Cricket at the Crossroads E-Book

Guy Fraser-Sampson

• Herausgeber: Elliott & Thompson
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Seitenzahl: 528

Beschreibung

In a decade spanning the 1960s and 1970s three major crises gripped the world of cricket. The Close Affair in 1967, when Brian Close was relieved of the England captaincy in controversial circumstances, laid bare the ugly class prejudice which had lingered on from the days of Gentlemen and Players. The d'Oliveria Affair saw the selection of an England touring party become a major international incident which divided the nation. And the birth of World Series cricket forced players and establishment alike to confront the very nature of the game, and how it should be played. Torn between the politics of the sport and the shifting social pressures of the day, the venerable institution of cricket found itself caught at a crossroads that would come to define how the game would be played and received for years to come. Based on original research and interviews with key figures of the day, Guy Fraser-Sampson evokes the era of the 1960s and 70s, the attitudes and politics of the time, and tells for the first time the story of the decade that dragged cricket forever into the modern era. Along the way, the book tells the story of some of the cricketing greats, and of their triumphs, disasters, and personal tragedies. Gary Sobers, Colin Cowdrey, Ted Dexter, Ray Illingworth, John Snow, Derek Underwood, Geoff Boycott. The ups, the downs, and the elusive what-ifs.

Leseprobe

CONTENTS

Title Page

List of Illustrations

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER 1: GENTLEMEN AND PLAYERS

CHAPTER 2: THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

CHAPTER 3: THE CLOSE AFFAIR

CHAPTER 4: ENGLAND’S 1967–68 TOUR OF THE WEST INDIES

CHAPTER 5: THE 1968 ASHES (PART I)

CHAPTER 6: THE 1968 ASHES (PART II)

CHAPTER 7: SOUTH AFRICA’S INTERVENTION (PART I)

CHAPTER 8: SOUTH AFRICA’S INTERVENTION (PART II)

CHAPTER 9: ENGLAND’S ALTERNATIVE 1968–69 TOUR AND A SUMMER AT HOME

CHAPTER 10: AN END TO THE SOUTH AFRICAN TOUR AND ENGLAND V THE REST OF THE WORLD

CHAPTER 11: THE 1970–71 ASHES (PART I)

CHAPTER 12: THE 1970–71 ASHES (PART II)

CHAPTER 13: THE 1970–71 ASHES PART III)

CHAPTER 14: A CONCLUSION TO THE 1970–71 ASHES

CHAPTER 15: AT HOME TO PAKISTAN AND INDIA

CHAPTER 16: THE 1972 ASHES (PART I)

CHAPTER 17: ENGLAND’S TOUR OF INDIA AND PAKISTAN, AT HOME TO NEW ZEALAND AND THE WEST INDIES

CHAPTER 18: ENGLAND’S 1973–74 TOUR OF THE WEST INDIES

CHAPTER 19: THE SUMMER OF 1974

CHAPTER 20: THE 1974–75 ASHES

CHAPTER 21: THE 1975 ASHES

CHAPTER 22: AT HOME TO THE WEST INDIES

CHAPTER 23: THE DAWN OF A NEW ERA

EPILOGUE

INDEX

Plates

Copyright

List of Illustrations

Colin Cowdrey (in sweater) leads the MCC to the West Indies in 1967. Fred Titmus the professional is trim in blazer and tie.

The MCC selectors in 1965 - note M.J.K. Smith, the absent-minded professor, reading the newspaper.

Garry Sobers, as captain of the Rest of the World, receiving a trophy at Lord’s.

Colin Cowdrey (left) after the 200th Test between England and Australia, Lords’s, June 1968.

A crowd watching a test match at Lord’s, sometime after the construction of the new tavern stand. Note the spectators sitting on the ground, a practice that was discontinued after the West Indian pitch invasions of 1976.

Brian Close in typically pugnacious mood.

Floodlights and barbed wire at Lord’s, Easter 1970.

The end of the road for the 1970 South African tour.

Basil D’Oliveira cover drives during his historic innings at the Oval in 1968.

Tony Greig batting against Australia at Old Trafford, June 1972.

Colin Cowdery is caught and bowled by Gleeson at Melbourne during his tour from hell in 1971. After dropping two vital catches and failing with the bat he did not play again in the series.

Illingworth is chaired off the field in Sydney by his devoted team of professionals on 17 February 1971. Underwood has just taken the last wicket and England have won the Ashes. From right to left: Knott, Underwood, Luckhurst (face obscured), Illingworth, Edrich, Shuttleworth (looking like a young Fred Trueman and fielding as substitute for Snow), Lever (fair hair), Fletcher (cap), D’Oliveira.

Tony Lewis enjoys a moment with Mrs Indira Gandhi in 1972 after being picked to captain England, despite never having played in a Test match.

John Snow, one of England’s great fast bowlers, playing in his last Test against the West Indies at Headingley in 1976. His action seems to have lost little of its power.

Geoff Boycott playing an uncharacteristic attacking shot at Trent Bridge in 1977, returning from his three-year self-imposed exile: 187 runs, dismissed once, over 12 hours at the wicket.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

To say that the writing of this book has been a labour of love would be an understatement. Being asked to write by a commercial publisher a book about my favourite period of cricket would feature at number two on my fantasy wish list, second only to being asked to join the Test Match Special commentary team. However, this particular fantasy could not have been fulfilled without the help of others, let alone their support and encouragement well above and beyond the call of duty.

Various former England players, including participants in that memorable game at Edgbaston in August 1967 (see Chapter 3), kindly agreed to be interviewed.

Christopher Martin-Jenkins most generously made time available from his impossibly hectic schedule as president of the MCC to offer insight, help and encouragement.

Keith Bradshaw allowed me access to the MCC archives, and Adam Chadwick and Neil Robinson kindly facilitated this.

Frances Edmonds, wife of Phil and a noted author in her own right, introduced me to her daughter Alexandra, who in turn passed me her unpublished dissertation on the socio-political background to the D’Oliveira affair.

Olivia Bays shepherded the book through publication with signal efficiency.

Lorne Forsyth had the vision to see that a book like this could be commercially viable, and the courage to make it happen. That he also has an encyclopaedic knowledge of cricket was a welcome bonus.

Finally, I would like to acknowledge an enormous debt to Remy Kawkabani: true gentleman, true friend.

INTRODUCTION

In 1967 British society was outwardly conventional and conservative. Those attending cricket, or even football matches, did so in a jacket and tie, and gave up their seats on trains and buses on the way home. Yet underneath this hard, polite exterior lay something altogether darker – an implicit belief that one person could be naturally inferior to another (and therefore treated as such) simply on grounds of class, colour, or ethnic background.

For those who were subjected to such a belief, or who took exception to it on grounds of principle, it could easily lead to anger, an anger which would at various times during this story spill out into the open. On two occasions in particular, this anger would swirl around the MCC in its cricketing bastion at Lord’s. On each occasion they would ignore it to secure their short-term objectives, but on each occasion, by ignoring it, emerge with their reputation badly dented.

There was also uncertainty born of frustration and confusion. The old ways were being swept away, to the consternation and dismay of some, and the exultation of others. Yet, whichever side of the fence you were on, nobody seemed to know quite what was going to replace them.

There was anger and despair born of the bitter social divisions which had always plagued Britain, perhaps uniquely so. Not for nothing did foreign competitors refer mockingly to the constant labour unrest that paralysed the UK’s factories as ‘the British disease’. Between 1967 and 1977 over 60 million working days were lost to strikes.

These divisions – between north and south, working class and middle class, ‘them’ and ‘us’ – had always been explicit within the game of cricket, with cricketers being classified officially as either ‘gentlemen’ (amateurs) or ‘players’ (professionals), and both treated and described differently. The distinction was formally abolished after 1962 and the MCC tour of Australia that winter, managed by no less a personage than His Grace the Duke of Norfolk, was the last to take place under the old system, with the players being accorded different treatment according to whether they were amateurs or professionals, even down to how their names were recorded and to which events they were invited.

There was anger born of a growing recognition that successive governments had badly mismanaged the economy, and yet it was the people who were going to have to pay the bill. This period would see the highest rates of income tax in history, a devaluation of the pound, Britain going bust and having to ask for an IMF bail-out, and retail prices trebling, leaving professional cricketers, already poorly paid in 1967 and without a trade union to argue their cause, dramatically worse off in real terms.

In due course, a sea-change in economic management would come from a grocer’s daughter from Grantham, and a sea-change in the fortunes of professional cricketers would come from the grandson of a penniless horse racing punter from Tasmania.

Yet in the meantime, it was in the game of cricket that many of these conflicts and tensions would play themselves out. Of course individual character and personality would play their part, as would both destiny and chance, but underpinning much of what would happen on and off the cricket pitch during the ensuing decade was a strong, ongoing and increasingly resented sense of ‘them’ and ‘us’. During the ten years from 1967 onwards the cricket world would be shaken to the core as the consequences of this division played themselves out. By 1977 both British society and the sport itself would look quite different.

CHAPTER 1

GENTLEMEN AND PLAYERS

It was a sweltering afternoon in 1967 as the England cricket team stepped off a BOAC jet in Barbados and dutifully posed for photos, led by their captain Colin Cowdrey. The beginning of a cricket tour is always aflutter with anticipation. Which newcomer will give glimpses of potential that may be richly fulfilled in the future? Will one of the struggling players find form and confidence simultaneously and leave for home at the end of the tour with their reputation enhanced, and their place in the side secure? It is at this point, of course, that those of a darker imagination will pose the third pertinent question: will one of the established veterans slink moodily onto the plane home, suffering the awkward glances of his fellows, undone by injury or inconsistency, and facing the grim possibility that his Test career may be over?

In respect of this particular team that December afternoon it was the first of these questions that must surely have lain uppermost in the minds of the attending journalists; both those meeting the plane on arrival and those travelling with the team from England, which latter crowd included a certain Brian Close, of whom more shortly. For this was a team chosen consciously to mark a break with the past, featuring a crop of mostly younger players who, it was hoped by the selectors, might form the bedrock of the England team for some years to come. To those who had followed England in recent years it had a somewhat unfamiliar look to it.

The era of Fred Trueman and Brian Statham was over, both having played their last Tests two years previously. John Murray, until recently rated unquestioningly as the best wicketkeeper in the country, was missing. There were some who felt he had been unlucky to be overlooked after his batting heroics against the West Indies in England in 1966, but in truth 1967 had been a wretched year for him.

Missing was the evergreen Tony Lock, one of the best left-arm spinners ever to play the game and who had reinvented himself with a new action and a new county as well as playing first-class cricket for Western Australia. He would therefore have been eligible for selection. However, he was 38 while his obvious like-for-like replacement, Derek Underwood, was just 22, and even he did not make the tour, despite his obvious promise.

Missing too was Bob Barber, felt by many to be the natural opening partner for the slower-scoring Geoff Boycott; he had declared himself unavailable because of business commitments. Nor, for the same reason, was there any return of the cavalier Ted Dexter, one of the most exciting batsmen ever to play for England; he had not played a Test since 1965, much to the disappointment of crowds around the world.

This was a team chosen for its blend of experience and youth, then, with the youthful element particularly applicable to the bowlers. The biggest concession to age and experience was Tom Graveney, at 40 the oldest man in the party. He was very much the joker in the pack, having forced his way back into the side in 1966 after a spell in the wilderness, and having played so well since then that it would have been simply unthinkable to leave him out. From the line-up, the selectors hoped and believed, would emerge a cadre of talented players who would form the future core of the side for the next five years or so.

Before the tour party left England, Colin Cowdrey had convened an indoor training session, at which he had laid out what he called a Five Tour Plan, ending with the Ashes series in Australia in 1970–71. He explained to the players that, stealing an idea from football, he expected them to form an ongoing squad from which England sides would be chosen during this period, though, as he admitted, ‘one or two of us may fall by the wayside’.1

The pairing of Cowdrey, the urbane Home Counties gentleman, and Fred Titmus, the chirpy cockney professional, both of whom were 35, must have seemed to the selectors a match made in heaven, bringing together two complementary individuals who between them could communicate with and inspire any member of the side, no matter what their upbringing or circumstances.

Cowdrey’s background was public school and Oxford (both of which he captained), and he made his debut for Kent at the age of 18, moving on to captain them as well. One of the most graceful batsmen of his generation, he married into a wealthy family which enabled him to finance playing cricket as an amateur. Very much an establishment figure, he would end up as one of only two cricketers to be awarded a peerage (the other being Learie Constantine), at the personal instigation of John Major, the former Prime Minister. He was, in short, exactly the sort of cloth from which English cricket liked its captains to be cut, whether at Test or county level.

Titmus, on the other hand, had come up the hard way. Born to working-class parents in a tough area of north London, he was a natural sportsman, playing professional football for Watford and making his debut as a cricketer for Middlesex at the age of just 16. A fine offspinner, he had a trademark arm ball that drifted away towards the slips, so that many of his victims were either caught or stumped by his teammate and close friend, John Murray. A genuine all-rounder, at one stage of his career he achieved the double of 100 wickets and 1,000 runs no less than five times in six seasons. By 1967 he had been captaining Middlesex for three years, and was therefore seen as a natural deputy to Cowdrey, well able to lead the side occasionally should Cowdrey wish to rest himself, or become unavailable through injury. He was a perfect and natural choice as the platoon sergeant of the squad.

It is difficult for a modern reader to appreciate just how tangible and significant was the distinction between the amateur and professional cricketer or, as it was more often expressed, gentleman and player. Every season, for example, the gentlemen played at least one first-class fixture against the players, often viewed as a Test trial. On many county grounds the professionals were not allowed to share the same dressing room (or even pavilion) with the amateurs. They were expected to call the amateurs ‘sir’, and refer to them as ‘mister’. Even the way their names were represented on the scorecard made clear their status. As the sixteen-year-old Fred Titmus trudged nervously out onto the Lord’s turf to make his debut for Middlesex, it was to the sound of a P.A. announcement regretting that the printers had made an error. ‘F.J. Titmus’, the announcer said apologetically, ‘should read Titmus, F.J.’

The difference had been even more pronounced on tour, when the amateurs had travelled in separate cars and stayed in swanky hotels, dressing for dinner, while the professionals had to put up in boarding houses. For away matches in England the situation could be even more stratified, with the amateurs in one hotel, the professionals in another, but the professional captain on his own in yet another. The image of upstairs, downstairs and the butler’s pantry comes strongly to mind.

The distinction was abolished officially in 1962. For some years it had been increasingly difficult to find amateurs who were both wealthy enough to be able to play cricket purely for fun, and good enough to command a place in the side as a player. Even if both these conditions were satisfied, it did not necessarily mean that they would be willing to captain the side. Amateurs often came and went according to business and family commitments; being available to play every match of the season was a different matter. Yet amateur captains were what counties wanted.

‘The snobbery was always there,’ says England all-rounder Barry Knight. ‘Tom Pugh, who took over as Gloucestershire captain from Tom Graveney, was an amateur who could hardly play … pros were pros, amateurs, amateurs, even after 1962. The change was in name only. You always felt they wanted amateur captains.’2

In truth, there had been many situations where it was apparent to all that the captain was not worth his place in the team as a player, which could and did lead to tension both on and off the field. Even Yorkshire, that most no-nonsense of counties, had suffered, the great left-arm spinner Johnny Wardle being sacked in 1958 after allegedly criticising the amateur captain Ronnie Burnet, a club cricketer who had been plucked from the obscurity of the Bradford League at the age of 39 to be given the job over Wardle’s head.

This even occurred at international level. In the winter of 1929–30 there were two simultaneous England tours overseas. One, to New Zealand, was captained by Harold Gilligan (Dulwich College), who despite playing as a specialist batsman achieved a Test average of 17.75 in the series, while the other, to the West Indies, was captained by the Honourable Freddie Calthorpe (Repton and Cambridge), son of Lord Calthorpe and the uncle of cricket commentator Henry Blofeld. Calthorpe also played for England primarily as a batsman, and tabled only a slightly better average: 18.42.

Farce was an occasional alternative to tragedy. In Surrey’s eagerness to appoint an amateur captain after the Second World War, they turned to Major Leo Bennett, a good quality club cricketer who captained the BBC’s weekend team. Hearing that Major Bennett was currently at the ground paying his membership dues, they buttonholed him and offered him the job. Unfortunately it turned out to be the wrong Major Bennett, but by the time the mistake was discovered it was felt that it was too late to do anything about it. The Surrey committee resolutely refused to admit that he had not in fact been their first choice, and he duly captained the side throughout the 1946 season. Major Nigel Bennett was described by one writer3 as ‘a weak batsman and utterly lost as a county captain’. The Surrey players, however, while doubtless resenting their very poor performance that year, were gracious in their acceptance of his presence, not least, so it was said, because he had an extremely attractive wife who used to attend every game, bringing a waft of perfume and a welcome touch of glamour to the pavilion.

So, the distinction had now been abolished, and at county level most captains were what would have been categorised as professionals under the old regime; Titmus at Middlesex was a case in point. Yet old habits died hard, and counties still yearned for a well-spoken public schoolboy when they could find one. So too did England and, amazingly, would continue to do so for some decades yet. In recent years their captains of choice had been public schoolboys all: Peter May, Ted Dexter, M.J.K. Smith and Cowdrey himself, who had captained the side sporadically over the years when none of the first three were available, and had finally got the job for himself in 1966, only to lose it after just three matches.

Fred Trueman said:

Those charged with running the game and selecting England teams... were former schoolboys who went on to Oxford or Cambridge... They looked down on the pros and considered an amateur with a cricket blue from Oxford or Cambridge as a much superior choice when it came to selecting the England team.4

M.J.K. Smith had been captain for the first match that summer at Old Trafford where the West Indies attack of Wes Hall, Charlie Griffith, Garry Sobers and Lance Gibbs overwhelmed England, who lost by an innings, Smith scoring just 11 in the match. His opposite number, Sobers, by contrast, scored 161 and then showed yet another side of his all-round brilliance by switching to left-arm spin in England’s second innings; he and Gibbs bowled 83 overs between them out of the total of 108.

It was the end for Smith as a captain, though he would be recalled briefly and slightly puzzlingly in 1972. An outstanding all-round sportsman, he was England’s last double international (rugby and cricket), but he had never really established himself at Test level, scoring just three centuries in 50 matches, with a batting average of 31. Indeed, playing as he did in an age of talented batsmen, it is difficult to imagine that he would have played anything like 50 Tests had he not been earmarked as captaincy material.

Smith, ‘an absent-minded professor’5 who played in spectacles, was vulnerable against fast bowling, especially early in his innings. Cowdrey says that the selectors were also afraid for his personal safety, as this was an era before helmets, and Smith had problems spotting short-pitched deliveries.6 So, the selectors now turned to Colin Cowdrey, but he too was to find the brilliant West Indies side more than a handful.

The 1966 Lord’s Test was memorable chiefly because it marked the debut of Basil D’Oliveira, the first ‘coloured’ cricketer to play for England since the 1930s. As so often at Lord’s the game was badly affected by the weather, ending in a draw. England achieved a first-innings lead and ran out of time chasing 284 to win in the second innings, ending 87 runs short with four wickets down, led in fine style by a rollicking 126 not out from Colin Milburn. England had been in a position to win the match, only to be denied by a mammoth second-innings undefeated stand of 274 for the sixth wicket between Sobers and his first cousin, David Holford.

Cowdrey himself failed twice with the bat and was heavily criticised in the press for overly defensive tactics, in particular, failing to attack Sobers and Holford before they were set. At least one former England captain felt he was not only defensively minded, but also indecisive, as would be evidenced by his uncertainty after an over-generous (or sporting, depending on your point of view) declaration by Garry Sobers in Trinidad in 1968. Ray Illingworth, the northern professional, says wryly that one of Cowdrey’s biggest challenges as captain was deciding whether to call heads or tails.7

Trent Bridge was a better game for Cowdrey personally, but another disaster for him as captain, England losing after once again gaining a first-innings lead. Sobers, having been dismissed cheaply, opened the bowling with Wes Hall and took four wickets. Tom Graveney, one of his victims that day, would later say that, with the exception only of Ray Lindwall, Sobers was the bowler he least liked facing throughout his Test career. Sobers the batsman cashed in with 94 in the second innings, but the star of the show was Basil Butcher, who cut the English attack to ribbons in making an unbeaten 209.

Worse still was to come at Headingley, where West Indies batted first, declared on exactly 500 (Sobers 174), bowled England out, enforced the follow-on and bowled them out again to win by an innings. With the exception only of D’Oliveira, who top-scored with 88, much of England’s batting was deeply unimpressive, with Cowdrey again failing twice.

With the series lost, the selectors decided that the time had come for firm action. They dropped the diffident southern amateur Cowdrey and brought in Yorkshire’s Brian Close to captain the side, with a young Dennis Amiss receiving his first cap. What followed was little short of cricketing magic. England scored 527 after having at one stage been 166-7, largely thanks to two huge stands. First Tom Graveney put on 217 for the eighth wicket with John Murray, whose batting had been considered a weakness at Test level. Then, still more improbably, the opening bowlers Higgs and Snow put on 128 for the last wicket. With Snow then dismissing both West Indian openers cheaply, this time it was England’s turn to win by an innings. After the match Snow and Higgs were asked to pose for the press still holding their celebratory beers. The authorities, scandalised, substituted teacups.

A blunt, combative, northern professional, much loved and admired, Brian Close remains one of cricket’s enigmas. His early days were spent in a council house in the working-class suburb of Rawdon, the birthplace of the great Hedley Verity, with two of whose children Close grew up (Verity was killed in Italy during the war). He was an intelligent and hard-working grammar schoolboy who, most unusually in those days, was offered a place at university, which he decided to decline, preferring instead to pursue a sporting career, though he had thought seriously about becoming a doctor.

A good enough footballer to play for Leeds and Arsenal and gain a youth cap for England, he too might have become a double international, but his soccer career was curtailed by a leg injury and the unwillingness of Yorkshire to release him for games which overlapped with the cricket season, so he decided to concentrate solely on cricket. His first season with Yorkshire, 1949, was little short of outstanding, as he became the youngest all-rounder to achieve the double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets. He was selected to play for the Players against the Gentlemen, which was to prove memorable for more than cricketing reasons. On reaching 50 he was congratulated by the amateurs’ wicketkeeper, Billy Griffith, who said ‘well played, Brian’, to which Close replied ‘thank you, Billy’. He was later disciplined and formally reprimanded by the Yorkshire committee for not having addressed him as ‘Mr Griffith’.

That same summer he played his first Test match (at Old Trafford against New Zealand), when he was still only 18 years old. He remains the youngest player ever to appear for England.

He was duly selected for that winter’s tour of Australia, which proved a personal disaster. Lonely, homesick and struggling with a serious groin injury, he was later to single out some of the senior players, notably Denis Compton, Len Hutton, Cyril Washbrook and skipper Freddie Brown for failing to counsel and support him, accusing him of malingering, and forcing him to play while injured. Ironically, only the Australian captain Ian Johnson was sympathetic to his plight, expressing his concern to Brown (who allegedly referred to Close as a bastard and told Johnson to mind his own business).

The tour set the pattern of Close’s Test career. Thereafter he would drift in and out of the side after lengthy intervals, always underachieving (not least by his own high standards), increasingly convinced that there was an ‘anti-Close’ lobby out to get him, and with controversy rarely far away.

Most famously against Australia in 1961, with England chasing down a total for victory but with Richie Benaud taking wickets regularly from one end with his masterful legspin, Close decided to hit out, and perished in doing so. England lost, and Close was blamed. Many thought the criticism unjust, including Benaud. Close claimed that his tactics were agreed by his captain, Peter May, but the patrician May declined to back him up. Others argued that but for the slow scoring of Raman Subba Row, who took two and a half hours to make less than 50, Close’s tactics would not have been necessary. This may have been the reason for May’s diplomatic silence. Subba Row (Whitgift School and Cambridge) was a close friend of May (Charterhouse and Cambridge). Close (Aireborough Grammar School) was not.

Close was dropped after just that one Test in 1961 and did not play for England again until 1963. That year he was the hero of one of the classic Test matches at Lord’s where, against the hostile bowling of Charlie Griffith (who broke Cowdrey’s arm and in a later series felled Derek Underwood with a blow to the head) and Wes Hall, Close stood up to them in scoring a courageous 70, sometimes advancing down the pitch to meet them, and frequently taking balls on his body. The last over of the match, with Cowdrey emerging from the pavilion with his arm in plaster to allow David Allen to bat out the match for a draw, has passed into cricketing folklore.

Sadly that was the high point of the series for Close. He was steady, scoring three other fifties, but never the century which would have cemented his position in the side, despite being given the chance to play in all five Tests that summer. In fact, that 70 at Lord’s would remain his highest Test score. At the end of the series he was quietly dropped, and not heard of again until plucked unexpectedly from county cricket to captain England in that amazing match at the Oval in 1966.

There was no tour that winter, but the following summer, 1967, saw two mini-series, each of three Test matches, against India and Pakistan respectively. Close, the man in possession, captained England to five victories and a draw. Again, though, his own form as a player was indifferent. In six matches, against weak bowling attacks, he scored just 197 runs without once making a 50. As a bowler he was more successful, taking 20 wickets at 20.9, but these figures are flattered by one fine performance against India at Birmingham.

Close himself, in looking back on his career, mused on the possibility of having been cursed with bad luck, on getting out to blinding catches or unplayable deliveries, while the player at the other end was dropped three times and went on to make a century. The truth is probably sadder and more prosaic. As a player, he was probably never quite good enough. This is a harsh judgement, so let us temper it a little.

Brian Close was an outstanding all-rounder in county cricket, particularly in his first few seasons when his fast-medium bowling could be decidedly brisk, and he swung the ball late. He could bowl both seam and spin. He could bat anywhere in the middle order, but was probably a natural number six. He was a fine fielder anywhere, an outstanding close catcher, and a courageous short leg in the days before helmets. Just about anyone who has ever played first-class cricket claims to have been caught by the wicketkeeper following a rebound from Close’s forehead.

However, two factors fall to be considered. First, there is a huge gulf between the demands of Test and county cricket, both technical and mental, which many very talented players have failed to bridge over the years; Graeme Hick and Mark Ramprakash would be two recent examples. Many of Close’s own contemporaries performed better than he did at Test level without ever becoming established in the England side: Jackie Hampshire (despite scoring a century on debut against the West Indies), Peter Parfitt (who averaged over 40 with the bat against Close’s 25), and Phil Sharpe (who also averaged over 40 and was generally reckoned the best slip catcher in the country). So, if he did fail narrowly to make the grade, then he was in good company; these were all very fine players indeed.

Second, while Close’s versatility as an almost total all-rounder was his greatest attraction, particularly at county level, perhaps it was also his greatest weakness at Test level. He was a utility player, the jack of all trades, but master of none. In particular he was never quite good enough to justify a place in the side as a batsman, and as he got older his bowling became less effective. Again, let us examine the credentials of this claim.

In a first-class career spanning 28 years and no less than 786 matches, Close never scored a double century. In fact, he was probably rather more effective as a bowler (1,171 wickets at 26.42) than he was as a batsman (34,944 runs at 33.26). In 786 matches he scored 52 centuries. By contrast, in 498 matches Peter Parfitt scored 58, including a double century. That’s six more centuries, in only 63% as many games. Yet Parfitt too had pretensions to all-rounder status: but for the perennial presence in the Middlesex side of Fred Titmus, he would undoubtedly have bowled a lot more than he did. He was also a fine slip fielder. Pursuing the comparison, Parfitt only played 37 Tests, spread over an eleven-year period. So, even if Close is right in his contention that he should have played for England more times than he did, he is wrong to feel that he was singled out for special attention. If he was unfortunate, it was in being cursed by the burden of unrealistic expectations at a very young age; the careers of many other promising young all-rounders have since followed a similar trajectory.

There is an extra dimension to Close’s game which must be considered, though, if any assessment is to be full and fair. He was an outstanding captain, not just in the technical matters of team selection, field placings and bowling changes, but in his ability to inspire those around him, and in his mentoring of young players. Mike Brearley, who shared these qualities, has pointed out that a captain should really be considered as an all-rounder, and this is fair comment. Whatever the case, it is Close’s inspirational captaincy, along with his almost suicidal courage under fire, which will linger in the memory. In a Gillette Cup match in 1973, he took over the wicket-keeping gloves from an injured Jim Parks. Brushing aside suggestions that a younger man should do the job with the claim that he had once been an emergency keeper during a Test, he strapped on the pads. Having fumbled his first few takes, he threw off the gloves and proceeded to keep wicket immaculately to the fast bowlers Hallam Moseley and Allan Jones bare-handed.

Certainly there seems little doubt that in 1967, and for some time thereafter, he was the best man available to captain England. That the distinguished commentator Christopher Martin-Jenkins should have spoken of him as a serious contender as late as 19748 speaks volumes.

And so as the 1967 summer progressed, the England selectors found themselves in the position of having selected as captain someone whom they had already discarded as a player, and finding that he had the knack of winning matches. By mid-August, Close himself was looking ahead to the forthcoming winter tour of the West Indies, and was already in preliminary discussions with the selectors about the composition of the touring party. It was at this point, however, that the dread hand of controversy which seemed constantly to hover over Brian Close would reach down and tap him smartly on the shoulder once again.

1 Colin Cowdrey, M.C.C.: The Autobiography of a Cricketer, Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1976

2 ‘Barry Knight – A Cricketing Odyssey’, www.bodacious.com

3 E.M. Wellings in Wisden Cricket Monthly, 1986

4 Fred Trueman, As It Was, Pan Books, London, 2004

5 John Snow, Cricket Rebel, Hamlyn, London, 1976

6M.C.C. op. cit.

7 Ray Illingworth, Yorkshire and Back, MacDonald, London, 1981

8 Christopher Martin-Jenkins, Testing Time, MacDonald, London, 1974

CHAPTER 2

THE SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LANDSCAPE

As the novelist L.P. Hartley memorably put it, ‘the past is another country; they do things differently there’.9 Anyone looking back from today to the Britain of the 1960s would be struck forcefully by the accuracy of this statement.

Economically, the country was locked into a vicious downward spiral. Knowing that the population was desperate for advances in living standards after the rationing and austerity which had continued after the Second World War, successive governments allowed these to be bought on credit, rather than earned by improvements in productivity. The 1962 film Live Now – Pay Later potently evoked the dramatic eruption of consumer debt into people’s lives. (In fact, the novel on which it was originally based was much bleaker, featuring a housewife who is forced into prostitution after she falls into debt to a loan shark.)

Economic mismanagement was exacerbated by what became known as the British disease: a combination of incompetent business management and militant trade union agitation, brilliantly satirised in I’m all right, Jack starring Peter Sellers as the nightmarish shop steward Fred Kite. The Wilson government would be forced to devalue the pound in 1967, signalling the end of the Bretton Woods monetary system which had served the world so well since the war, though this would not be formally abolished until 1971. Though not widely recognised as such at the time, this was in fact an act of enormous significance and could be argued to be the precursor of the modern sovereign debt crisis. Despite the devaluation, Britain would effectively become bankrupt in 1976, with Chancellor of the Exchequer Denis Healey having to go cap in hand to the IMF asking for Britain to be rescued.

Healey, incidentally, also gained notoriety by setting Britain’s highest ever rate of income tax (83% on earned income and 98% on investment income), an outrage made possible only by people being effectively locked into the country by exchange controls which made it impossible to transfer money out of the country. Thus, you could live abroad if you liked, but only at the expense of leaving your money behind.

Politically the two main parties offered the public a choice between strident socialism and tired jingoism. Disillusioned members of the Labour Party would later seek ‘a third way’ by setting up the Social Democratic Party, but at this time the third party, the Liberals, were seen as marginal, with little chance of any success under the ‘first past the post’ electoral system. Their prospects were not improved when their leader, Jeremy Thorpe, later stood trial for the attempted murder of his gay lover (he was acquitted). This bipolar approach to politics echoed the fascist/communist divide of the 1930s and was hardly conducive to reconciliation between workers and bosses.

For it was the class system which remained at the heart of Britain’s social ills, having survived two World Wars, a General Strike and the introduction of commercial television. Middle-class young people would be routed into management jobs regardless of natural intelligence or aptitude. Working-class young people would be expected to leave school at the earliest possible opportunity to take a job in a factory, or clerking in an office. Upper-class people thought work of any kind beneath them, whether they needed the money or not. The impoverished former officer trying to pose as a gentleman, and usually being drawn into rather seedy crime, became a staple of film and fiction.

In cricket, it was reckoned unthinkable for a non-working-class person to be classified as a professional. P.G. Wodehouse, for example, has Psmith rescue Michael Jackson from such an ignominious fate using his ample trust fund as a deus ex machina. Though the distinction was officially abolished in 1962, the attitudes behind it survived and flourished throughout the period covered by this book. No professional cricketer would be elected president of the MCC until 2004, 42 years later.

In 1963 Freddie Trueman was fined £50 (a good deal of money in those days) for his off-field behaviour on a tour of Australia managed by the Duke of Norfolk. When he was asked about it by the media, he not unnaturally told the truth, namely that he had been given no explanation about what he was supposed to have done wrong, but had simply received less money than he had been expecting.

Lord’s attempted to rescue the situation with a classic piece of political spin, explaining that Trueman had not been fined, but had merely received less than the full amount of his bonus, which was after all discretionary. While outwardly serene, though, the MCC was furious, as a disciplinary file in their archive bears witness. The president of Yorkshire, Sir William Worsley (Eton and Cambridge), Baronet Worsley of Hovingham, past president of the MCC, a Lord Lieutenant of Yorkshire, and father of the Duchess of Kent, was asked to interview Trueman, and his letter to Lord’s afterwards10 drips with resigned condescension.

He reports Trueman as saying: ‘I am not a gentleman, and I know that, and I know that my code of behaviour is not always popular with authority …’ In despair, he concludes: ‘We all know that he is uncouth,and nothing we can do will alter that.’

In a precursor of the Close affair, some (though not nearly as many) members of the public wrote in to complain. One, written by eight Yorkshiremen and dated 20 May, asked: ‘Why, now that amateurism has been abolished, must you carry on in this “old school tie” frame of mind?’

Beyond the game of cricket, the class system would be ruthlessly exploited as a source of amusement. The gentle nonsense humour of the Goons included such characters as Major Bloodnok, a former army officer with an IQ in single figures, and Grytpype-Thynne, a Terry Thomas-type upper-class bounder. Their cultural successors, Monty Python, would famously feature the Upper-Class Twit of the Year race. In between, both social and political issues would be satirised with increasing venom by a whole series of programmes inspired by That Was The Week That Was. The British establishment, however, seemed to survive these attacks more or less unscathed.

Race was becoming an increasingly significant factor: Britain, in an era of full employment, had actively encouraged immigrants from Commonwealth locations such as the West Indies to take up low-paid jobs working for the likes of London Transport and the National Health Service. Others came from the Indian subcontinent; still more from East Africa when Idi Amin expelled Uganda’s ethnic Indian population in 1972. By this time, racism had become an explosive issue, with Enoch Powell’s notorious ‘rivers of blood’ speech in Birmingham in 1968 splitting the country. He was promptly sacked from the shadow cabinet by Edward Heath, though ironically there were some who credited the lingering afterglow of Powell’s popularity with the electorate for Heath’s election victory in 1970.

Thus race too became a polarising issue, admitting only of two real choices: either you were racist or you were anti-racist. There did not seem to be any in-between. BBC television were to make an important contribution to the debate through the unlikely medium of a comedy show, Till Death Us Do Part, featuring Warren Mitchell as the foul-mouthed racist and all-round bigot Alf Garnett. So effective were Mitchell (a gentle and cultured man in real life) and the scriptwriters in creating the character of Garnett that many members of the public wrote in to complain, not realising that the show was deliberately intended to disgust and repel. The sad truth was that Alf reminded just about everybody of a character in their local pub.

For racism was a feature of British life. Until 1968 landlords could and did display signs that said ‘no blacks’ or ‘no coloureds’. Even ten years later the writer, during a summer job as a student, heard an office manager say to an employment agency ‘and I don’t want any you can’t see in the dark’ (in his spare time the man was a Conservative councillor). Yet it was mostly covert, rather than open as it was, for example, in South Africa. When Basil D’Oliveira and his wife moved to Britain they spent some months in a state of confusion, looking for separate buses, and separate entrances to public buildings and cricket grounds. In what might be viewed as an alternative racist joke, it was said that Mike Procter when he first visited London spent three hours waiting for a bus with a white conductor.

Reference to separate buses should serve to remind us that apartheid was being actively practised at this time not just in South Africa, but in various states of the US. In 1968, the year after our story begins, Bobby Kennedy, the man credited with ending that system, was assassinated, as was the great civil rights leader Martin Luther King, sparking race riots across America’s southern states.

For 1968 was a year of unrest. In London, protestors mounted a huge demonstration against the Vietnam war in March, which sadly turned violent, in first Trafalgar Square and then Grosvenor Square. Other demonstrations would follow throughout the year. In Paris, students took to the streets aiming at nothing less than the overthrow of their government. In Poland and Czechoslovakia democratic movements were brutally suppressed by the Soviet Union. In Germany, Baader-Meinhof terrorist bombs exploded and a left-wing politician was shot. In Northern Ireland, clumsy police handling of a civil rights march would spark a tragic 30-year period known as ‘the Troubles’. Little could anyone have guessed, however, that it would be the game of cricket which would contribute one of 1968’s most contentious events, and one of its most lasting controversies.

Another aspect of British life which would be thrown into stark relief by the Close affair was the north–south divide. This was in a way an extension of the class system. Those who had been to public school would speak a standard form of English with a more or less standard accent, regardless of where they lived. Any two people meeting for the first time who spoke in this way would instantly recognise a common bond born of shared experiences such as bad food, cross-country runs and lighting farts in the dormitory. It was for precisely this reason that many people who had not been to public school sought to copy the accent in the hope of being accepted as an honorary member of the club.

Leaving aside this very small segment of the population, however, your accent defined where you had been brought up, and further gradations of the particular accent would also give a clue to your social origins. For many southerners, it was not until the advent of commercial television that they had ever heard a northern accent. A new generation of northern writers arose. Keith Waterhouse, John Braine and Stan Barstow gave life to BillyLiar, Room at the Top, and A Kind of Loving respectively. All made into films, they would build awareness of life north of Watford.

Sometimes, as they will in our story, two of these factors would combine. A southern gentleman would feel himself to be living in a different world from a tradesman living in his own town. Replace the local tradesman with a northern workman and the gulf might seem too great ever to be bridged. Yet this is exactly what various cricketers were called upon to do, with sometimes explosive results.

Essentially, the British people were suffering from a crisis of identity. Since before the Second World War, the grammar schools had offered a way for bright working-class boys to break free of their social origins and compete for management and professional jobs. It was no coincidence, for example, that many of them found their way into the RAF during the war. There were many more technical requirements for those who flew and maintained planes than for those who fought in or supplied, say, the infantry, and so educational skills were at a premium. This did not, however, prevent the other services from looking down on the air force for granting officers’ commissions to those of humble birth.

After the war, it became increasingly possible for boys and girls to progress from grammar school to university. Upwardly mobile, they began to form the management pool of the future. The tectonic plates were shifting under the established structures of British society, but nobody could be quite sure where the earthquakes would occur, or when. It was mostly in the new industries, such as the media, where the new wave made most progress, and typically in manufacturing where they made least. Here the British disease raged unchecked, with family background, not ability, conditioning your chances of promotion. In the City too, it was still felt to require a certain type of person to be able to discharge a position of responsibility in a merchant bank or a stockbroking firm. Here, there was often open resentment of grammar schoolboys, who were felt to be too clever by half.

During the same period, and often as part of or immediately after the increase in progression from grammar school to university, there occurred a great regional co-mingling. In the nineteenth century London had seen a huge influx of labourers migrating from the countryside in search of work. In the 1960s it was seeing a similar ingress, but this time it consisted of smart young graduates from the north or (even more unthinkably) Scotland, wearing their BA on one shoulder and their social chip on the other. They were hungry for success, and eager for hard work. They were, in short, the southern middle class’s worst nightmare come true.

The crisis of identity had to do with Britain’s place in the world too. Though historians disagree on when precisely Britain ceased to be a great power, it was probably at the time of the Washington Naval Treaty in 1922, at the latest. That had not stopped successive British governments continuing to posture on the world stage, a trend that continues to this day. Britain had gone into the Second World War totally incapable of fighting it, and had gone bust within eighteen months, able to continue only as a client of US credit under the thin pretext of Lend Lease. Afterwards, our share of the post-war aid which the US had generously donated to various European countries had been spent not on retooling British industry but on building new houses, and maintaining the ridiculous levels of armed forces around the world which befitted Britain’s image of itself as a great power.

It was with the Suez crisis in 1956 that the whole house of cards finally came crashing down. Defied and ridiculed by what Britain saw as a small and backward state, timely military intervention proved impossible, even given the greatly swollen defence budget. When finally Britain was ready to respond, world opinion had moved against her, the so-called ‘special relationship’ with the US had been exposed as a pathetic delusion on the part of the government (a delusion which nonetheless exists to this day), and Britain and her ally, France, were forced into a humiliating withdrawal.

Along the way Britain and France had been persuaded into an agreement with Israel allowing Israeli forces to invade Egypt, an invasion which was then used as a pretext for Franco-British intervention. It was a shabby, worn-out trick by a shabby, worn-out Britain. A final tragic twist saw Prime Minister Anthony Eden, a man who had won the MC in the trenches of the First World War, and resigned from Chamberlain’s cabinet on a point of honour in protest at the appeasement of dictators, lie to the House of Commons about the Israel connection, suffer a nervous collapse, and retire from public life, a last sad relic of the Edwardian Age that was Britain’s vanished glory.

Wherever your political sympathies lay, it was impossible now to avoid the inevitable truth that Britain no longer enjoyed anything resembling the power and prestige that she once had wielded. The nation which had once controlled roughly a third of the world was now exposed for what it really was: a small, broke and hopelessly divided island in the Atlantic Ocean. Yet wounded pride and self-delusion persisted in many Britons, not least Alf Garnett, who refused to accept that Britain’s great power status had finally been stripped away, revealing some rather grubby underwear.

What did it mean now to be British? How could one be ‘British’ without that definition including some people over in Northern Ireland with comical accents whose sole objective seemed to be to kill as many of each other as possible? Or people with frankly unintelligible accents in Scotland who seemed to hate the English almost as much as they hated Rangers or Celtic supporters (delete whichever does not apply). Or people with different-coloured skins; surely you had to be white to be British, didn’t you?

What did it even mean to be English, now that you knew this to include people speaking what sounded like different languages living in tenement buildings under the shadow of slag heaps? Or people like Alf Garnett whom you found disgusting? Or people with public school accents whom you found insufferably arrogant?

The truth was partly that British society was already much more diverse than most people had ever realised it to be, and that they were slow in coming to terms with this fact. It was partly that it was becoming rapidly more so, given both immigration and social mobility. Alvin Toffler would in 1970 describe ‘future shock’ – what happens when the rate of change becomes too great for people properly to comprehend it, or assimilate it into their way of thinking.

These profound social and historical influences form the backdrop to our story, so it has been useful to state them explicitly. It was not just British society, but the world of cricket too, which underwent such rapid and significant changes that they can be understood far better in retrospect than they could have been at the time.

As the Warwickshire secretary Leslie Deakins pointed out in 1967, attendance at County Championship matches had dwindled in the space of 20 years by 80% from two and a half million to just half a million. ‘We must acknowledge,’ he said, ‘that we are providing a spectacle that the public does not want.’11

The establishment had been sufficiently concerned to ask for various reports to be drawn up outlining what the public did want, and there was general agreement both in general and on the specifics.

In general, the public wanted brighter cricket. This would later result in the bonus points system being revised to reward a win more generously, but for some time the situation would remain that it was possible to win as many points for two draws as it was for one win, provided that you gained a first innings lead each time.

‘Brighter cricket’ nonetheless issued forth constantly as a buzz-phrase, and when Geoff Boycott took nearly ten hours to score 246 against India at Headingley that summer, not only was he pointedly not selected for the ‘batsman of the match’ prize, but he found himself dropped from the next match as a punishment for slow scoring. Ken Barrington had been dropped in similar circumstances in 1965, but sadly the selectors soon got tired of paying lip service to the idea of brighter cricket, allowing both over-rates and scoring rates to decline.

More specifically, it seemed that what the public wanted was limited overs cricket. The Gillette Cup, a knockout competition played originally over 65 overs, had been introduced in 1963 and had proved wildly successful. From 1966 it was standardised at 60 overs a side, with a limit of twelve for any one bowler. However, even having included the minnows of the Minor Counties plus Scotland and Ireland, there were only a limited number of these games, since it was a knockout competition. Given the popularity of these games with the public, perhaps something could be organised on a league basis as an even greater money spinner?

At the same time, BBC television was wrestling with a problem of its own. It had been awarded Britain’s third television channel, BBC2, in 1964. While initially very successful under its controller (from 1965), David Attenborough, particularly for lavish costume dramas such as The Forsyte Saga and for leading edge comedians such as Peter Cooke and Dudley Moore, it had increasingly come under fire for being too highbrow. The BBC badly needed a populist programme, and had actually been flirting with broadcasting cricket on a Sunday afternoon before the required ration of religious broadcasting (the ‘God slot’) on a Sunday evening.

Sunday was then a rest day in the county programme, but exhibition matches could be arranged for the International Cavaliers, an invitation team not unlike rugby’s Barbarians, which would include some recently retired Test cricketers whose backs and knees could safely be trusted over the period of a single afternoon, as well as some big name international players. The emphasis was on fun, big hitting and good-natured sportsmanship. If anything, these games proved even more popular than the Gillette Cup.

Britain in the 1960s was unrecognisable from today in many ways, but at no time was it more different than on a Sunday afternoon. Pubs closed earlier at lunchtime and opened later in the evening. Shops were forbidden by law from opening, and so remained closed. So, usually, did restaurants and cinemas. After listening to Round the Horne or The Navy Lark on radio after Sunday lunch, a yawning gulf opened up of several hours which could be filled only by the traditional pastimes of arguing with other members of your family, and spying on the neighbours. The Tony Hancock radio show brilliantly portrayed this in an episode entitled simply A Sunday Afternoon At Home, written by Ray Galton and Alan Simpson.

At the same time a third interest group, the tobacco industry, were looking for a solution to a problem of their own. With cigarette advertising having been banned on UK television in 1965, how could they keep their various brand names in front of the public?

BBC2 had taken to televising some of the Cavaliers’ matches, and it did not take long for the perfect marriage to emerge between the needs of cricket, the needs of BBC2, and the needs of tobacco companies. The John Player League was the first version of cricket ever to be created by television for television. At 40 overs a side, with the bowlers coming off restricted run-ups, it was designed to fit perfectly into the BBC’s available time slot on a Sunday afternoon.

It took to the screens in 1969 and the public loved it. Not only did it bring much needed TV and sponsorship revenues into the game, but it encouraged people to turn out on a Sunday afternoon to watch their county side performing under very different conditions. Any batsman who hit a six went into a pool for cash awards at the end of a season. So did any bowler who took four wickets.

The action was hectic and fun. Spectators were guaranteed a result in the course of a single afternoon. Best of all, the bars stayed open all afternoon, and sexy young ladies in miniskirts wandered among the crowd dispensing free John Player cigarettes.

The very success of the Sunday League, as it was popularly known to the dismay of John Player, brought tensions of its own between the progressive elements within the cricket community and the traditionalists. The former saw limited overs cricket as an important part of the way ahead, if only for financial reasons, rather than simply a peripheral bolt-on. The latter saw it as an irrelevant distraction which risked damaging the development of young players by encouraging negative bowling and reckless shot selection. In the event, both would be proved right.

Incidentally, prominent among the traditionalists was Brian Close, who condemned limited overs cricket as ‘instant rubbish’. By a sad mischance, some of the leading progressives ended up sitting in judgement upon him as part of an MCC disciplinary committee.

The progressives pointed out that the County Championship was no longer sufficiently financially viable to form the staple offering to the public. The traditionalists asked why nothing had been done to promote the Championship either locally or nationally. For example, could not part of the deal with the BBC have been the provision of a regular weekly feature on the Championship on a Saturday afternoon, just as already happened with soccer?

The progressives, delighted with money flowing into the game’s coffers from the Sunday League (from the BBC, John Player, and gate receipts), called for more limited overs cricket. The traditionalists argued that two limited overs competitions were already enough, and that adding a third could not be done without severely cutting back the County Championship schedule.