A Day when the Tectonic Plates in Cricket shifted forever
There’s plenty of discussion currently about Franchise Contracts for Top Cricketers.
The game’s outcome was decided by the Captain with the much better tactics ... the one who - as his Times’ Obituary would say almost six decades later – had “more theories than Darwin.”
As a 10 year old I was at the match …
Ø What REALLY did happen ... on a Day when the Tectonic Plates in Cricket shifted forever ?
Ø And what might we learn about adapting to – perhaps even welcoming - Franchise Contracts?
Travel with Ol’ Ric…
From the Kent / Sussex border – via Ootacamund in Madras, India and Milan, Italy – to … an Ol’ Boy & his wife watching from the Cromwell Road end.
Why would this player – who in a single IPL contract in 2017 with the Royal Challengers in Bangalore earnt more than a NHS Nurse earns in a lifetime – volunteer for DIScoverABILITY Day?
Hi everyone!
In May 1963 I was 10 (almost 11) and in my final couple of months at St Mark’s Primary School in Frant Road on the edge of Tunbridge Wells, very near the Kent/Sussex border.
I don’t remember the feeble excuse Dad gave the school for my absence, but on Wednesday 22nd May 1963 I was watching cricket with him.
At The Nevill, Tunbridge Wells the Old Rivals: Kent & Sussex were playing in the First Round of the Gillette Cup, which was in its first season.
Looking at the XIs, plenty of familiar and much-loved names. In batting order:
For Kent: Test Players in Peter Richardson, Brian
Luckhurst, Mike Denness, Alan Brown and a young Derek ‘Deadly’ Underwood
For Sussex: Legends including Alan Oakman, Ken Suttle, Les Lenham, Ian Thomson, Tony Buss & Don Bates
Two strong, well-matched teams.
As
for the Captains:
Both were Oxbridge Blues; one at Oxford and the
other at Cambridge.
Both had captained their Varsity XIs.
Both were top quality Test Players.
Both were England Captains.
Both would become Presidents of the MCC.
And in the long years after retiring from playing, they would remain good friends, jointly writing The Spirit of Cricket.
For
Kent:
Colin ‘MCC’ Cowdrey was born in Ootacamund in
Madras, India, some 5,000 miles east of The Nevill.
In England, he went to Tonbridge School, barely 5
miles from the ground.
The first cricketer to play in 100 Tests, MCC would
end his long playing career from 1950 to 1976 with 42,000 First Class runs (only
12 players have more) and 107 centuries, one of only 25 batters to go past 100
centuries.
In 1997 he became Lord Cowdrey of Tonbridge.
For
Sussex:
Though just 28 years old that May-Wednesday now
long, long ago, the Captain was already known as a Lord: Lord Ted.
Born in Milan, he remains the only Italian born
cricketer to play for England.
Though not such a long cricketing career as Cowdrey's, Ted Dexter played 62 Tests for England, scoring 4,500 runs at an average of 48, with 66 wickets. In all First Class games he scored 21,000 runs and took 400 wickets.
His Times’ Obituary almost 6 decades later on 27 August 2021 would start with the Headline:
England cricket captain known as Lord Ted who batted with flair and aggression and was said to have ‘had more theories than Darwin’
Lord Ted Dexter
The Bluemantles Stand at The Nevill
The
game was 65 overs a side.
130 overs in a day …
Plenty of modern day players (and spectators too) would say: You’re avin’ a larf !!
Sussex
won the toss and batted.
Their
score of 314 for 7 was at an average of 4.8 runs per over.
Ken Suttle led the way with 104, with Ted chipping in with 45. Alan Brown took 3 for 63 in his allotted 15 overs.
Observant Readers ... may have noticed I haven't
mentioned one other Sussex Legend: The ONE player I had gone to see.
My Favourite Cricketer that day and - 60 years on - today!!
Kent v Sussex at the Nevill: There can't be anyone
who has ever watched cricket with me who doesn't know (far more than enough)
about my Favourite Cricketer's 127 in 1958 or the 188 in 1951.
Incidentally, the 1951 game - my
Favourite of Alltime - is THE cricket story I would like to be told at my
Funeral Service ... Do come along !!
When the 3rd wicket fell at 127, the Sussex No. 5
took guard. He was soon into his stride and quickly got to his half century.
At the Railway End I was jotting down some notes
for the Diamond Jubilee blog; the one you are reading today!!
You don't need to be an Oxbridge Maths graduate to
know that I was 100% statistically confident that it was a racing certainty ...
Off the last ball of
the innings he went to his century ... one-bounce through midwicket into the
marquees !
At 217 the 4th wicket fell and Les Lenham came to the wicket.
Almost 6 decades later in the Sussex Cricket Museum article in 2020 mentioned below, the Sussex No.5 still remembers: Les Lenham promptly ran me out !
JM Young Jim Parks run out for 59
---
What is it about The Nevill and Run Outs?
On 11 July 1973 two very good friends of mine were playing for Tunbridge Wells Wednesdays v Skinners' School.
One had cut short his holiday in Scotland the previous day, travelling 450 miles south to be able to play against his alma mater.
When the 2nd wicket fell at 36, the Tunbridge Wells No.4 Graham ' Bish' Bishopp came to the wicket. Of the next 37 runs until the 3rd wicket fell at 73, Bish scored but 9; playing the junior partner to regular 1st XI player Doug Woodford.
When Doug was out for a well-made 43, Peter 'Young Man' Hill joined Bish, a lifelong friend from the days of the Upper Banner Farm Cricket Club - the UBFCC.
The scorecard will show forever that Bish was run out for 13.
Half a century later Bish & The Young Man are still arguing about exactly who was to blame !!
A few balls later the Young Man ran himself out for 4.
Cricket can be a cruel game!!
But ... ... the Scorecard never lies !!
Source: https://tunbridgewells.play-cricket.com/website/results/4991365
Heavy rain meant that Skinners' did not face a single ball.
The match may have been Abandoned ... But the Memories will Last Forever !!
---
As Kent started their innings - and though neither of us had never seen a One Day match before - Dad & I agreed the game looked Even-Stevens.
A Piper without any Knowledge is but rarely a Piper without a firmly held Opinion !!
But, Kent started to fall behind the required
run rate, losing wickets regularly.
Though Peter Richardson would be
awarded Man of the Match for his 127, of the Kent batters 7 failed to reach
double figures.
Don Bates, Bob Pountain and Ted each took two wickets.
With Kent all out for 242 in 56
overs, Sussex won easily by 72 runs.
Looking back across the Seasons, with hindsight it is all too obvious that Dad & I were Completely Wrong.
As Kent started their innings, the game was NEVER going to be Even-Stevens.
In 2020 in an article for the Sussex Cricket Museum One-Day Wonders: Jim Parks on Ted Dexter's 1963 Sussex side, Young Jim analysed what happened:
Ted grasped the nettle very quickly.
I remember that first-round game against Kent at
Tunbridge Wells.
It was a good batting wicket and we were fortunate
that year that we batted first in every game because Ted preferred to defend a
target.
In contrast to Ted, dear old Colin Cowdrey was still attacking with two slips and a gully in the 65th over.
When we fielded we tended to start with a slip but not for long. Ted soon had everyone on the boundary. Our seam attack would bowl back-of-a-length which was difficult to score off and we always had a man in front of the wicket rather than at, say, second slip, to cut off the singles.
For Kent, Deadly Derek remembers:
They batted first and got a huge total. I
disappeared for – 0 for 87.
When we batted everybody went back in the boundary.
I hadn’t bowled in that form of cricket of cricket,
none of us had, and we didn’t know quite to play.
We were venturing in to the unknown.
Source: Young Jim - The Jim Parks Story
Lord Ted had been at Cambridge, as had Charles Darwin who in 1859 wrote On the Origin of Species:
“One general law, leading to the
advancement of all organic beings, namely, multiply, vary
Let the Strongest Live and the Weakest Die.”
You don’t have to have been to Cambridge to understand what all ABBA Fans already know - in One Day Cricket:
So the Winner takes it all
And the Loser has to fall
The Winner, Sussex, would go on to the take the Gillette Cup in 1963… and in 1964.
As for the Loser:
We had a letter from their [the Kent] Chairman furious at what they regarded as negative and unsporting tactics by Sussex.
It really was a Day when the Tectonic Plates in Cricket shifted forever !!
Let the Strongest Live and the Weakest Die
Ol’ Ric
Watching from the Railway End at The Nevill
PS
So, dear reader,
how are you getting on with the Starter Question?
Why would this player – who in a single IPL contract in 2017 with the Royal Challengers in Bangalore, India earnt more than a NHS Nurse earns in a lifetime – volunteer for DIScoverABILITY Day?
Tymal Mills plays T20 cricket for England and all around the world.
For Franchises such as the Royal Challengers Bangalore and the Mumbai Indians in the IPL, the Quetta gladiators and Peshawar Zaimi in the Pakistan Super League, Brisbane Heat, the Hobart Hurricanes and the Perth Scorchers in the Australian Big Bash and the Southern Braves in The Hundred.
Though Tymal started his professional cricket career with Essex, since 2014 he has played for Sussex, down at Hove Actually.
I am sure that Tymal firmly believes that Sussex is his Home Club, somewhere that - like all Sussex Legends, whenever they played – he will ALWAYS be welcome !
I never doubted that he would volunteer for DIScoverABILITY Day.
---
And Finally … What about:
an Ol’ Boy & his wife watching from the Cromwell Road end?
He was playing in the game at The Nevill back in May 1963.
In his late’ 80s - and almost half a century since his last game for Sussex in 1972 - he was still a regular at the County Ground, Hove.
Mrs Parks & Young Jim
Sussex
v Gloucestershire on 26 June 2019
"Watching from the Cromwell Road end"
I’ve absolutely no problem with the Top Cricketers from Sussex - the Lord Teds & Young Jims of their age - deciding to sign Franchise Contracts; even if it means leaving their County club.
Sports careers are necessarily short, even if you get to play well into your 30’s. By choice or by circumstance, exiting professional sport is inevitable. What happens after is much 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.
My best wishes to all those who “Take the IPL Rupee”
Please, do remember:
An estimated 40% of professional footballers go
bankrupt within five years of retirement, and many more struggle financially in
later life, according to Xpro, an organisation that helps professional
footballers adapt to life after their playing career.
Source: Christopher Hogarth, Wealth Planning Director, Cazenove Capital
But I bet that just like Young Jim ... the Franchise Cricketers will always want to come back & watch cricket at Hove Actually !
As Clive James wrote about Sydney, the city of his youth, in the closing words of Unreliable Memoirs:
“Pulsing like a beacon through the days and nights, the birthplace of the fortunate sends out its invisible waves of recollection.
It always has and it always will, until even the last of us Come Home.”
For those of us who grew up in the Tunbridge Wells area - but may not have lived there for many, many years – well, we’d always agree with that !!
The Lads … watching from the
Railway End at The Nevill
---
Outground Cricket, eh … Memories Forever !!
Let’s hope
that Kent and Sussex are back at The Nevill ... SOON !!
Your Gillette Cup at the Nevill memories have unlocked some of my own.
ReplyDeleteI remember to this day standing close to a tall, heroic figure at Neath, also in 1963, shortly after witnessing the sort of innings I’d never seen before. He had smitten a lot of runs in a short time for Glamorgan, though not quite a century. I’d have remembered that. Previously I had only seen Don Shepherd hit the ball so high and hard, but he was (only?) a hit ‘em for six tail ender, with a big swing but little finesse.
That man was an instant hero, although I’ve never seen the score card, and only had the memory before today. I couldn't even recall his name, and I don’t think I saw him play again.
It was Euros Lewis (born 1942, at Llanelli – 2014). The game was Glamorgan's first List A (Gillette Cup) game, against Worcestershire at The Gnoll, Neath. Glamorgan lost, but left-hander Lewis (he alo bowled right-arm off breaks) became the first Glamorgan player to score a one-day half century, with 78.
Now we reach the sort of coincidence you enjoy so much, Ric.
Lewis began his first class career in the 1961 County Championship campaign with Glamorgan. He established himself as a hard-hitting opening batsman, before concentrating on his bowling, dropping down the order. In his first season Lewis scored 450 runs at an average of 34.61, with three half centuries and a top score of 73 not out.
In his second season, he was a semi-regular in the Glamorgan side, playing twelve first-class matches in 1962, though his batting form dipped, to 11.63, with a single half century in 12 games. He took 15 wickets in 1962, at an average of 30.80, with a maiden five wicket haul, 5/97, against Cambridge University.
But he certainly found his form once again at The Gnoll that day.
He left Glamorgan in 1966, for…(you’ve probably guessed, Ric) Sussex. He played for Sussex until he retired from first-class cricket at the end of the 1969 season (having missed Glam’s 2nd Championship victory that year. What might have been if he’d stayed.) I’d like to think you saw him play, and that he reproduced that famous knock at the Gnoll.
Deservedly, he has his own Wikipedia entry, which I have shamelessly plundered. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euros_Lewis
Can't beat a Top Co-Incidence !!
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