All Ten: The Ultimate Bowling Feat

189 Bob Berry Lancashire declared overnight, setting Worcestershire 337 to win. It was a tough target, but Worcestershire made a gallant effort to achieve a surprise victory. That they got so close was partly due to a number of dropped catches – Berry himself the guilty party on two occasions. Kenyon and Richardson again began well, taking the score to 84, but after Berry had prised them out the Worcestershire middle order failed again and at 153 for five a win for the visitors looked unlikely. However, Bob Broadbent and Louis Devereux counter-attacked in a partnership of 105 to rekindle hopes of victory. Broadbent was particularly severe on Roy Tattersall, lifting him over the boundary four times, as well as hitting twelve other boundaries. Berry however kept pegging away to take advantage of Worcestershire batsmen hitting out in a bid to win their fifth match of the season. As he began his 37th over the situation was tense: two wickets left and only 19 runs needed. However he only needed two balls to move Lancashire up to fifth in the table, just four points behind Surrey. Despite the transgressions in the field, eight of Berry’s victims had fallen to catches, and it was fitting that the final wicket should be a catch, his fourth of the innings, by Jack Ikin, a brilliant fielder who would take 329 catches for Lancashire, mainly at short leg. The wicketless bowlers at the other end included two who had played for England against Australia earlier in the summer: fast bowler Brian Statham, one of England’s greatest, and off-spinner Roy Tattersall whose 164 wickets during the season were exceeded only by the 172 taken by Nottinghamshire’s Australian wrist- spinner Bruce Dooland. A month later Tattersall, with nine for 40 against Nottinghamshire, might have taken his own all-ten if the ninth wicket, Arthur Jepson, hadn’t fallen to Berry. Two participants at Blackpool had been involved 17 years previously when Glamorgan’s Jack Mercer had taken all-ten against Worcestershire: Reg Perks, a victim of both all-tens (and also a Tom Goddard victim in 1937) and umpire Ernest Cooke, who had also stood for Graveney’s all-ten in 1949. Despite his achievements in 1953, followed by a successful winter tour to India with a Commonwealth XI led by Australia’s pre-war wicketkeeper Ben Barnett, Berry played little in 1954 and was given permission by Lancashire to look elsewhere. Worcestershire, in need of another spinner to support Roly Jenkins, and remembering Blackpool, signed him on. Berry served his new county well for four seasons before the emergence of Doug Slade, a promising slow left-armer not yet aged 18, again restricted his opportunities and he joined Derbyshire, where he would stay another four seasons. Without consistently hitting the heights, Berry had had a reasonably successful career, finishing with 703 wickets at just under 25 apiece. He was the first man to be capped by three counties, and appropriately had five-wicket hauls for both his adopted counties against Lancashire (having previously taken five wickets in an innings for Lancashire against them). He later became a publican and restaurateur and remained involved in the game as president of Farnsfield CC (near Mansfield in Nottinghamshire)