A long, long time ago
I can still remember how that music used to
make me smile
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died
American Pie by Don Maclean
Hi everyone!
A £1.50p money off voucher which expired the following day led me to walk down from Brighton station to the TESCO Express in Queen’s Road in search of a Pork Pie for the picnic.
By twenty to eleven I was queuing at the bus stop for the No.7 to take me via Seven Dials to Palmeira Avenue for the Royal London Cup Semi-final Sussex v Lancashire.
I was listening to Pop Master on
Ken Bruce’s BBC Radio 2.
(12 & 15; rather better than I usually score).
Ken said to one of the contestants
that Music Is So Evocative.
More about this later on.
By barely 11.00 I had taken my seat up at the Cromwell Road end for the start of play.
Lancashire are a strong team.
But after only 14 overs they were looking down & out at 67 for 5.
No Fool like an Old Fool. I was thinking I might be home by late afternoon.
However, the Lancashire Captain,
Dean Vilas, had other ideas.
With 50 from George Lavelle
and 57 from Danny Lamb, Vilas’s 121 helped Lancashire to 319 for 8.
They had scored 252 runs in the
final 36 overs for the loss of only 3 wickets !!
During the between-the-innings interval there was much discussion about Sussex’s chances.
The general consensus was that two out of three of Ali Orr, Tom Alsop and Sussex captain Cheteshwar Pujara would need to Go Big.
Of course, plenty of the spectators
around the ground were following the other Semi-Final at the Ageas, Southampton:
Hampshire v Kent.
Hampshire’s score of 310 for 9 was very similar to Lancashire’s.
Helped by 95 by Ollie Robinson (not
the Sussex one !!), 54 from former Sussex player Harry Finch and a wonderful 84
not out by 46 year old Darren Stevens, Kent go through to the Final at Trent
Bridge.
Best wishes to the Old Rivals !!
---
As always at Hove, there was plenty of time to remember Times Past.
It was August Bank Holiday Tuesday.
Exactly 50 years before in 1972 I
had been at the ground for the County Championship game v Middlesex.
Watching with Dad and his best friend Bill Sands, we were just a few yards from where I was sitting half a century on … …
Just a few yards from where I was sitting half a century on ...
Dad and Bill had played for Rye Cricket Club before the war.
On that gloriously sunny day now long, long ago, all their favourite Top Tales were told.
I had heard them many, many times.
Some may even have been (partly) true !
(Editor: dear reader, you will be thinking like Father, like Son !!)
And the match had plenty of twists
and turns and a tremendous ending:
Middlesex scoring 257 in 58 overs to win the game.
After a Quick Pint at The Palmeira, we drove back to Tunbridge Wells.
But Dad & I said very little.
It wasn’t that Sussex had lost. Like all lifelong fans, you know your team does lose. In fact, of the 20 Championship games Sussex played in 1972, they won but two.
No, the reason that we said so little was that Bill had told us that he had a friend who “knew someone on the Committee” who thought that this was going to be Young Jim’s last season for Sussex.
Jim was about turn 41.
But his form seemed OK.
56 and 41 not out in the Middlesex game.
Across the Season he scored 1,014 runs, the 18th time Jim had done so. Only James Langridge has done it more times (20) for Sussex.
Whatever the rights and wrongs, it
was indeed to be Jim’s last season for Sussex.
Just the away game at Dean Park in Bournemouth against Hampshire (21 & 70) and then – after 29,138 First Class runs for Sussex - a career that had begun at Fenners against Cambridge University way back in 1949 was over.
As Dad & I drove home that evening, there was a song on the radio, a Big Hit that summer:
A long, long time ago
I can still remember how that music used to make me smile
But something touched me deep inside
The day the music died
It really did feel like the day the music died.
But - of course – cricket down at Hove Actually has continued on.
The Sussex openers Alsop and Orr came out to bat.
At 126 for 1 after 21 overs Sussex
were up with the Duckworth Lewis score.
But Lancashire restricted the run rate and at 167 for 4, with all the Top 4 batters out, it was Game Over.
Sussex were all out for 254, Lancashire winning by 65 runs.
Well played, Lancashire !!
No Final for Sussex. But it has been a really, really enjoyable Royal London Cup competition !!
---
We are well through Season 2022, just a few weeks of Fixtures left.
Do get out your diary & have a look for the game v Glamorgan on 26th to 29th September.
And if not that game … It’ll SOON be Season 2023 !!!
I really hope that you’ll come
along and watch cricket with me.
I can’t promise you that Young
Jim will be back playing for Sussex.
Though he surely will be by the time I write the Blog !!
After all ….
Why read a Lord Ric Cricket Blog, when you can star in your own.
See you soon!!
Lord Ric of Beckley Furnace
PS
By choice or by circumstance, exiting professional sport
is inevitable. What happens after is less certain.
There’s an oft-repeated phrase in sports, its
recurrence having washed away its origin, but the premise is this:
Athletes die twice,
and the first death comes in retirement.
Of course, Young Jim did not die at the end
of Season 1972.
Jim went on to play for Somerset until 1976.
He worked for Whitbread for 18 years and then 'Came Home' to work for Sussex in marketing … and become President; twice !!
In 1973 he married Jenny.
You would often see Mrs Parks and Jim walking round
the ground.
Watching from the Cromwell Road end in June 2019
Aged 90, Jim died a few months ago in May 2022.
Just as he was that Tuesday evening 50 years ago … Young
Jim is still my Favourite Player.
To live on in the
hearts of others is not to die
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