Lives in Cricket No 6 - Bill Copson

to be known as the ‘vintage summer’ and seems, even now, to have gone on for ever. Members of the bowling fraternity toiled under these conditions: in the Championship they conceded runs at the rate of 27.51 per wicket, a figure only once exceeded in Copson’s career, and almost four runs per wicket more than in 1946. Bill Copson had the somewhat unexpected, but well-deserved, experience of being recalled to play in the final Test of the season against South Africa at Kennington Oval. This was only the third Test Match of his career. It turned out to be his last. Middlesex won the County Championship, the county’s first success for twenty six years. Despite Test Match calls, their powerful batting scored at a tremendous rate, permitting their bowlers sufficient time to dismiss their opponents. They won nineteen out of their twenty six matches and finished ten points ahead of the runners up, Gloucestershire. Derbyshire had a much better season and rose to fifth position, the biggest positional gain by any side in the competition. They won eleven matches in all, under their new captain, E.J.Gothard. Although he accomplished very little with the bat, he had one remarkable bowling performance, against Middlesex at Derby, when he took a hat trick by dismissing Alan Fairbairn, Bill Edrich and Walter Robins. He was the second and last Derbyshire amateur to perform this feat. Prior to this game he had only taken one first-class wicket. Copson, despite missing four consecutive games in the first two weeks of June, accomplished some good performances, although only capturing five wickets in an innings on four occasions. A match he was sorry to miss was that against Somerset at Chesterfield, on 11 June, when Derbyshire completed the rare feat of defeating their opponents in a single day. This was the first occasion that this had happened in the County Championship since 1925. Somerset were dismissed for 68 and 38, George Pope taking thirteen wickets. This has remained the only instance of Derbyshire winning a first-class match in a single day’s play. Of the fifteen ‘one-day’ Championship matches since 1890, six have involved the defeat of Somerset. Bill Copson’s selection for the final Test was surprising. The visiting South Africans had a strong batting side. After enforcing the follow on in the First Test at Trent Bridge, England made a spirited comeback in their second innings and an unlikely and courageous tenth-wicket partnership between J.W.Martin and Eric Hollies, set South Africa too big a task and they finished sixty one runs short of victory for the loss of only one wicket in their second 68 Final First-Class Seasons