Cricketers: A Portrait of Cricket in the Golden Age from Wills’ Cigarette Cards

 

For some years, a framed set of 50 cigarette cards depicting cricketers from a past age has hung on my living room wall. I bought it from a gift shop in Manchester for £25. On the reverse of each card is the name of the firm that produced them: W.D. and H.O. Wills. The players’ appearance (gaudy caps, neck ties, almost universal moustaches) points to the set being made in the 1890s and a Google search confirms that it dates from 1896 and was simply named, “Cricketers”. It was the first ever set of sporting cigarette cards that the Wills brothers’ firm produced.

Sadly, I don’t have a bargain hanging on my wall, for on the reverse of each card is also clearly written ‘reproduction’. If they had been originals in good condition I could have sold the set for up to £4,000. As it is, it is worth no more than the £25 that I paid for them.

Despite this slight disappointment, like the fusty old antiquarian that I am, I have recently been surrounding myself with dust-strewn and voluminous cricket books to research into the 50 cricketers depicted in my set of cards. In this article I will relate what I have found out and will consider what the cards say about cricket at that time – and a little about the state of England in the 1890s as well.

My first task was to put some basic details about each player on to a spreadsheet (I’m not just a fusty old antiquarian), so that I could sort them in different ways to discover trends. Although released in 1896, it is likely that the selection of players was based on performances during the 1895 season. This could explain the inclusion of the otherwise obscure Jack Painter of Gloucestershire and George Nicholls of Somerset, who had good seasons that year. It also explains why Surrey has more representatives (six) than any other county, as they won the county championship in 1895 (Yorkshire, who won in 1896, has only three players included). In 1895, the number of first-class counties was expanded from nine to fourteen, with the admission of Derbyshire, Essex, Hampshire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire to join Gloucestershire, Kent, Lancashire, Middlesex, Nottinghamshire, Somerset, Surrey, Sussex and Yorkshire (Worcestershire subsequently joined in 1899; Northamptonshire in 1905; Glamorgan in 1921 and Durham in 1992). All the 1895 counties are represented in the cards with the odd exception of Essex, despite their fearsome fast bowler Charles Kortright coming eighth in the bowling averages that year. The batting averages in 1895 were headed by Archie MacLaren of Lancashire and Charles Townsend of Gloucestershire, aged just 18, was second in the bowling averages. As well as 47 county cricketers, the cards include representatives of Oxford and Cambridge Universities and a representative of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), the gentleman’s club that owned Lord’s cricket ground and which governed the laws and spirit of the game (he was Herbert Hewett, a former captain of Somerset who had fallen out with the county club).

By 1896, test matches had been played between England and Australia for twenty years and England had first played (white) South Africa in 1891-2. England toured Australia in 1894-5 under the captaincy of Andrew Stoddart of Middlesex, winning the five-match series by three games to two. Australia toured England in 1896, with England, captained by the famous Dr. W.G. Grace (Gloucestershire), retaining the Ashes by two matches to one. Many of those who played for England in these series are included in the cards, but some fine cricketers did not make the cut, including the batsmen William Gunn of Nottinghamshire, J.T. Brown of Yorkshire and Bobby Abel of Surrey and the Yorkshire bowlers Bobby Peel and George Hirst (from now, all the players that I will name in this article appear in the cards, unless otherwise stated).

In 1896, Britain was still the world’s undoubted superpower. Its global trade was greater than any other country and its empire was the largest the world has seen. Its navy was the world’s most powerful. At home, the upper classes were firmly in control. Three-quarters of the land was owned by just 5,000 aristocratic or gentlemanly families and at the 1895 general election, the Liberal Earl of Rosebery was replaced as Prime Minister by the Conservative Marquis of Salisbury. At the same time, the seeds of Britain's 20th century decline had been sewn. Germany and America were catching up with Britain in volume of trade and were ahead in the new electronic and chemical industries. The reunification of Germany had wobbled the balance of power in Europe, leading ultimately to the conflagration of the Great War. Conflict around Irish home rule presaged the eventual break-up of the British Empire. Even the aristocracy was under threat: agricultural depression due to foreign competition had reduced the value of land, the Parliament Act of 1911 would limit the power of the House of Lords and economic pressures would lead to the decline of the great country houses which in the 1890s hosted much genial cricket.

None of this was of any concern to those who governed cricket in 1896. English first-class cricket was entering what later writers would come to regard as its Golden Age, when the values of cricket were said to have been manifested most clearly in the way that the game was played. Those values can be summed up in a few familiar phrases. The first comes from a poem entitled Vitai Lampada, written at the end of the 19^th century by Sir Henry Newbolt which, set in a public school, compared cricket with warfare and ended each verse with the line “Play up! Play up! And play the game!” What is valued in the poem is courage, steadfastness and leadership – and playing by the rules. The game (or battle) is on the line but must be won fairly and with style.

This idea underpins another familiar phrase (albeit of more obscure origin): ‘It’s not cricket’. The manly struggle between bat and ball must be carried out chivalrously – as must Britain’s duty to the rest of the world. In another contemporary phrase cricket was “more than a game” - no wonder that cricket was such an important part of the education of the public schoolboys who were being groomed to administer the country and its empire.

These values were manifested in the way that first-class cricket had come to be shaped by the MCC in the second half of the nineteenth century. An important theme was that the way that games were played should be more important than their results. The MCC had been reluctant to promote a county championship, fearing that it would lead to a win-at-all-costs mentality that would diminish the game as a pursuit and a spectacle. The championship had only been established in 1890 and was a far looser concept than it is today (counties could choose how many matches they played and who they played against). The MCC contrasted county cricket with what they regarded as the grim horrors of the football league, founded in 1888, or the Lancashire cricket leagues, founded in 1892.

A second requirement was that first-class cricket games should be three days long, in contrast to the one day games played in the Lancashire leagues (or the 90 minute association football games). The true spirit of cricket, it was felt, could only be fully realised in the long, two-innings format. In the nineteenth century this of course reduced the number and range of spectators, as working people could rarely attend due to their long hours and scant holidays (and the fact that most county games were played on weekdays). This did not trouble the MCC however, as it felt that the first-class game should not be sullied by the pursuit of gate money. Traditionally, watching cricket had been a pastime for the leisured classes and the counties were expected to make most of their money from well-heeled members’ subscriptions.

The third and most important manifestation of the values of cricket was the distinction between amateur and professional players. Only amateurs, it was felt, could truly play the game in the right spirit, uninfluenced by the need for personal reward. Most importantly, the captain of a county side should always be an amateur, even if he lacked the playing ability of available professional players (Lord Hawke captained Yorkshire for over 20 years, despite being a moderate batsman). Amateurs, it goes without saying, were largely drawn from the monied classes and any public school and university educated cricketer was expected to play as an amateur.

The amateur-professional distinction is clearly seen in the cigarette cards. There are 24 amateurs and 24 professionals depicted (the other two started their careers as amateurs before turning professional). Many of the amateurs wear gaudy blazers, while all the professionals are soberly dressed in white. The amateurs have their initials before their surnames, (W.W. Read) while most of the professionals are named by surnames only, or if initials or first names are needed to distinguish them from other players with the same surname, they come after that surname (Read, Maurice).

The upper classes are well represented among the amateurs; no fewer than seven of the 24 are “titled”. There are two peers of the realm: the influential county captains and administrators Lord Harris of Kent and Lord Hawke of Yorkshire. There are two sons of peers: the Hon. Stanley Jackson (Yorkshire) and the Hon. Charles de Trafford (Leicestershire) and two baronets: Sir Timothy O’Brien (Middlesex) and Sir Kingsmill Key (Surrey). Finally, there is an Indian Prince, Kumar Shri Ranjitsinjhi (Sussex – later His Highness the Jam Sahib of Nawanagar). At the same time, not all the amateurs were blue-blooded. Some, like Lancashire’s captain Archie MacLaren came from “trade” and another anomaly was the amateur status of two former Australian test players, Billy Murdoch (Sussex) and J.J. Ferris (Gloucestershire), conventionally listed as amateurs although they were to all intents and purposes professional. Two players had begun their careers as amateurs before turning professional: George Nicholls of Somerset and Harry Daft of Nottinghamshire. Harry was son of Richard Daft, a great professional batsman of the previous generation who doubtless funded his son’s early career from profits from his subsequent business ventures. Finally, George Lohmann, the great Surrey bowler, played as a professional despite being the son of a stockbroker.

The large majority of the amateurs were specialist batsmen, while the majority of the professionals were bowlers. The “golden age” was, in the minds of those who believed in the concept, largely one of dashing, free-scoring, upper-class amateur batsmen who played the game for fun and toiling working-class professional bowlers who put in an honest day’s work for an honest day’s pay. The great chronicler of the golden age was the writer Neville Cardus. Born in a Manchester slum, Cardus was eight years old in 1896, but a few years later was playing truant from school to watch Lancashire play at Old Trafford. He was a decent slow bowler and was employed for a few years as assistant professional to the now-retired Yorkshire bowler Ted Wainwright at Shrewsbury School. In the 1920s, as cricket correspondent for the Manchester Guardian he perfected a metaphor-filled style of writing that created a rose-tinted image of cricket of the pre-war era. Consider, for example, this description of the batting of Archie MacLaren:

“MacLaren’s cricket was a classical education because of its magnificent outlines, and yet, at the same time, it possessed the colour and hint of danger which tell of the romantic attitude. His poise and the mould of his technique, as he made his runs, were clear and firm, almost serene; but in his more commanding strokes there was an energy that seemed to be reaching outward…an energy which signified a man very lordly, a man born to rule, to dictate and to wear the imperial robe”.

Professional bowlers were regarded more as legionnaires than as Roman emperors, as in this passage about the Surrey fast bowler Tom Richardson bowling against Lancashire:

“His face was wet, his breath scant. He was the picture of honest toil. With the ball in his hands again he trotted back to the wicket and once more went through the travail of bowling…on a pitiless summer’s day. This was Tom Richardson all over - the cricketer whose heart was so big that even his large body hardly contained its heroic energy”.

And when Cardus quoted (or perhaps put words into the mouths of) northern professionals, he never failed to give them a faux northern accent:

“These old Notts professionals after a day’s play would sit in a tavern, or like Attewell would go home to the village they were born in and have boiled onions for supper. Their vocabularies were not wide, but now and then they spoke with an echo of biblical cadence: ‘If God’s willin,’ Attewell would say, ‘Ah s’ll be down at ground next Saturday mornin’”.

So the image of a golden age when amateurs and professionals responded in their own ways to the call of “play up! play up! and play the game!” and cricket represented all that was good about England was a powerful one and we can see it reflected in the cards. But did it accurately reflect the reality of cricket in the 1890s?

In two fine books, The Willow Wand and A Social History of English Cricket, Derek Birley examined many of the myths of the golden age, concluding that while some (mainly well-off) cricketers could be said to practice the ideals of cricket, others had a more hard-nosed approach. Some events in 1896 illustrate the gap between the myth of the golden age and its reality.

The principle of playing by the rules was sometimes challenged. One incident of gamesmanship occurred in that epitome of the amateur spirit, the Varsity match between Oxford and Cambridge universities. At the time, if the team batting second fell short of their opponent’s score by more than 80 runs, they were obliged to follow on, whether their opponents wanted them to do so or not. In the 1896 Varsity match, Oxford, batting second, were likely to follow on, but the Cambridge captain, Frank Mitchell (not depicted on the cards) told his bowlers to deliberately bowl no-balls to ensure that Oxford were less than 80 runs behind, thereby saving his bowlers from having to come straight back out to bowl in Oxford's second innings. His action was greeted by spectators with ‘a great shout of “Cricket!” “Play the game!” “Shame!” and other cries’. A few years later the MCC was obliged to change the follow-on rule to prevent further occurrences.

In the 19^th century, the superiority of white people over non-whites was taken for granted. In 1896 this view was challenged by the emergence of the Indian Prince K. S. Ranjitsinjhi (universally known as Ranji). Although rich and supremely talented as a batsman, Ranji initially struggled for acceptance by the cricketing establishment. He only won a single “blue” at Cambridge and despite being the leading batsman in the country was not selected for the first 1896 test match against Australia, due to opposition from Kent’s Lord Harris. Officially this was due to doubts about his qualification status, but others not born in the country had played for England and it seems likely that racism was involved in the decision. Selected despite Lord Harris for the second test, Ranji scored 62 and 154 and headed the first class batting averages in 1896. Thereafter he was accepted as “English” and learned to flatter his adopted countrymen, dedicating his 1898 Jubilee Book of Cricket (ghost written by his fellow Sussex and England player Charles Fry) ‘by her gracious permission to Her Majesty, the Queen Empress’.

Another smouldering issue that cast doubt on the purity of cricket was “throwing”, the suspicion that some bowlers used unfair means to put extra speed or spin on the ball. The onus was on umpires to call a no-ball if they suspected a bowler of throwing, but only the brave and determined did so. In 1896 questions were raised about the bowling actions of two of the Australian tourists, the fast bowler Ernest Jones and the spinner Tom McKibbin, but neither were called for throwing. In later years, however, three of the players on the cards were called for throwing; the Somerset left arm spinner Edwin Tyler, the Sussex all-rounder (and future England captain) Charles Fry and the Lancashire fast bowler Arthur Mold. Remarkably, a film exists of Mold bowling in the nets in 1901 to the veteran Lancashire batsman A.N. Hornby (not depicted on the cards), to attempt to demonstrate that his action was fair. Modern video techniques enable viewers to “freeze-frame” the film to form their own judgements about whether Mold threw.

The spirit of 19^th century cricket implied that amateurs played for the love of the game and sought no financial reward from playing, while professionals were loyal servants who accepted their wages gratefully. Both views were challenged during the 1896 test match series against Australia. Prior to the deciding third test at the Oval, five English professionals, including Tom Richardson and George Lohmann, wrote to the Surrey committee (the match organisers) demanding a £20 match fee per head instead of the usual £10, otherwise they would refuse to play. The committee resisted and three of the rebels backed down but George Lohmann and William Gunn stood their ground and were left out of the team.

As well as illustrating the bolshiness of some professional players, this incident highlighted another issue that had long been around in cricket, that of “shamateurism”. Part of the professionals’ argument for more money was that supposed amateurs were being paid ‘expenses’ that amounted to as much as, or more than, the professionals’ fees. The issue of amateurs making money from playing the game rumbled in the background of English cricket until the amateur/professional distinction was abandoned in the 1960s.

The amateur ideal had its roots in the days when cricket was a pastime for the leisured gentry. Some of our 24 amateurs had private incomes, from land or business; Charles de Trafford’s father owned Trafford Park, south of Manchester, on which Old Trafford cricket ground had been built, while Andrew Stoddart’s father was a wealthy wine merchant. However, most late 19^th century amateurs needed to earn a living. Lord Harris was a colonial as well as a cricket administrator and Stanley Jackson of Yorkshire, the son of a former cabinet minister, later entered politics himself and was knighted for his services as Governor of Bengal. Some followed professions: John Mason of Kent and Charles Townsend of Gloucestershire became solicitors and Charles Fry of Sussex earned money from journalism. Some amateurs were stockbrokers, an occupation that carried social status without being too demanding on time. And some were offered sinecure administrative posts by their counties, such as Surrey’s Walter Read, formerly a schoolmaster, who was appointed the club’s assistant secretary, a position which, as Wisden put it with satisfaction, “enabled him to devote all his life to the game”.

But regardless of their outside incomes, few leading amateurs (not even the holier-than-thou Lord Harris) turned down the chance to boost their finances with expenses for playing county and international matches, or going on overseas tours, often being paid considerably more than the professionals. Some, like Walter Read and Andrew Stoddart, were to all intents and purposes full time cricketers.  When in 1896 the five professionals demanded more money for playing in the third test, the press made much of this fact and Stoddart prudently withdrew from the match through “injury”.

Overshadowing all in 1896 (and for many years before) was the towering figure and formidable beard of Dr. W.G. Grace. Grace’s recent biographer, Richard Tomlinson, entertainingly sets out how he epitomised all that was good and bad about cricket in the second half of the 19^th century. He was by far the most prominent cricketer in the world, scoring 54,211 runs in his first-class career and taking 2,809 wickets with apparently innocuous slow bowling. In 1895, aged 47, he experienced an Indian summer, scoring 1,000 runs in the month of May and 2,344 runs overall, following it up with another 2,135 runs in 1896. He captained England to victory in the 1896 Ashes series.

At the same time, Grace was notorious for his extensive use of gamesmanship. For years, he had intimidated umpires, caused resentment by tricking opponents into getting themselves out and perpetrated other shady acts. Despite this, he retained the support of the cricket authorities and popularity among the public. Neville Cardus, who tended to avoid controversy in his writings, described him as “a great Victorian”. However, he added, a touch archly, “he shared their view that authority was a matter to be exploited drastically”. An unnamed professional put it more succinctly. Asked if Grace cheated, he replied, “no, he was too clever for that”.

Grace was also cricket’s most notorious ‘shamateur’ and made many thousands of pounds out of the game. In the 1896 professionals’ dispute, the question of Grace’s expenses became an issue and the Surrey secretary, Charles Allcock had to declare that Grace had never been paid more than £10 by Surrey for any match he had played at the Oval. As £10 was the match fee that the professionals were objecting to, it was not a strong argument.

Despite his cricketing income, however, Grace was not good at living within his means and remarkably he maintained his practice as a General Practitioner throughout his career. Richard Tomlinson suggests that one reason why Grace only went on two overseas winter tours was his need to maintain his position with his employers, the Board of Governors of the Barton Regis Poor Law Union. So the best cricketer in the world spent his winters as a humble G.P. in North West Bristol. How good or conscientious a doctor he was is an open question, but 19^th century medicine was largely a matter of common sense and good luck and being treated by the world’s most famous sportsman could have had a profound placebo effect on some patients.

What else can we glean from the set of cards about cricket in the late 19^th century? Well, one thing that might surprise modern followers of the game is that there are only three specialist fast bowlers depicted – Arthur Mold of Lancashire, Tom Richardson of Surrey and his teammate Bill Lockwood. Fast bowlers were valued, but 19^th century wickets and playing conditions often meant that other styles of bowling predominated. It was customary at the time to open the bowling with a quick bowler at one end and a slow bowler at the other. Leg break bowlers, such as Alec Hearne of Kent or Charles Townsend of Gloucestershire were also important, but the googly had not yet been invented. There were also many successful medium pace bowlers, such as William Attewell of Notts, Jack Hearne of Middlesex and George Lohmann of Surrey, exploiting indifferent wickets with cut and seam. Only two wicket keepers are included in the cards, Arthur Augustus Lilley of Warwickshire (universally known as Dick) and Gregor McGregor of Middlesex.

It was an age when top-level sport was less specialised than today and many of the cricketers on the cards excelled at other games. Andrew Stoddart and Gregor McGregor played rugby for England and Scotland respectively and John Dixon and Harry Daft of Notts played association football for England, while Robert Lucas of Middlesex represented England at hockey. Two men stood out as all-round sportsmen: the Lancashire and England batsman Frank Sugg was also a professional footballer and according to his Wisden obituary,

“he excelled as a long-distance swimmer, held the record for throwing the cricket ball, reached the final of the Liverpool amateur billiards championship, won prizes all over the country for rifle shooting, bowls and putting the shot and was famed as a weightlifter”.

Even Sugg had to cede first place as an all-round sportsman however to Charles Fry, who captained England at cricket, played for England at football and for Southampton in the F.A. Cup final of 1902 and in 1892 set a world long-jump record which stood for 21 years. He was also an accomplished classical scholar, which Frank Sugg wasn’t.

The portraits on the cards seem to have been based on photographs but appear stylised, with colours painted on, and give few clues to how the players appeared in action. We can, however, see a handful of the players performing on film. We have mentioned the film of Arthur Mold bowling to A.N. Hornby in 1901. The earliest surviving cricket film is a short clip of Ranji batting in the nets during the England team’s tour of Australia in 1897-8. Ranji appears again demonstrating his batting in an 1899 film that also features W.G. Grace. Lord Hawke can be seen on the same clip coming determinedly out to bat (though his career batting average suggests that he probably wasn’t at the wicket for very long).and yet another film of Ranji from 1901 includes some shots by Charles Fry.

All of the players are of course long gone. They were too old to have seen action in the First World War, but J.J. Ferris, who was something of a lost soul, died of enteric fever in 1900 while serving with the British army in the Boer War. He was 35 years old. Next year, George Lohmann died aged 36, his body weakened by a previous bout of tuberculosis. The fine Lancashire left-arm spinner Johnny Briggs contracted a neurodegenerative disease that confined him to an asylum and led to his death at 39. A possible diagnosis is General Paralysis of the Insane, a dementia-like condition caused by tertiary syphilis – there is no reason to believe that 19^th century cricketers were any more chaste than the rest of the male population. Then in 1912 Tom Richardson died aged 42 of a heart attack that was triggered by alcohol abuse and obesity.

At the other end of the scale, seven of our cricketers reached their 80s. Six were amateurs but the longest-lived was the professional Alec Hearne, who died in 1952, aged 88. The last survivor was the Oxford University blue Gerald Mordaunt, who died in 1959 aged 87. Three years later, in 1962, the amateur/professional distinction was finally done away with and the next year, 1963, saw the first sponsored limited-overs one-day county tournament, the Gillette Cup. Thus does one age give way to another.

But the cards also bear witness to one of the grimmer facts about first-class cricket, for two of the fifty players committed suicide. They have not been the only ones; the cricket writer David Frith has shown that cricketers have higher suicide rates than players of other sports and the male population as a whole, though explanations for this finding remain speculative. Few conclusions can be drawn from the two on the cards who ended their own lives. In 1903, Arthur Shrewsbury of Notts, one of the finest professional batsmen of the 19^th century, shot himself at the age of 47. Despite his fame as a cricketer and his success in business, he was afflicted by demons and died believing (wrongly) that he had a terminal illness. Then in 1915, the dashing amateur Andrew Stoddart, rugby international and England cricket captain, shot himself aged 52, apparently depressed by the war and his own loss of role. Shrewsbury and Stoddart had opened the batting together for England in 1893. Such tragedies remind us that while cricket may be more than a game, there is always more to life than cricket.

 Sources used:
Birley D (1979) The Willow Wand: Some Cricketing Myths Explored. London: Queen Anne Press
Birley D (1999) A Social History of English Cricket. London: Aurum Press
Cardus N (2012) Cardus on Cricket: A selection from the cricket writings of Sir Neville Cardus (Rupert Hart-Davies editor). London: Souvenir Press
Frith D (2001) Silence of the Heart: Cricket Suicides. Edinburgh: Mainstream Press
Green B (ed) (1986) The Wisden Book of Cricketers Lives. London: Queen Anne Press
Tomlinson R (2015) Amazing Grace: The Man who was W.G. London: Little, Brown

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...and various editions of Wisden Cricketer's Almanack

Cups and Ties – The Early Years of Limited-Overs County Cricket

 

On Sunday 3^rd September 1967, I spent a day with my parents at Folkestone, Kent. I was eleven years old. In the afternoon we went to Folkestone Cricket Club’s ground to see a benefit match for Stuart Leary, a long-serving Kent County Cricket Club batsman. The match was billed as S. E. Leary’s XI versus Kent CCC’s President’s XI. It was a gentle affair, the teams a mixture of current Kent players and well-known figures from the past, including Brian Valentine, who batted for Kent and England before the War (and was that year’s club president) and Doug Wright, a fine spin bowler for Kent and England in the 1940s and 50s. There was a good crowd and the takings helped boost Leary’s benefit purse to a then club record £9,000.

 

The mood in the crowd was particularly buoyant as the day before, Kent had beaten Somerset at Lords to win the Gillette Cup, then in its fifth year and at the time the only one-day limited-overs county cricket competition. Huddles formed as the cup was paraded around the ground and an announcement over the public address system invited spectators to purchase a special tie that had been produced to commemorate the win (this was the 1960s, when people still wore ties). Eagerly and with the financial help of my parents, I bought one and I cherish it still.

My commemorative tie!

I was particularly keen to own that tie as I had been at Lords for the Cup Final. I had gone with my mother and our cricket-mad neighbours, who had got us tickets in the Lords grandstand (my dad wasn’t a cricket fan but my mum was). I had been cricket-mad myself for two years and it was only the second proper match I had attended. Fifty-two years on, I can still recall the atmosphere in the ground and my feelings as the game ebbed and flowed and in this article I will put the match into the context of the development of one-day, limited-overs county cricket in England.

The Birth of the Limited-overs Cricket

In the 1960s, county cricket was in a bad way. Attendances at three-day county matches had fallen by three-quarters from a peak in the late 1940s and many county clubs were facing financial difficulties. There was a growing feeling that the first-class game had become dull, with slow scoring and a defensive attitude among captains and players. A series of enquiries and reports from the 1940s onwards sought to generate ideas for making the game more attractive and thereby to boost paid attendances.

One-day cricket, as played in the leagues below county level, was first mooted in a 1956 report, but it was not until 1963 that the first-class counties first played a one-day tournament. It was simply named ‘the Knock-out Competition’. Each game comprised one innings per side, each innings being a maximum of 65 overs and bowlers restricted to a maximum of 15 overs. Following a preliminary match between Lancashire and Leicestershire to reduce the number of sides to sixteen (Durham was not then a first-class county), the competition proceeded through three knockout rounds to a final at Lords in early September between Sussex and Worcestershire, with Sussex the winners. A further innovation was the ‘Man of the Match’ award, given in the final to the Worcestershire bowler Norman Gifford, who received the princely sum of £50. The competition caught the imagination of the public, attendances were good and the final was a sell-out, with an atmosphere that mirrored that of its elder brother, the F.A. Cup final.

Next year, 1964, the Knock-out Competition became the first cricket tournament to gain a commercial sponsor, being renamed the Gillette Cup. The cricket authorities were clearly unused to dealing with commercial companies as they asked Gillette for just £6,000 – considerably less than the company would have paid. The number of overs per side was reduced to 60, with bowlers restricted to 12 overs each. Sussex won again, beating Warwickshire at Lords before another full house. The editor of Wisden had expressed his approval of the new tournament the previous year, but after the 1964 competition he was less sure, opining that it “has proved a money-spinner in filling some grounds, but no-one can pretend that the cricket, excepting a few instances, has been any better”. Sides had in general not yet adapted their approach to the different demands of the new format; tactics, as in three day games, were often defensive and scores were low. Medium paced bowling proliferated and spinners were marginalised. At the same time, some recognised that a new approach was needed and the success of Sussex in the first two finals could be attributed in part to innovative tactics by their captain, Ted Dexter. The 1965 final went some way to redressing the scoring balance as Yorkshire made 317 for 4 in their 60 overs, the highest score in the competition to date, with the final’s first century, an aggressive innings of 146 by – believe it or not – Geoff Boycott. Yokshire beat Surrey by 175 runs.

In 1966, yet another report was commissioned on the future of county cricket, the enquiry being chaired by D. G. Clark, a prominent cricket administrator and former captain of Kent. The Clark report recommended a reduction in the number of first-class county matches and the introduction of a one-day league tournament, with each county playing each other. The report was overwhelmingly rejected by the counties, despite their increasingly precarious financial position. A number of objections were raised, but underpinning many of them seemed to be a deep-seated prejudice against one-day, limited-overs cricket on the part of county committees, which at the time were dominated by former amateur players and other public school types. However, this proved to be the last stand of cricket’s old guard, for in 1969 the counties accepted the need for a radical new competition to supplement the now well-established Gillette Cup. This was the John Player league, played on Sunday afternoons, with 40 overs per side and bowlers restricted to eight overs each and their run-ups (which at the time tended to the baroque) limited to 15 yards. The competition was an instant success and limited-overs cricket became a permanent feature of the county cricket season.

The 1967 Final

Saturday 2^nd September 1967 was, I recall, cloudy but dry. Lords cricket ground was packed and the atmosphere was excited. In those days, spectators were still allowed on the grass behind the boundary and a carnival atmosphere prevailed there. The stands were strewn with Kentish hops and Somerset cider tree branches. In our privileged seats in the grandstand, my Mum and I could look down and enjoy the revelry. An advantage of the new competition was that it increased the chances of a county winning a trophy and both Kent and Somerset were hungry for silverware. Kent had last won the county championship in 1913 and Somerset had never won it (they still haven’t).

Kent were however leading the county championship at the time, only to be pipped to the post when Yorkshire won their final match. Kent’s successes in 1967 heralded a decade of achievement that the county hadn’t experienced before and hasn’t since. They won the county championship in 1970 and 1978 and shared it with Middlesex in 1977. In addition they won seven one-day titles during the 1970s. Their dominance was based upon a core of three players who would be shoo-ins for a cricket Hall of Fame if one existed: Colin Cowdrey, Derek Underwood and Alan Knott (to be joined in 1968 by a fourth in the Pakistani all-rounder Asif Iqbal) and a supporting cast of solid county and international players. Somerset were eighth in the county championship in 1967 and had just one test player, the opening bowler Fred Rumsey, who later founded the Professional Cricketers’ Association, the players’ trade union.

The victorious Kent team display the Gillette Cup. The picture shows the winning eleven and twelth man David Sayer, along with their secretary/manager, the one-time Kent and England wicketkeeper/batsman Leslie Ames

The teams provide a snapshot of county cricket in ghe 1960s. Kent’s captain was Colin Cowdrey, one of England’s finest batsmen, who had been educated at Tonbridge School and Oxford. Somerset were led by Colin Atkinson, who attended Darlington Grammar School and Durham University and was a schoolmaster by profession (later headmaster of Millfield School). Although the distinction between amateurs and professionals had been abolished five years previously, Atkinson was a throwback to the amateur age, a player of modest achievements given the captaincy (to the disgruntlement of some senior professionals) for his perceived leadership qualities.

The match scorecard and report from the Kent CCC Annual 1968

In contrast to today, there were no specialist limited-overs players and both sides broadly fielded their first choice county championship elevens. At the time, spin bowlers were not favoured in limited-overs cricket and Somerset left out their off-spinner Brian Langford to include an extra seam bowler, Roy Palmer, though Kent included two spinners, Derek Underwood and Alan Dixon. County sides these days tend to include large numbers of overseas-born players and it is interesting to note that Somerset’s team included Terry Barwell, born in South Africa and Bill Alley, from Sydney, Australia, while for Kent, Stuart Leary was also a South African and John Shepherd was from Barbados and subsequently played three tests for the West Indies. It should also be noted that Colin Cowdrey had been born in Madras, India, the son of a tea planter. Five of the Kent XI were born in the county but just two of the Somerset side were home grown. It was an age when individuals could excel at more than one sport and Stuart Leary was also a professional footballer, with Charlton Athletic and Queens Part Rangers.

Fred Rumsey bowls for Somerset early in the Kent innings. Note the packed Lords stands and the number of close fielders!

Limited-overs cricket was to dramatically improve the overall standard of fielding and the athleticism of cricketers in general, but in 1967 both teams included players who would not pass muster today in terms of their athletic make-up. Colin Cowdrey was noticeably broad of beam, though a fine slip fielder, while Kent’s 6’ 7” opening bowler, Norman Graham, was a notoriously gangly and hapless fielder (and one of those rare cricketers who took more wickets than he scored runs). On the Somerset side, Bill Alley was the county circuit’s senior player at the ripe old age of 48.

Finally, trivia fans will be interested to learn that no fewer than five of Somerset’s eleven became first class umpires after their playing careers were over: Mervyn Kitchen, Graham Burgess, Bill Alley and the brothers Ken and Roy Palmer. The latter two were on the county panel for 31 and 27 years respectively. And Kent fielded four players called Alan!

We noted earlier that in those days, limited-overs cricket had not developed specialised tactics and games tended to proceed like shortened county championship matches. The 1967 final was no exception (in the photo above, Somerset's field includes two slips, a gully and a short leg - inconceivable today). The game ebbed and flowed, with both teams having the upper hand at different times and was absorbing enough – one eleven year old at least went through the whole gamut of emotions during the day – but today’s players and spectators would scratch their heads at the scoring rate. Kent scored just 193 in 59.4 overs, a run-rate of 3.21 per over, in good conditions and on a benign wicket. Somerset might have been expected to meet that total with ease, but after a solid start (the eleven-year-old’s mood was at a low ebb by then) they faltered dramatically. Amazingly, the first four overs that Kent bowled after the tea interval were all maidens – virtually impossible today. Behind the clock, Somerset lost wickets regularly and were all out for 161, in 54.5 overs. The man of the match was Kent’s opening batsman (and later England captain) Mike Denness, who made 50, the highest score of the day and the sell-out crowd went home happy with the day’s entertainment, if not necessarily the result (though I was!)

Colin Cowdrey being presented with the Gillette Cup. Note his comfortable waistline

The Onward March of Limited-Overs Cricket

By the 1970s, limited-over county cricket was firmly established. During the 1970s, Lancashire joined Kent as one-day specialists, winning the Gillette Cup four times and the John Player League twice. They pioneered specialised tactics and modern coaching methods, including the analysis of opponents’ strengths and weaknesses. In the days before videoed matches and computerised statistics, information on other county players was gained by cultivating umpires' opinions of those they had seen when officiating.

Since 1972, when the Benson and Hedges Cup joined the Gillette Cup and John Player League there have been three one-day competitions each year. Each have gone through many iterations, with constant tinkering with the competition formats, number of overs per side, and competing teams. The names of the competitions changed regularly as new sponsors came along. At different times, the Minor Counties (individually or as representative sides), Oxford and Cambridge Universities, Scotland, Ireland, Denmark and the Netherlands and a developmental side known as the Unicorns have all played in one or other tournament, along with the first-class counties. Other developments have happened to limited-overs cricket along the way. In 1981, restrictions on the placement of fielders was introduced, to counteract the tendency for fielders to be placed around the boundary as matches progressed. Day/night matches under floodlights were first played in Australia in the late 1970s and in county competitions from the late 1990s. Along with day/night matches came the introduction of the white cricket ball and coloured clothing for players. In 1997 a mathematical formula, the Duckworth/Lewis method (now Duckworth/Lewis/Sterne) was introduced to counter the advantage that teams batting second had enjoyed in rain-affected games through having to score fewer runs per wicket to reach a revised target.

The first limited-overs international match is generally held to be a one-off game between Australia and England that was played on 5^th January 1971, but this ignores a little-remembered triangular tournament heldat Lords in September 1966 between England, the West Indies and a Rest of the World side. It was billed as the Cricket World Cup and was won by England. However it was poorly publicised and attendances were small (and it was rather overshadowed by another World Cup that took place in England that year). In a few years it had been virtually forgotten but it presaged the first World Cup proper that took place in 1975 and was won by the West Indies.

In 2003 the Benson and Hedges Cup was discontinued and was replaced by a new tournament – the Twenty20 Cup – and cricket changed for ever. Since then there have been 10 overs per side competitions and next year (2020) English cricket will give up its 200-year-old domestic tradition based on counties to embrace a 100 ball per side city-based tournament.

Conclusion

The 1967 Gillette Cup final proceeded much like any three-day county match played at the time. The same players, dressed in the same cricketing whites used much the same tactics and the scoring rate was similar. However, the enthusiasm of the sell-out crowd clearly showed that something had changed and that limited-overs cricket had caught the imagination. It seems clear that limited-overs cricket saved the county clubs from financial ruin.

Today, limited-overs cricket is vastly different and not just in the players’ appearance. Scoring rates are far higher, fuelled by fielding restrictions, greater athleticism among players, heavier bats and new tactics and shots. At the same time, new bowling strategies have come along and slow bowlers, including leg spinners, play an important part in the game. Fielding has improved astronomically. Nevertheless, the counties still face financial pressures, that cricket’s authorities hope will be relieved by the new city-based tournament.

There is still an argument about the soul of cricket and the future of the long-form game. Many followers of the game still see first-class and test cricket as “proper” cricket and limited-overs matches as more-or-less entertaining sideshows. In 1963, the editor of Wisden, in his annual notes, barely mentioned the new “Knock-out competition” and forty years later in 2003 another editor was similarly perfunctory about the introduction of twenty overs per side cricket, referring dismissively to “the new knockabout Twenty20 Cup”. 2019's editor was scathing about the new city based competition, commenting that it “hung over the English game like the sword of Damocles, suspended only by the conviction of a suited few”. Perhaps he will be proved wrong and the new tournament will catch the imagination like the Gillette Cup did nearly sixty years before. But I wonder if an eleven year old who buys a souvenir T-shirt for (say) the Manchester Meerkats will treasure it as much as I have treasured my Kent Gillette Cup winner’s commemorative tie.