s folk who were with me that fine day can add to my memory of why we were there and what else happened.

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.

A Tale Of Two Cartoons And An Historic Yet Cartoonish Cricket Match, 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.

For The Completists Amongst You…

Here is my transcription of that diary page:

Sunday, 15 June 1975 – took second half of exam. All over! Dined up films. John player – Derby V Essex, film panicking streets.

Monday 16 June 1975 school under 13s. We won by seven wickets. TV Star Trek, likely lads, Waltons, weekend, Horizon.

17 June 1975 – bar mitzvah class. Then came home lots of revision. TV add the seventh crown hooray.

Wednesday, 18 June 1975 – we lost in cricket league boo-hoo some hot revision had to catch 37 train home. Out of five competition. TV ascent of man, only on a Sunday, England out of potential cup.

Thursday, 19 June 1975 didn’t go to classes. Still sweltering. TV Dad’s Army, Jacques Cousteau, All in the Family.

Friday, 20 June 1975 – uneventful day. Still sweating. TV It’s a Knockout v good, more swatting.

Saturday, 21 June 1975 – West Indies won Prudential Cup…Still swatting.

I wrote up the Saturday some while ago:

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

A Tale Of Two Cartoons And An Historic Yet Cartoonish Cricket Match, 7 June 1975

Allow me to transcribe this diary entry as best I can. The verb pertaining to my father’s insurance claim I think reads, “blagged” but I might be mistaken:

Saw Prudential Cup. England Won. Old 51 not out. Dad blagged from insurance got two films: Jerry & the Goldfish, and Dr Jekyll & Mr Mouse

“Prudential Cup” that day was actually the very first match in the tournament that later became known as the cricket world cup, so I am rather glad to realise that i really have been following that tournament since the very beginning.

A strange match to say the least. Look at the scorecard:

England v India at Lord’s 7 June 1975

England’s score looks normal by modern standards, but 334/4 was a monster score in a one day match back then. My excitement about Chris Old’s performance was due to the fact that he was one of my favourite players, because he was from the Yorkshire team that I met when I was seven…

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

…therefore Chris Old was, to all intents and purposes, my friend. My friend scored 51 runs in 30 balls which was, in those days, a very unusual and exciting run rate.

In response, India crawled to 132/3, with Sunny Gavaskar responding to England’s huge total with what I can only imagine was an act of passive resistance: 36 runs in 174 balls.

I doubt if I saw the whole match through.

More likely, I was captivated by the Tom & Jerry cartoons dad brought home from the shop for me.

Dad’s shop.

His shop window had suffered some serious water damage, with much stock completely written off, but those two Tom & Jerry cartoons (Standard 8) had damaged boxes but the film inside was salvagible.

Dad, being dad, asked the insurance man if it would be alright to hand the unsellable but still useable items to his son. the insurance man probably nearly fainted (or could hardly control his laughter) at being asked such a question and kindly acquiesced to dad’s modest request.

Dad told me that he had persuaded the insurance man to let me have the films and I was most impressed by dad’s negotiating skills.

I loved those films and watched them over and over.

I strongly suspect that dad got home before Sunny Gavaskar’s crease protest was over and that I abandoned the cricket match for the cartoons. The diary is silent on that aspect.

Here is the Jerry & the Goldfish, thanks to The Daily Motion:

And here is Dr Jekyll & Mr Mouse, also from The Daily Motion:

The First Week Of June, Including The UK Joining The EEC & The Very First Match Of The Very First Cricket World Cup. I Was There (In Our Living Room), As Were Tom And Jerry, 1 To 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. Possibly he decided that India stood no chance and he would have a bit of batting practice instead. Either that or the Little Master didn’t fancy this one day stuff and indulged in a bit of satyagraha.

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

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.

For the completists among you, here is an attempted transcript of the rest of the text from that week:

Sunday, 1 June 1975 – classes good. Visited mummy. TV The Count of Monte Cristo.

Monday 2 June 1975 – beat [Bob] Kelly in the second round of fives [competition]. Mum came home. TV Likely Lads, Waltons, RWT [Rutland Weekend Television].

Tuesday, 3 June 1975. Classes good. Tea at Grandma Jenny’s. Cold chicken for dinner. TV Tommy Cooper.

Wednesday 4 June 1975. Beat 2BJ by 105 runs. 143 to 38. I got 10 runs gave five and got a catch. TV The Ascent Of Man, Wodehouse Playhouse.

Thursday, 5 June 1975 – Polling day [The European Communities membership referendum]. Classes mix up. TV Jacques Cousteau. Nothing else to tell!

Friday, 6 June 1975 – CCF Parade. Rotten. Had to walk home from Tulse Hill. I felt pretty ill. TV Walt Disney, It’s A Knockout and Canon. Britain’s in Europe!!