History of Bucks CCC

Many years earlier Slack, as captain of UCS, had given the 14 year-old Parry his chance in the school team, and they had subsequently played together in club and Conference cricket. Parry was an off spinner, good enough to have played for Middlesex Second Eleven, who nevertheless soon earned a reputation as ‘the phantom spinner.’ “He did turn it, but not very often,” says one member of the team remembering him as “one of those players who always look as though they are going to bowl off spin, but then the ball goes straight on.” John Slack points out that Parry also bowled “a rather good gentle away swinger, which effectively accounted for people believing he bowled both leg breaks and off breaks. But he never bowled a leg break in his life!” In his teenage years Parry had gone to Lord’s for coaching sessions with Jack Hearne, who impressed upon him the importance of accuracy. He was encouraged to pitch every ball on a handkerchief and “towards the end of the session Jack just left the middle stump there. He put half a crown on top of it and I had six balls and if I could hit the handkerchief and the stump, the half crown was mine.” An employee of the Bank of England, Parry was fortunate to be able to play whenever he was required. “I could have as much time off as I liked,” he admits. “I was playing 70 or 80 days of cricket every summer. And I went on a Conference tour of Australia for eight weeks on full pay!” For the next seven seasons Parry played with great regularity for Bucks, finishing his career with 233 wickets at 18.58. The seam attack benefited from the emergence of Beaconsfield’s Ray Bond, whose fast bowling had been brought to the county’s attention by TomOrford after a string of successes for the Young Amateurs. Bond had played a couple of matches as a 20 year old in 1965 and he would soon be regarded as one of the county’s finest post-war bowlers. He stamped his presence in the second match of the 1968 season with figures of 12 for 85 against Oxfordshire at Buckingham. After a poor first year with the bat, the captain enjoyed a productive summer, David Janes was also in good form, and in the opening match of the season 19-year-old John Turner made the first of his 151 appearances that would bring a record aggregate of 7,524 runs for the county. There was the most unnerving of starts for young Turner, who opened the batting with his captain on the Newbury Grammar School ground against Berkshire, for as they went to the wicket they knew that there was almost no-one to follow. Ian Feasey, a High Wycombe player making his second appearance for the county, remembers the problems they all encountered. He had gone round to David Janes’ parental home, having been promised a lift to the ground. He watched Janes eat a leisurely breakfast before they set off in his MG. Soon they discovered that all the roads around Newbury were clogged – the races were on! “When we got there Tony Waite was padded up to go in three, Clive Leach had just got there and was tearing about getting changed and the orders were: ‘Bat in order of arrival!’” Making 44 in an opening stand of 78, Turner helped stave off the crisis. He would never have cause to look back, scoring 512 runs in his first season. For Parry, too, it was a successful debut; he claimed five victims in Berkshire’s second innings as the home 73 The Slack years: another Championship Ray Bond and John Turner