Cricket Witness No 3 - The Daffodil Blooms

60 Triumph and tragedy of 1,000 first-class runs and 100 wickets in a season, reaching the target during the final game of the 1935 season at Worcester. In 1937 he also achieved the rare feat of scoring a century and taking a hat-trick in the match at Leicester whilst in 1939, during the game against Gloucestershire at Newport, Emrys wrote his name in yet another page of the record books by scoring an unbeaten 287 – the highest individual innings for the Welsh county and passing the previous best of 280, made by Dick Duckfield against Surrey at The Oval in 1933. Davies’s feat stood for 61 years before Steve James recorded the county’s first-ever triple century in an equally high-scoring game at Colwyn Bay, but had circumstances or, more particularly, the attitude of Gloucestershire captain Wally Hammond been less churlish, Davies might have recorded a triple-hundred himself. Hammond had already completed an unbeaten 302 in Gloucestershire’s first innings and, with a sizeable cash prize for the batsman who made the highest score of the summer, it was not just the home supporters and the Glamorgan team who were keeping a close eye on the Rodney Parade scoreboard during the closing minutes as the game moved towards the close of play. To the disgust of the home side, Hammond deliberately slowed Emrys Davies and Arnold Dyson at Swansea in 1937.