My first Test match

In this strange time with no live sport being played and England’s Jimmy Anderson even wondering whether a single ball will be bowled in what should be this year’s cricket season, it’s natural for one’s thoughts to drift down memory lane, in my case to the first Test Match I attended. That was at The Oval in August 1956. Living in Scotland I had never watched any first-class matches, though, aged nine, I had been lucky enough to see Bradman’s 1948 Invincibles when they played a two-day match against Scotland in Aberdeen.

It was also my first, or first independent, visit to London. I stayed in a hotel, went to The Oval in the morning and the theatre at night.

England had already retained The Ashes, but Australia could still halve the series. The first Test, at Trent Bridge, had been drawn after many rain interruptions. Australia had won at Lord’s as they usually do or did, one of my heroes, Keith Miller, taking five English wickets in each innings. England had then won at Headingley and Old Trafford where Jim Laker took his unprecedented and never equalled nineteen wickets in the match (9 for 37 and 10 for 53). Catch a glimpse on grainy old black-and-white footage, and you’ll see neither vociferous appeals nor wild celebrations, just Jim turning to the umpire with a polite “howzat”, then hitching up his trousers to take yet another wicket. No drama, just a professional going about his work. Driving home that evening – I suppose he was due to play for Surrey the next day – he stopped off in a pub for a pint and a sandwich. The TV news was on in the bar. Nobody recognised him.

It was a season of farewells, the last English tour for two of Australia’s greatest-ever, Ray Lindwall, now 34, and Keith Miller, a couple of years older. On account of the Second World War, both had been in their mid-twenties when their Test careers began, though Miller had played a wonderful innings at Lord’s for the Dominions in a Victory Test in 1945. Neville Cardus thought Lindwall  the cleverest fast bowler he had seen, and, as for Miller, with his film star looks, he was an explosive and incalculable bowler and a batsman who was both correct and dashing. A quarter of a century later someone asked me to compare Miller and Botham. Miller, I said, was Botham with elegance. He had flown bombers over Germany. Asked about pressure at the crease, he said, “pressure is a Messerschmitt up your backside”.

For England it was a summer of comebacks. The maestro Len Hutton had retired, but his old opening partner, Cyril Washbrook, out of the Test side for five years, was brought back for the Third Test. He was 41 and a selector himself. His colleagues sent him out of the room while they debated his selection. It might have been an awkward conversation on his return if they had decided against picking him. As it was, he came to the wicket at Headingley, cap at its usual jaunty angle, with England 17 for 3. He shared a big partnership with his captain, Peter May, before he was out the next morning for 98. Then the selectors pulled the future Bishop of Liverpool, David Sheppard, from either the pulpit or theological college – I forget which – and he made a hundred at Old Trafford. And for The Oval they recalled Denis Compton, minus his right knee-cap after his latest operation.

In those days you didn’t need a ticket for most parts of the ground. You just queued at the turnstiles. I was there early and got a good position on the grass behind, as it were, first slip, at the Vauxhall end. So in the first over of my Test career, I had a perfect view of Colin Cowdrey feathering a late outswinger from Lindwall to be caught behind. That day was dominated by a stand between May and Compton. For years schoolboys had been divided between those who worshipped Denis and those who worshipped Len. I was a Hutton fan, but now that he had retired, I was caught up in the Romance of Compton’s return. He hobbled a bit as he ran and I don’t think he trusted his knee sufficiently to allow him to play his famous sweep, but he batted beautifully, with a series of exquisite late cuts. Most only went for a single because there was a third man posted on the boundary, captains not yet enslaved by the strange modern notion that runs to third man don’t count. Late in the day he was out for 94. Without a fielder at third man he would have made his hundred. Everyone stood and clapped him till he had disappeared up the pavilion steps. I guess there were lots of tears.

England collapsed the next morning – what’s new? – leaving Peter May stranded on 80 something. So Australia were batting before lunch. England had Frank Tyson, the fastest bowler in the world, back for the first time in the series. He was bowling to Colin McDonald, the only man to have defied Laker at Old Trafford. McDonald played him off his legs. We looked to the boundary. There was no sign of the ball; it had been caught, inches from the ground, one-handed by Tony Lock at backward short-leg. It remains in memory as the best catch I ever saw without seeing the ball.

More than forty years later I was in the club car of the night-sleeper from Edinburgh and talking with Angus Calder, poet and historian, fan of jazz, rugby and cricket. We discovered we had both been at The Oval that day and had the same vivid picture of Lock’s extraordinary catch imprinted on the memory. Only it was a different memory. One of us knew he had caught the ball in his right hand, the other in his left. I forget now which of us favoured which hand, and I’m certainly no longer clear which it was.

In the afternoon Laker and Lock got to work as they usually did at The Oval during the long years of Surrey’s supremacy. The ball turned and leaped from a teasing length. Lock was brisk – he had the temperament of a fast bowler; Laker studious. The Australians were soon in trouble. There were only two innings of note. The first was from the brilliant left-hander Neil Harvey. He made only 38 or 39 and was never in control, but his footwork as he came down the pitch to stun the spinning ball, or went right back on his stumps, was both delightful and educational. The other came from Miller. At Old Trafford he had looked all at sea against Laker, lunging uncertainly forward. Now he recovered some of the daring of his brilliant youth, making 60 something in an innings distinguished by handsome cover-drives and old-fashioned leg-hits. It was a good way to go out.

It began to rain at lunch-time on the Saturday, rained over the weekend and on Monday too. Tuesday saw a full day’s cricket, but the match petered out. May declared England’s second innings rather late, and though Australia collapsed again against Laker and Lock, they just held on to draw the match – one I still recall more clearly than hundreds I have watched, live or on TV, since.
And the theatres I hurried to at close of play? What did I see? Osborne’s “Look Back in Anger” , Sandy Wilson’s delightful musical “The Boy Friend”, a bravura performance by that fine Welsh actor Hugh Griffiths in Anouilh ’s “The Waltz of the Toreadors”, Flanders and Swann “At the Drop of a Hat”, a Strindberg play – but which? – and, of course, “The Mousetrap”.

Now there is not one of that England XI at The Oval still alive, and perhaps only Neil Harvey of the Australians, but “The Mousetrap” is still running or, rather, will still be running when the Coronavirus has passed, the theatres re-open and the tourists return. Live cricket will be back too, Jimmy Anderson bowling again, and sixty years on someone who is now a boy will be remembering how he was there when Anderson took his last wicket for England.