I arrived at Fenners on the morning of 22nd April 1981 in a positive frame of mind for Cambridge University’s opening game against Essex. My captain, Ian Peck, had just given an interview with David Hallett of the Cambridge Evening News in which he had said the Cambridge side would have a solid enough batting line up once he had decided who would open the batting with me. All was therefore well with the world, although our skipper left himself out having just returned from a Barbarians rugby tour, and his stand-in Derek Pringle for some reason decided that having won the toss against his own county, Cambridge would bat first.
I walked in with my fellow Oundelian, Tony Murley, and would have asked the senior umpire, Don Oslear, for a middle and leg guard and looked up to see John Lever about to run in with several sweaters and barely any fielders in front of the wicket.
John Lever’s opening offering was a slow but sadly a straight full toss which I simply missed to be then given out to the very first ball of the new first class season. As it was the only game being played in England there was a camera crew from Thames Television and a full press box including distinguished cricket writers Henry Blofeld (The Guardian), David Miller (Daily Express), Richard Streeton (Times) and Doug Ibbotson (Telegraph) and with Wisden being carefully scrutinised, nobody could find another occurrence of a dismissal to the first ball of a new first class season – a statistic being revealed hourly on BBC Newsbeat and later on all the main evening news channels.
Matters got worse when it was confirmed that in fact the dismissal had occurred before the first class season had even started as the Fenners clock was a few minutes fast and so I had already returned to the pavilion before the clock on the Catholic church struck 11.30am.
Anyway, soon all was forgotten as at 12.10pm on Day 3, the umpires led the players off the field and play was stopped for the first time in first class cricket on the grounds that it was deemed to be too cold. Derek Pringle’s contact lenses were floating around his eyes and the Essex captain Keith Fletcher and his team, including Stuart Turner, Neil Foster, Ken McEwan, Ray East and Brian Hardie, could no longer feel their hands. For the record the university recorded a draw and I had a more productive second innings!
Memory added on February 11, 2021
Comments (Add your voice)
No comments have yet been added to this memory.
