Roger Knight: 1971, Lancashire v. Gloucestershire Gillette Cup semi-final

In 1971, we played in the Gillette Cup semi-final at Old Trafford, one of the most famous games of all time, which ended in near darkness just as the BBC News was starting at 8.50pm.  For us, as the beaten team, it was a heart-breaking moment of abject dejection. 

For Lancashire it was a moment of absolute elation as David Hughes took the game by the scruff of the neck.  For the cricket supporters at the ground, it was an astonishing end to the game.  It is a well-documented match, but the final five overs, after delays for rain, started as the evening gloom descended.  There had been an announcement at 7.30pm that the train for Bristol was leaving, but no Gloucestershire supporter moved.  

Another announcement at 8.30pm received the same response.  Of these last five overs, Mike Procter had two to bowl, Jack Davey, our more than useful left-arm seamer, also had two and John Mortimer, our England off-spinner and a canny bowler, who had already taken three wickets, had one. 

The decision to get Morty’s over out of the way and then leave the two quicker bowlers to finish the game seemed a reasonable option.  In hindsight, perhaps we should have used the quicker bowlers first and then left the off-spinner to bowl the last, if necessary, in the almost complete darkness that would have fallen by then.  Hindsight is a wonderful thing!  David Hughes, who had only just come to the crease, smashed a six and the wily off-spinner, as was his usual response to being hit, bowled the ball a little higher, a little more slowly and a fraction shorter. 

This ball went a little further into the crowd at long on.  There is, on film, one delivery of that over where the ball was hit through extra-cover and I ran round the boundary from long off to stop the four, only to be thwarted by some young boys who gleefully rushed to pick it up just inside the boundary rope, which had become closer to the action as the crowd became more and more excited. 

Rory Bremner, one of our best impressionists and comedians, uses the film, which shows me shouldering one boy out of the way and kneeing another to try to get at the ball and prevent a boundary.  It goes for four and Rory’s comment is: “Here we see the future Secretary of MCC fielding on the boundary”.  Suffice to say the twenty-four runs off that over made the twenty-five to win off five overs a foregone conclusion and Lancashire won and went on to win the final at Lord’s. 

We had dismissed Clive Lloyd and the other main Lancashire batsmen, but David Hughes exhibited a fantastic display of big hitting and deservedly won the man-of-the-match award.

Add a comment