All Ten: The Ultimate Bowling Feat

188 Bob Berry After playing only 26 matches in 1951 and 1952 and taking just 62 wickets, Berry had greater success in Coronation Year. He took advantage of the opportunities afforded by Hilton’s temporary loss of form to take 98 wickets, the closest he ever got to 100 in a season. Writing in The Cricketer Trevor Bailey thought that he had recovered his deceptive flight and was spinning the ball more. His great day was the culmination of a three-match purple patch in which he would take 35 wickets. The game would have an exciting climax, and Berry would be in the thick of the action. The tussle for the 1953 Championship was tense. Surrey won it, for the second successive year, but success was not assured until their penultimate match. At the end of July the table was topped by Sussex, who would not win their first title for another fifty years, with Surrey fourth and Lancashire, who would eventually finish equal third, their efforts seriously handicapped by rain, in sixth place. They probably took some consolation from the plight of their White Rose rivals across the Pennines who finished 12th, their then-lowest ever placing (although to be fair their players did contribute significantly to England’s long awaited recovery of the Ashes that summer). Worcestershire meanwhile, led by Ronnie Bird and still awaiting their first Championship, would finish a lowly 15th. Stanley Park is Blackpool’s main public park covering an area of some 260 acres. The cricket ground is home to Blackpool CC. An attractive seaside ground with an impressive pavilion, it hosted the last of its 99 first-class matches in 2011 but is still used occasionally for List A matches. It is probably best remembered for Warwickshire’s Jim Stewart battering a record 17 sixes in a match there in 1959, a total only exceeded three times since. Until the last day the cricket in the Worcestershire match in 1953 had been unexceptional. Lancashire, with a side including eight players who had appeared for England, led off with 265, forty-two-year-old Reg Perks, Worcestershire’s leading all-time wicket-taker, finishing with seven for 115 from 33 overs of accurate fast-medium swing bowling. Worcestershire replied with 108 without loss by the close; Don Kenyon, who had played in the first two Tests against Australia, and was to become his county’s highest ever run-scorer, was 60 not out, and left-hander Peter Richardson, who would begin a successful Test career against the Australians three years later, was on 32. Earlier in the season they had put on 290 against Gloucestershire at Dudley. Kenyon went without addition next morning and, apart from Richardson (62), nobody else stayed long as Berry (four for 23), Brian Statham and Roy Tattersall, sharing the wickets, dismissed Worcestershire for 191. Lancashire batted consistently in their second innings, reaching 262 for eight at the close. Chief contributors were Alan Wharton (58 not out), his second fifty of the match, and Australian Ken Grieves (66) whose skills as a fielder (he held more catches (555) for Lancashire than anybody else) were put to good use as a goalkeeper, first for Bury, and then Bolton Wanderers and Stockport County.