Cricket Witness No 5 - Whites on Green

94 Championship tricks and a victory over the Boks “He had already showered and changed, ready to go on the bus, but he had to come in before he had had time to change properly. He came out to the middle without his socks on, just a pair of boots, and that was that.” 9 Jim Pleass also remembered how the tourists were taken by surprise, and the joyous celebrations after the Glamorgan victory: “With the mad scramble to change back into whites and don pads, their dressing room must have looked like the opening day of a quick- change artistes’ convention. But the wickets kept tumbling – 72-8 and 72-9 before Percy Mansell was caught by Gilbert Parkhouse off a top edge, and it was all over. We had won by 64 runs. Then the euphoria; we were mobbed and Wilf was carried shoulder-high from the field; the National Anthem was sung in the Pavilion and the champagne flowed yet again at St. Helen’s.” 10 1. Western Mail , 25 May 1948. 2. Western Mail , 26 May 1948. 3. Western Mail , 16 June 1948. 4. Western Mail , 9 July 1948. 5. J.Arlott, Indian Summer (Longman’s Green and Company, 1947) 6. Article by J.H.Morgan, “The County’s Grounds” in the Glamorgan CCC Yearbook for 1951. 7. A.K.Hignell, Lucky Jim – The memoirs of Glamorgan’s 1948 Championship winner (Welsh Academic Press, 2014). 8. Ibid. 9. D.Miller, Born to Bowl, Douglas Miller (Fairfield Books, 2004). 10. A.K.Hignell op. cit. Jim Pleass late cuts Percy Mansell during his decisive innings with Wilf Wooller against the 1951 Springboks at Swansea.