All Ten: The Ultimate Bowling Feat

165 Tom Goddard match. He had been stumped in both innings, the only two of Goddard’s 16 wickets in the match to fall that way. For a while the batsmen scored freely. Buller’s wicket had cost Goddard 20 runs in two overs and with the 50 going up in only 35 minutes Worcestershire seemed set for a good score. However once the second wicket went at 59 a collapse quickly set in as Goddard, well supported by his fielders, took out the middle order. At 98 for eight the end seemed close. However Harold Gibbons who had so far batted steadily for ten runs in 50 minutes found help, perhaps surprisingly, from Reg Perks who made 33 before he swung once too often and was caught on the boundary. Together the pair had put on 87 in just over an hour, hitting a six apiece. Goddard’s figures had of course suffered a bit during this stand. However, he now had all nine wickets and he didn’t have to wait long for the tenth as just over a year after becoming Jack Mercer’s tenth victim Peter Jackson did the same for Goddard, leaving Gibbons, who had gone in second wicket down, undefeated and easily top-scorer. Goddard had paid a high price for his wickets, but he could afford to attack, and be attacked, whilst Sinfield kept things quiet at the other end. Goddard had previously taken nine wickets in an innings twice, with best figures of nine for 21 against Cambridge University in 1929 in a match also played at Cheltenham, but at the Victoria Ground, not the College Ground. Gloucestershire would need to make the highest score of the match to win, a tricky 317 on a wearing pitch. By the close they were 91 for two, with captain Basil Allen on ten and, ominously for the visitors, Hammond on 62. These two continued the next day, putting on a match-winning 269 at over a run-a-minute on a pitch giving the spinners considerable help. Hammond eventually went for a typically hard-hitting 178. Allen who had largely concentrated on defence went soon after for 78. There was a late flurry of wickets and when the seventh fell three more runs were still required. However these were scored without further loss, Goddard, a modest batsman, fittingly being at the wicket at the time. Gloucestershire’s win left them fifth in the Championship table. They finally finished fourth, some distance behind Champions Yorkshire. Remarkably the official list of County Champions still doesn’t include Gloucestershire. The Cheltenham pitch continued to help spin. In the second match of the Festival Goddard (12 wickets) and Sinfield dismissed all 20 Derbyshire batsmen. Goddard finished the season with 248 wickets, a total never since exceeded, and of course now never likely to be. He would eventually take at least 200 wickets in a season four times. And he wasn’t finished with records yet. Two years later at Bristol, against Kent, he took 17 wickets in a day, a feat only emulated by Blythe and Verity. Goddard was commissioned in the RAF during the War, but despite being in his mid-40s when cricket resumed continued to take wickets in vast numbers. When his career finally finished in 1952 he was just 21 wickets short of being the fifth man to take 3,000 first-class wickets. After cricket he set up a successful furniture shop in Gloucester in which he was active until about a year before his death in 1966.