Chapter Thirty Gloucestershire v Somerset On Saturday 4 August 1951, Gloucestershire followers made the journey to the Ashley Down ground at Bristol with more than the usual degree of anticipation for the traditional Somerset match. It had been announced that Wally Hammond would play for the county after being absent for five years. Hammond had made a successful return to first-class cricket after the war but he had led an ageing England side to defeat in Australia in 1946-47. He was 43, putting on weight and troubled by ill health. It was time to go and he left with a superb record but an unhappy legacy of one tour too many. Then in 1951, at the age of 48, he was persuaded to reappear in an attempt to boost the county’s membership recruitment drive. Gloucestershire’s top five looks formidable. George Emmett, Arthur Milton, Tom Graveney, Hammond and Jack Crapp all played for England but Graveney and Milton’s best years lay ahead and, as was soon to be demonstrated, Hammond’s were emphatically in the past. Emmett (110) and Milton (120) began with 193 and although Graveney failed, Hammond arrived at the crease with his side in a strong position. Much had changed since 1946. On expert advice sand was added to the high clay content of the Bristol pitch to balance the texture. It created a killing ground for the off breaks of Tom Goddard and the slow left arm of Sam Cook in 1947 but it had calmed down by now and there was plenty of time for the great man to play himself in and then, perhaps, unleash some of those glorious strokes of fond memory. Bomber Wells, then a 21-year-old off spinner of promise doing his National Service in the RAOC, played against Somerset. He recalled the packed ground and the queue which stretched to the Grace Gates, but his main memory is of meeting Hammond. “When I was introduced to him, I almost bowed, for this was the man who when batting in Gloucestershire – and elsewhere no doubt – shops and offices closed so that the staff could see him.” Hammond received a tremendous ovation when he went out to bat. When he was dismissed Wells remembered that “many Somerset and Gloucestershire supporters, knowing full well they would never see him again, unashamedly wept. The vast crowd stood as one as the ageing giant, making his last appearance for the county which he had graced so magnificently for so many years, slowly made his way up the steps of the pavilion. I can tell you now there was a lump in my throat.” Hammond had taken guard against an old foe, the tubby little slow left-arm bowler Horace Hazell, whose own career would end a year later. Hammond had once been heard to say during a Gloucestershire-Somerset game: “I wish I had that little chap in our side – he’s as good as anyone in the country when it comes to slow left arm.” On this day Hazell would bowl unchanged for four hours ten minutes; 51.3 overs, eight wickets for 101. 157