Curiously I cannot remember the first ball I received in first class cricket. Yes, I remember the day, the weather, the opposition and the beautiful batting strip that Fenners was on that dry cold mid-April day in 1976. I can remember, however, the second delivery – well, almost. The vastly experienced Brian Close, captaining his final county, Somerset, was the bowler – on this occasion purveying his off-spinners.
I say “almost” because as I was looking up to prepare to receive the next ball the bowler was already at the crease in his delivery stride. In that instant, of course, I should have pulled away and reset my guard. No. I froze and with leaden feet stuck in the crease. I was trapped leg before wicket for a duck. An early lesson for me – always keep your eye on the bowler as soon as he has the ball in his hand! I was told by team-mates that Close had not reached his bowling mark before turning to deliver the ball off only two strides – a youngster deceived by the canny older campaigner.
A not dissimilar fate awaited me in the first innings in my only Test match at the Oval in 1981, only this time I can remember neither my first nor second deliveries. Again venue, weather and opposition (!) come easily to mind and also the long hopeful walk out to the famed Oval wicket…
It had been a long day. After the dismissal of Wayne Larkins with the score on 61–1, at number five in the order I padded up and prepared myself for the ordeal to come. Waiting to bat is a tortuous and enervating experience and after over four hours sitting with my pads on I was more than relieved at about ten to six with the score on about 240–3 when the England captain, Mike Brearley, suggested I take a break and he would go in next if a wicket happened to fall. My relief was immense but short-lived as Mike Gatting was bowled by Lillee for an excellent 53, Mike Brearley fell to Terry Alderman for nought, and I was on my way out to the crease in the dying minutes of the day.
But I cannot remember taking guard. Neither the first nor second deliveries from Terry Alderman pierce the memory but his third ball to me is there still. It pitched on a good length just outside off stump and I pushed out stiffly half forward, prodding tentatively down that line. A firm outside edge allowed me just enough time to follow instinctively the path of the ball as it found its way inexorably into the waiting hands of Terry Kent at second slip.
Now what I do remember – rather sadly – is the painful, even longer walk back to the pavilion, trying to maintain an air of dignity in my disappointment. Yet all the while I could envisage in my mind’s eye the cheeky cartoon yellow duck spilling fulsome tears, which television viewers could see imposed at the bottom of their screens as the camera followed the departing batsman from the field of play. This unkind visual innovation for the batsman who had failed to score was courtesy of Kerry Packer’s Channel 9.
Things come in threes, they say. Well, in my case, not quite, but very nearly! The Oval 1981 – second innings. I really cannot remember which delivery this was – first, second or third – but it is very vivid in my memory.
I prepare to take guard. “Head still, left elbow up, watch the ball,” I keep trying to tell myself. But the wise axioms of my father are not working today. I cannot take my eyes off the gold medallion that keeps swinging from side to side just underneath the bowler’s chin as he is approaching on his well-known rhythmic run-up. The mesmeric effect seems to last much longer than the five or so seconds the run-up takes and when the ball is let go I sort of pick up the line - short of a length, off stump. I sort of get into position on the back foot, I sort of shape to play the ball down.
In an instant, the ball has risen to chest height and it nicks the inside edge of my angled bat. I glance back in alarm to see the ball miss the leg stump by a whisker and runs down to fine leg for four past the diving Rodney Marsh.
I run up the wicket with an embarrassed smile – I am off the dreaded “pair”. “You’ll be on your effing way soon,” the bowler, Denis Lillee, predicts.
And he was not wrong. A tortuous thirteen and I was never to return to that stage again.
A much later debut brings a warmer glow as I remember the beginning of Durham’s first class cricket campaign way back in 1992. Such was the interest in 1992 of the entrance into cricket of the eighteenth first class county that its very humble start against Oxford University was headline news. I wrote a piece then for the Times which recalls my first Durham delivery.
Memory added on December 14, 2020
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