Cricket Witness No 5 - Whites on Green

142 A very special place black and white television). I remember warm cheese-and-cucumber sandwiches. And Dandelion and Burdock pop. And melting ice-cream from the van. I remember the shout of the white-coated scorecard sellers. The newly printed card. The responsibility of entering the wickets (in best writing, of course). I remember the crack of ball on bat. The pounding feet of the boundary fielder. The speed of the ball. In short, I remember falling in love with cricket – and with St. Helen’s.” 4 Richard’s heartfelt recollections were initially published in a special booklet published to celebrate the 40 th anniversary of the St. Helen’s Balconiers, the Swansea-based supporters organisation who have done so much in recent years to preserve county cricket at this West Walian outpost and at a time when other out-grounds and festival weeks have been erased from the cricketing calendar. Their name stems from the popular area of seating on the balcony of the old Swansea pavilion, and it was here that the great and the good of Swansea’s cricketing world would watch the county games. In 1972 Roy Fredericks and Alan Jones – whose Benefit Year it was - delighted those on the balcony by sharing what was then Glamorgan’s best-ever opening stand in first-class cricket, adding 330 for the first wicket against Northamptonshire. When Alan was dismissed, one of the cognoscenti, Danny Lewis, remarked, “This is the sort of occasion on which a collection A view of the ecstatic crowd after Glamorgan’s victory over the 1968 Australians.