Outdoor pre-season practice at Fenner’s had been largely impossible, so much rain fell in April 1975. And so my first first class match against Surrey was a bit of a hit-and-miss affair played on a damp, stodgy wicket so untypical of the usual Fenner’s "shirt-front".
After amassing a measly 105 against the likes of Arnold, Jackman, Pocock, Intikhab and, strangely, Younis, Cambridge took the field and Chris Aworth soon called on me to bowl for the first time in a first class match, a privilege sadly no longer accorded to the University in all its county matches. My memories of the 26 overs I bowled in that innings are somewhat sketchy to say the least after an interval of some 45 years, but I recall bowling at some pace because the pitch was so slow.
It was the sort of pitch you never see in first class cricket these days. Once a match had started the pitch was left open to the elements except for the ends, something which the batsmen of the time thought was grossly unfair because the bowlers had the benefit of stable footing while they had to bat on rain-affected pitches that were unpredictable at best and sometimes downright dangerous, in the days before helmets were even dreamed of.
All that said, that April pitch was, in essence, a slow-turner which left a callow young off-spinner with plenty of room for error and made fluent batting difficult. In fact, not a bad pitch upon which to make a finger-spinning debut! And so to the first unfortunate victim; Dudley Owen-Thomas had won four Cambridge Blues (1969–72). Known as "Cuddly", he was a free-flowing batsman "hitting the ball with a full sweep of the bat", but I doubt he evinced much appetite for the Fenner’s pitch on 23 April 1975! After amassing 6 runs he fell to yours truly. If memory serves he was very well caught at cover by Peter Hayes, diving to his left, from a ball which held up slightly in the pitch and induced a lofted shot into the off side. Nothing particularly remarkable, but one never forgets the name of one’s first first class victim!
Now although Dudley Owen-Thomas takes centre stage in this miniscule cricketing drama, there are a couple of sideshows to add. Henry Blofeld describing the day’s play in The Guardian wrote under the headline 'Cambridge have a find in Allbrook', "it was clear that in Allbrook…they have acquired a distinctly useful off-spinner...Slightly built, with long dark hair and just above medium height, he already flights the ball cleverly, probably the hardest facet of this particular art, off an easy seven pace run up. He was able to spin the ball…and he also bowled a very good line, as his figures suggest." But I suppose the headline I shall always remember best was in the Daily Mirror of all places: "Malcolm has Surrey in a spin!"
I bowled a total of 47 overs in this match and over the next four years, I bowled and bowled and bowled!
The second sideshow concerns an elite cricket club, the first two members of which earned selection in this match. Geoff Howarth, who went on to captain New Zealand and Arnold Long, who went on to captain Sussex, were both dismissed ‘caught Hignell, bowled Allbrook’. Others had succumbed to this particular combination in schoolboy cricket but these were the founder members of the caught Hignell, bowled Allbrook club in the first class game! I am sure that, with further research, the numbers of the club would swell, but I am not sure they will want to be reminded of this particular form of dismissal, though I note from the page of Wisden immediately following the details of the 1975 Cambridge University v. Surrey match that the third member was David Steel of Northamptonshire.
All I would say is that Alastair Hignell was a very brave, some would say incautious, man to field at short leg to my bowling for so many years!
Memory added on December 16, 2020
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