Cricket Witness No 5 - Whites on Green

124 1968 saw the historic game at Swansea against the Australians over the August Bank Holiday but with pressure for shorter itineraries and Bill Lawry’s team arriving later than any Australian team had done before, there was only one match. In 1969 there was a return to twin tours but the tourist game at Swansea, against the West Indians, took place in early July whilst Sophia Gardens staged the match with the New Zealanders over the August Bank Holiday. If the scheduling of tourist games at Swansea and Cardiff saw the resurfacing of the east-west tensions in the committee room, it was global politics, or more correctly the anti-apartheid movement which affected the matches in 1970. The South Africans had been scheduled to play at Swansea during the last week of July. But the tour was cancelled and through the efforts of the Glamorgan committee, and in particular Bill Edwards, the proprietor of the sports shop in King Edward’s Road, the fixture was taken up by Jamaica. His links with the Caribbean administrators saw further changes to the format of the tourist games at Swansea during the 1970s with lucrative one-day games, mirroring the Sunday League competition, being staged against the West Indians on their tours in 1973, 1976 and 1980. A similar venture was planned in July 1982 when the Pakistanis visited Swansea, with Bill using his close links with their officials to secure a 40-over match on the Sunday afternoon, but the weather conspired against them as the contest was washed out. The 1980s saw another important change with Glamorgan securing a deal with the Neath Development Partnership to stage the matches against the 1985, 1989 and 1993 Australians at The Gnoll. With generous sponsorship from those involved in the industrial regeneration of the area, these contests drew decent-sized crowds, with the Pakistani duo of Javed Miandad and Younis Ahmed also sharing a triple-century stand in the 1985 contest. Ten years before, it was fellow Pakistani Majid Khan who played the last great innings by a Glamorgan batsman against the Australians at St. Helen’s, with Majid playing an innings during which this consumate batsman teased and taunted a world-clas attack all over the field, racing to fifty in just 47 minutes, with ten sweetly-struck fours. The bowlers he decimated were Alan Hurst, Max Walker, Gary Gilmour, Ashley Mallett and Ian Chappell – perhaps not the greatest Australian attack of all time, but it was the manner in which Majid majestically made his century. His innings also followed a fine opening stand as Alan Jones and his teenage colleague, Alan Lewis Jones, put on 132 for the first wicket with the youngster, wearing a white floppy sunhat, showing great promise for the future with an innings which belied his youthful eagerness. As the two Joneses sent the ball time and again to the boundary, and Majid gracefully devoured the Australian attack, many in the sun-drenched crowd fancifully looked forward to further great days for Glamorgan’s cricketers at Swansea and further victories by the next generation of Welsh International cricket comes to Swansea