won by eight wickets. But a personal memory of 1950 is not so much Ramadhin and Valentine and the calypsos but ‘Good old Tom’. In 31 matches against Derbyshire Tom Dollery scored 2,444 runs, average 50.92 and made nine hundreds, six at Edgbaston and three at Derby with 177 the highest. His crowning glory was skippering the side to the championship in 1951, when there were two notable games against Derbyshire. It was a fine team: runs from the openers Gardner and the left-handed Spooner, who also kept wicket, Ord, Dollery, Wolton, Townsend and Ray Hitchcock and possessing a fine attack in Pritchard, Charlie Grove, Hollies and the young slow left-arm bowler Ray Weeks. The fielding was superb, with Townsend breaking records in the slips and Dollery and Gardner also excelling as did Wolton in the deep. Whitsun was early in 1951 and the Edgbaston game developed into a tremendous battle for first innings points. The pitch was slow and on Saturday John Kelly took three and a half hours over his first 50 during a laborious display by Derbyshire, who were 282 for eight at the close, with Kelly on 76. He was a stylish batsman but in this match he sorely tried the patience of the Birmingham faithful and he was still there on 97 after nearly five hours when the innings closed at 313 in 158.3 overs; Hollies’s analysis 64-30-69-3. Kelly’s innings was recalled by Robert Brooke, cricket author and a founder of the ACS, in the 1991 summer edition of The Cricket Statistician . “Strangely one’s memory suggests it was not a boring innings; rather was it similar to one of the Tom Dollery Restaurant’s rock cakes – hard, solid, rock like, heavy going but somehow fascinating.” At the end of Saturday’s play, Brooke, then in a short spell as a schoolboy autograph hunter, asked Kelly to sign his book. The Derbyshire batsman provided the sole example of a player who thanked him for requesting his autograph. “Even in those days many players seemed in too much of hurry and one’s interest finally evaporated when one’s own county captain and cricket hero invited one to vacate his immediate vicinity (‘clear off!’).” Although Derbyshire were without Jackson and Gladwin, Warwickshire lost three wickets for 43. Dollery (70) came to the rescue again and there were useful contributions from Wolton and Townsend but Derbyshire gained a lead of 37. Their feeling of well being was eroded by the dismissal of three batsmen for 12 before Kelly and Alan Revill brought about a partial recovery. On the final day, Warwickshire needed 174 in two hours and Dollery accepted the challenge but when he was out for 41 Derbyshire took command. Nine wickets were down for 157 before Hollies played out the last over from Morgan to save the game. Warwickshire took over the leadership on 1 June and stayed there. Their visit to Derby in August was marred by rain when they were well placed; the home batsmen’s struggles against Hollies (seven for 67) etched in the memory before the weather closed in. Charlie Elliott made 50 in that game. “Eric Hollies was always a handful,” he said. “There were quite a few leg spinners around in those days and some of us in the Derbyshire team had played alongside Tommy Mitchell but we were often at sea against Hollies. He was different from people like Doug Wright, who bowled leg breaks and googlies at quite a pace and Roly Jenkins who turned the ball a lot. Eric’s leg breaks were not extravagantly spun but his length was always immaculate and he did just enough to beat the bat. And, of course, he had the googly and it was this which bowled Bradman for a duck at The Oval in 1948. “They had a good team in those days but with Les Jackson and Cliff Gladwin in our team we generally gave as good as we got although we had problems getting Derbyshire, Warwickshire and Others 149