Cricket Witness No 3 - The Daffodil Blooms

117 ten wickets away from their prized goal. For the second time in the game, Len and Johnnie tricked and teased the despondent home batsmen and, by the time lunch was taken, Hampshire were still 130 runs in arrears with only five wickets remaining. The morale of any doubting Thomas, or Jones or Davies was lifted by a telegram gleefully brought across from the press tent by a broadly smiling J.B.G.Thomas. It came from the Somerset captain and simply said “We will beat Yorkshire, Good luck.” 11 “Come on boys, let’s go and finish off the job,” were Wilf’s simple words as he led the team back out after the interval. In the second over after lunch Jim Bailey was run out, before Johnnie claimed three further wickets to put Glamorgan on the verge of the title. As Jim Pleass recalled: “Standing as umpire at Johnnie’s end was – of all people – Dai Davies, our former batsman who had retired after the War to take up umpiring. On that day at Dean Park, Dai was proudly wearing a red tie with a dragon motif, and when in Hampshire’s second innings their last batsman Charlie Knott missed his intended stroke against Johnnie Clay, the ball cannoned into his pads with a great appeal rending the air from the off-spinner. But before Johnnie could complete his words, Dai had already said: “that’s out, and we’ve won!” “Indeed, we had won; not only the match, but the Championship title as well, because Somerset duly did us proud by holding Dai Davies, the county’s former batsman who stood as umpire at the decisive match at Dean Park in 1948. Clinching the title