Mike Procter

Procter was bowling below his full pace. He had been unwell in the morning, and unable to field. Now, with the chance of a breakthrough, he made a great effort. His run grew longer, his pace extreme, and the light poorer. He thundered up to the wicket, reminding me of the deathless lines of a poet laureate on the Jameson raid: “They raced across the veldt as hard as they could pelt.”

He made a fearsome sight as he walked back towards his mark, his fair hair tangled and flopping, his mouth moving, his brow dripping, every muscular inch a fast bowler in the high tradition. He must have made an even more alarming sight to the batsmen.

Suddenly Amiss hit him twice for four, bold, unconventional shots to extra cover with a horizontal bat and to third man with a vertical one. Then Jakeman, who as an umpire has a touch of Mr Harcourt about him, no-balled Procter twice. At the end of his eight-ball over Procter made a weary signal which I took to mean that he could manage two overs more.

The modern cricketer

Jesty was unable to bowl. He was, I heard him explain, suffering from “a strain on the inner wall of the lower abdomen”. There is your modern professional cricketer. Tom Goddard would have said: “Oy dun me gut.”

Man of the Match

Knight was made man of the match – at least I think he was, because I saw him step forward to collect something, although a defect in the public address system caused Bill Edrich to howl and shriek like a nightingale that had got at the vodka. 

David Shepherd

“Good old Shep,” they cry in Gloucestershire when he comes out to bat, one of the West's unmistakable own, usually following a series of much more talented chaps from places like Sialkot and Streatham. “Well done, Shep,” they cry, as he chases unflaggingly round the boundary. When those powerful forearms make the ball hum over the bowler's head, how they chortle! When he gets out early through some optimistic bash on a turner, and comes in sorrowfully shaking his head, as if he could not imagine how he of all men could come to do such a thing, there is always a consolatory murmur. “Never mind! ’Ard luck. Good old Shep.” Who cares what his average is? Doesn't he cheer us up!

Worcester

They say of New York that it will be a fine city when they have finished building it. The same thought occurred to me about Worcester as, once more, I found myself locked in its traffic chaos. They are driving a new road through the centre. My taxi man assured me that the project was going well, “only two years behind schedule”. In the meantime – and I suspect it will be a long, long meantime – what was once one of the fairest cities of England is reduced to a jumble of bulldozers.

It is full of one-way routes. Motorists become so irritated by the delays that the sight of 50 clear yards ahead sends them into a frenzy of speed, pedestrians so scared that they dart and flutter like hens in a farmyard when the fox is in. Even the calm cathedral is in bandages. Yes, it will be a lovely cathedral when it is finished. It was also a lovely city before they started mucking about with it.

Cricket writing

The Spectator, in a pungent and partly laudable article concerning the place of sport in society, referred to cricket writing as “tripe masquerading as art”.

Sometimes I think I shall abandon cricket and take up political journalism instead – only that must be so much more difficult. The tripe that conceals art is one thing: but few can achieve the subtlety of the tripe that conceals tripe.

Derek Randall

He is still a fidgeter, though I understand he is making efforts to control it. I am not quite sure if he is wise in this. I am inclined to think that the more he fidgets, the better he bats. When play was resumed it lasted for only an over, enough for Randall to complete his 100, his first of the season. Before the vital ball, he tapped the pitch twice, scratched his box twice, waggled his knees three times, and tugged his helmet five times. I counted.

The Hampshire announcer

Mr Shepheard’s best moment came when he said: “Play has been resumed in the Test match – oh, and by the way, President Nixon has resigned.” The cheer, a mixture of irony, relief and scorn, brought a man running out of the bar, thinking another wicket had gone. When he discovered it was nothing so important, he went back in again. Thus do the mighty fall.

The value of the championship

This match was important to both sides, since both still have a chance of the championship: it was especially important for Somerset , who have never won it.

One championship is still worth more than all the one-day competitions put together. I speak in cricketing terms, though it perhaps might apply also to the sponsorship: nobody has suggested that Schweppes does anything to damage your health, though cigarettes and even your friendly neighbourhood bank manager easily might.

Last ball excitement

Gloucestershire would have won if their captain had hit the last ball of the match for six, and as the bowler was Bedi, it was possible. Brown failed, but there was such dashing hither and thither by players and spectators, the fibrillations perhaps exaggerated by the players, but real and throbbing enough to most of the spectators, especially the small boys, who will grow up believing that this is what cricket is about. I suppose by the time they have grown up, it will be.

Basingstoke

On the way back to the station I paused for a while in the old Church of St Michael , once the town’s pride, now overshadowed, pushed into a corner, by the huge Ministry-of-Love-style shopping precinct. It is cool and peaceful. Indeed, I have written this report here, quietly, in a back pew. I daresay St Michael’s will be here when the shopping precinct is gone, and I daresay that they will still be playing cricket up the road. Both of these are comforting thoughts.

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