Cricket Witness No 3 - The Daffodil Blooms

107 But the weather intervened again as rain prevented play until 5p.m. on the second day before overnight thunderstorms left the field flooded on Friday morning. Despite some abortive attempts again with the blankets and mangle, conditions were deemed unfit by the umpires, and the sodden scene was abandoned to the elements and the sheep as Glamorgan’s players headed for Weston-super-Mare desperately hoping that they would not lose any more ground in the title race. By the time their Campbell’s Steamer had set sail from Pier Head in Cardiff to the Somerset resort, there was confirmation from Derby that Surrey – Glamorgan’s nearest challengers – had beaten both Derbyshire and the weather at the Racecourse ground with Alec Bedser, a nifty exponent on a wet wicket, claiming eleven wickets. It had rained for most of their crossing so after their vessel had docked and the team had booked into their nearby hotel, there was only one thing on everyone’s mind. Would the rain relent in Weston-super-Mare to allow a match to unfold at Clarence Park? 1. A.K. Hignell, The Skipper: Biography of Wilf Wooller (Limlow Books, 1995). 2. A.K. Hignell, The Centenary History of Glamorgan CCC , (Christopher Helm, 1988). 3. The Skipper: Biography of Wilf Wooller , op.cit. 4. D. Miller, Allan Watkins – Lives in Cricket (ACS, 2007). 5. The Skipper: Biography of Wilf Wooller, op.cit. 6. Western Mail, August 1 st 1948. 7. A.K. Hignell, Maurice Turnbull, A Welsh Sporting Hero (Tempus Publishing, 2001). 8. The Centenary History of Glamorgan CCC op. cit. 9. South Wales Evening Post, 4 August 1948. 10. South Wales Evening Post, 6 August 1948. 11. Ibid. The summer of 1948