History of Bucks CCC

command a regular place. Seen as a bits and pieces player, batting in the middle order and bowling a few overs of seam, he had not managed to translate his aggressive club runs into success in the minor counties game. The summer of 1976 was to prove a watershed, an average of 34 giving an indication of his true potential. But the star of the show this year was a 21-year-old left-hand batsman born in St Vincent, whose talent was first revealed in adult cricket for the village of Frieth and who had moved on to score heavily for High Wycombe, Wilf Slack. Still one of only two players to have graduated from the Bucks team to play Test cricket for England, Slack opened the batting in every match, scoring 748 runs. A product of the Young Amateurs, after just one season in the county side, he was engaged by Middlesex, going on to win the first of his three England caps when called up to reinforce David Gower’s team on their tour of the Caribbean in the winter of 1985-86. It was a huge shock to his many friends when Wilf Slack collapsed and died while playing cricket in Gambia on 15 January 1989. He was only 34. Poll’s first season as captain was marked by a sequence of close finishes that characterised the best of minor counties cricket. Among the twelve matches eight were in the balance until the end: - a four-wicket victory over Berkshire at Reading, reached thanks to an unbroken seventh wicket stand of 62 (Poll 51 not out) that enabled Bucks to reach a target of 194; - a draw at Bedford with Bucks’ last pair together, having lost only one wicket in the last 20 overs; - victory at Hertford by one wicket after Gooch and Gillott had added 27, the future Indian Test spinner Dilip Doshi firing two boundary balls down the leg side to end the match; - the last pair hanging on to earn Bucks a draw against Norfolk at Lakenham; - losing by 28 runs at Ipswich when Suffolk took the last wicket with the final ball of the match; - losing by six wickets to Oxfordshire at Marlowwith seven balls remaining; - surviving against Suffolk at Chesham with just one wicket intact; - taking the last wicket with the first ball of the final over to register a second victory against Berkshire. Eleventh in 1976 and sixth a year later, Bucks still failed to qualify for the Gillette Cup, missing out by a single point in 1977. ‘It would be nice to see an off-spinner in the Bucks side again,’ the captain had written in his report on the 1976 season, commenting that leg spinners had proved to be ‘an expensive luxury’. No more was to be seen of Sant and little of Champniss, but the captain’s prayers were answered by the arrival of Andy Lyon. A member of the High Wycombe club, in a county career that stretched from 1977 to 1987 he played 109 championship matches, claiming 367 wickets and ending seven of his eleven seasons as principal wicket-taker. Having started as a seam bowler, Lyon came to High Wycombe as an off spinner of brisk pace. Making full use of his height, he could be close to unplayable in helpful conditions, yet on other occasions he was said to be too keen to experiment. “He’d have his men in round the bat and then throw in a slow full toss on the leg side, which had everyone ducking and diving,” said one who played with him. There were also debuts for former Young Amateurs, Neil Hames, a fast-scoring left-hander and future county captain, and Paul Ashton of Amersham, who seldom did justice to his talent in Bucks colours. From within the North Circular came Terry Cordaroy, once briefly of Middlesex, whose painstakingly correct batting helped to The North Circular team: Brian Poll and David Smith 83 Andy Lyon