All Ten: The Ultimate Bowling Feat

164 Tom Goddard and with no restrictions on the placing of leg side fielders, giving bowlers conditions which those playing today can only dream about. Off-spinners weren’t very fashionable between the Wars and with fewer Tests and Hedley Verity established as England’s main spinner, Goddard only played for England eight times. He did at least stamp his name on cricket history when he took a hat-trick in the Johannesburg Test on Boxing Day 1938. He added another later on the tour, and eventually finished his career with six, a total only exceeded by the seven taken by Kent’s Doug Wright. The Worcestershire side at Cheltenham, eight of whom had been on the receiving end of Mercer’s all-ten the season before, probably knew what to expect, Goddard having taken 13 wickets against them earlier in the season at Dudley. In Gloucestershire’s previous match, against Lancashire at Old Trafford, he was wicketless for the only time in a very successful season. Someone would pay. Gloucestershire relied heavily on Goddard. With no bowler of pace, and his great partner Parker having retired, the only significant support came from fellow off-spinner Reg Sinfield. The pair took 337 Championship wickets between them in 1937; the next highest contribution came from Walter Hammond with 33. The visitors made a good start on Saturday, the opening day of the Cheltenham Festival. Batting first they made 310 in four hours, and then took four Gloucestershire wickets for 113 by the close of a lively first day. Curiously Goddard had not come on until the Worcestershire score had reached 167 for two, but when he did he immediately got among the wickets, finishing with six for 68 in 18 overs. Australian Roger Kimpton top scored, last out for 92. An Oxford cricket (and golf) Blue who liked to get on with things Kimpton only batted for an hour and a quarter. The previous season, batting with a runner, he had made a century against Lancashire in just 70 minutes. He liked batting against Gloucestershire - three of his eight first-class centuries came against them. Returning to Australia at the outbreak of war he won a DFC as a fighter pilot in the Pacific. The game moved on apace on Monday. It began with two Cornish-born batsmen at the wicket: Jack Crapp and nightwatchman Edward Scott. Both would play for England after the War: Crapp at cricket, Scott at rugby union. Scott, a 19-year-old leg-spinner who had just left Clifton College, was playing the first match of his short first-class career. Gloucestershire’s first innings was over fairly quickly leaving them 114 behind. Worcestershire then made a bright start the second time around, Charlie Bull and Syd Buller putting on 25 before Buller, who had hit three fours, was caught by Hammond fielding in the (for him) less customary position of short leg. No fielder (apart from Goddard himself) took more catches off Goddard’s bowling than Hammond (116). Two years later Yorkshire-born wicketkeeper Buller would be badly injured in the car crash that took Bull’s life. Finding fame as a fearless umpire after the War, he collapsed and died during a break for rain in a Championship match at Edgbaston in 1970. With 81 in the first innings Bull had had a good