Chapter Thirty-One Essex v Worcestershire Sometimes a random memory helps illuminate a bigger picture. Holiday visits from Essex to the beautiful New Road ground at Worcester enrich such recollections but the one in mind concerns Worcestershire’s match against Derbyshire at Ilkeston in June 1950. It left no statistical legacy. No records were broken and its impact on the Championship was minimal. Nobody hit a century but the scores – Derbyshire 325 and 206 for eight declared, beat Worcestershire 195 and 271 by 65 runs – reflect pleasant days spent watching nearly a thousand runs scored in what might be described as a perfect example of a three-day county match at its best. Worcestershire, having been behind throughout, made a brave bid for victory but were undone, as so many teams were in those days, by Les Jackson. The point of all this concerns Worcestershire’s attack, consisting of Reg Perks (fast-medium), Peter Jackson (medium-pace off breaks), Dick Howorth (slow left-arm) and Roly Jenkins (leg breaks and googlies). Worcestershire delivered 192 overs in the match and all but five from the captain Ronnie Bird were sent down by these four. There was nothing unusual about this. Twelve years earlier, in August 1938, they had bowled Hampshire out at Worcester. The 1950 season, when Howorth was aged 41, Jackson 39, Perks 38 and Jenkins 31, was to be their final year together. Jackson retired; the other three simply adjusted by taking 100 Championship wickets apiece in 1951. Perks, Howorth and Jenkins played for England, Howorth, on three occasions and Jenkins (twice) achieved the double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in a season. Perks became captain in 1955 and combined career figures for the quartet of more than 6,000 first-class wickets complete the story. The mind’s eye can see now Jackson’s fair hair, Perks’s high action, Howorth’s easy delivery and high tossed leg breaks from Jenkins finding turn but the pitch not allowing the ball to spin sharply enough to defeat experienced county batsmen. Additional interest was provided by Worcestershire’s challenge for the title a year earlier with a team which included some six or seven players who commanded a regular place before the war. Perhaps an average age of 35 meant it could not quite last the pace but Eddie Cooper, Laddie Outschoorn (who was born in Ceylon and taken prisoner at Singapore by the Japanese) and Don Kenyon made their 1,000 runs and Jenkins, Perks and Howorth each took 100 wickets. Two defeats by Middlesex, the joint champions with Yorkshire, proved costly but third place was a glorious swansong for a popular side. Essex, their holiday opponents, had a less memorable 1949, finishing joint ninth. Jenkins was too much for them at New Road, spinning his side to an innings’ victory, although Eric Price’s slow left arm bowling brought him eight for 125 in the Worcestershire innings but the boot was almost on the other foot when the August Bank Holiday match took place at Southend’s Southchurch Park. Doug Insole and Stan Cray made big hundreds, typically the opener Dickie Dodds hit 161