Lives in Cricket No 6 - Bill Copson

Chapter Three Annus Mirabilis Looking back, British and European news in the year 1936 seems to be characterised by events which we now think of as unusual, if not unique. The abdication of King Edward VIII to enable him to marry Mrs Wallis Simpson, a twice divorced American; the huge hunger march by the unemployed from Jarrow to Westminster; the re-occupation of the Rhineland by German troops; and the invasion of what was then called Abyssinia by the Italian army, were all unconnected events which fitted that pattern. In its own less momentous way, Derbyshire’s achievement in winning the County Championship, for the first and only time, follows that trend. 11 The success was not only unique, but it was unusual in that it was only the second time that a county outside the ‘Big Six’ had taken the title. 12 For Copson this rather wet summer was one of conspicuous success. His accurate and very hostile fast bowling played a key role in his team’s triumph. His 24 11 From 1911 to 1962, Wisden recorded Derbyshire as having won the County Championship in 1874, at a time when the title was decided by the Press and not by the clubs themselves. In that season, the county had played four first-class matches, winning three and drawing one. The Almanack had taken into account a book published in 1895 by Alfred Gibson who had decided that ‘least matches lost’ was the means by which the title champion was awarded. R.S.Holmes published a book in 1896 making a similar identification, and this found its way into Wisden regularly from 1911. Later research, including that by members of the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians, has shown that contemporary publications judged Gloucestershire to be the best county side, and that the ‘least matches lost’ method was not in widespread use in 1874. The Derbyshire club did not celebrate its winning of the championship in that year, nor did local newspapers state that the club were champions. An ‘official’ championship under which the county clubs decided how to allocate the title did not come into operation until 1890. Nowadays Wisden says that the ‘title of champion county is unreliable’ before 1890, but says that its listing including Gloucestershire as the 1874 champion county is ‘the most accurate available’, but adds that ‘it has no official status’. 12 Although it produced sides with a genuine local identity, the requirement which operated until 1939, that players should either be born or live for two years in the county they played for, adversely affected counties with small populations. In the mid-thirties, Derbyshire’s resident population was smaller than all but four of the counties in the Championship. The county club’s membership was correspondingly small. In 1936, Derbyshire had 2,220 members compared with 3,450 at Kent, 4,649 at Lancashire, 5,465 at Surrey and 6,592 at Yorkshire. This in its turn limited the resources available to develop and maintain teams. Derbyshire’s title was thus a very particular achievement.