The Summer Field

183 Chapter Twenty-Two Modern changes ‘If only something could be done to curtail the length of matches, and rid us of that awful nuisance the poking time-wasting batsman, there would be little improvement possible.’ J Arthur Gibbs, A Cotswold Village (third edition, 1909) ‘The Yorkshire Post ?’ Sir Pelham Warner replied, when Joe Illingworth, the head of the Post’s London bureau, rang. It was Monday, October 2, 1961, the former MCC president’s 88 th birthday, and Illingworth had a daily diary column to fill. ‘I take off my hat to you sir, it is so kind of you to remember me,’ said Warner, ever the diplomat. He obliged with a few bland words about Yorkshire players he had toured with (‘delightful, all of them’). Even in extreme old age he fretted about the game. ‘It is ludicrous to play every day, but what can one do? What is the answer?’ Illingworth suggested one-day games; Warner disagreed. ‘One day matches would produce queer declarations.’ Warner was thinking of the single-innings matches, as played at Lord’s in wartime; that you could set each team a number of overs was evidently beyond his imagination. * In the 130 th over of Wednesday, May 22, 1963 at Bournemouth, Derbyshire and Hampshire’s first Gillette Cup match had reached its climax. Donald Carr was fielding at mid off. The 36-year-old former captain of Derbyshire, a new assistant secretary of MCC, had come out of retirement. ‘I hadn’t done anything in the game at all, really, I had made 15 runs or something, not very well … and I hadn’t had any fielding to do; and I was absolutely exhausted. The excitement, and trauma, of having to play in these games!’ Everyone was feeling their way in this new sort of game, although Derbyshire’s new captain, Charles Lee, had played league cricket in Yorkshire, so Carr recalled in old age: ‘We got 250 in our innings, we thought it was probably quite a good score, we didn’t know if it was or wasn’t.’ The Hampshire batsman Henry Barnard, on 98, needed six from the last four balls to tie. ‘Our bowler was our slow off spinner, Edwin Smith. Just the sort of fellow you might manage to slog for six, but he didn’t, he [Smith] kept his head and bowled it and I can’t remember what happened off the ball but certainly it didn’t go for six.’ Barnard was bowled. ‘At the end of the game I told them, I don’t think I can manage it again. I couldn’t manage another game so close.’ Thus Carr ended his career in limited overs cricket. ‘And the main thing was that I hadn’t done anything in the field at all worthwhile, and I was absolutely knackered. The fearsome, frightening business of playing in a knockout game. Not