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.