Cricket Witness No 3 - The Daffodil Blooms

91 New faces Arms Park. He was already on the radar of the Glamorgan talent scouts, having played for the Cardiff Schoolboys side as well as the Cardiff club before the War, besides having been invited to attend Glamorgan’s winter nets during 1939/40. When county cricket resumed, his name was still in the scout’s notebook as someone to follow. He suitably impressed George Lavis in the winter nets at the Arms Park, and then enjoyed a fine start to the club cricket season as Cardiff met and defeated a number of decent teams from South Wales as well as from Gloucestershire and Somerset. During June 1947, Jim enjoyed a purple patch of form with four centuries, and during the final week of the month, Johnnie Clay rang the young batsman to enquire about his availability for Glamorgan’s away match with Derby. As Jim modestly recalled: “A phone call from Johnnie Clay was surely a joke! Someone was having me on. Although I had done well in club cricket, there was such a tremendous gap between that and county cricket. Surely it wasn’t possible for someone to be pitch-forked, without even a game for the 2 nd XI, straight into the 1 st XI and County Championship cricket. Johnnie assured me that it was no joke, and that Friday night I was on my way up to Derby.” “Many thoughts whirled around in my head during that train journey. I had seen some of the famous Derbyshire professionals at the Arms Park before the War, and, indeed, I had waited seemingly for hours to obtain their signatures on, firstly, a scrap of paper, then, in later years, on a scorecard, or autograph book. Now it seemed I was going to join them as a county cricketer, although my abiding thoughts as my train headed north was that I would probably be twelfth man.” “After arriving at Derby railway station, I duly made my way to the team hotel to meet Johnnie Clay. After booking in, I made my way to the bar and was soon introduced to Arnold Dyson, the Yorkshire-born opening batsman, as well as my boyhood hero Emrys Davies, who opened the batting with Dyson. Allan Watkins, Willie Jones and Wilf Wooller also introduced themselves to me as I stood, rather dumbstruck and surrounded by my heroes. But this was nothing compared to when Johnnie Clay then said “Welcome, Jim; you are playing tomorrow.” 5 Everything that followed the next day must have seemed like a dream. Breakfast at the city centre hotel; taxi to the Racecourse Ground, with its acres and acres of open space; changing into