Lives in Cricket No 6 - Bill Copson

Griffin’s bowling action attracted a huge amount of publicity in the first half of the season. 41 Despite the assistance he received from Alfred Gover at his Indoor Cricket School at Wandsworth in London, this was not satisfactorily resolved and matters came to a head in the Lord’s Test Match when he was called eleven times by Frank Lee, all from the square leg position. Curiously Griffin had also taken a hat trick in this innings, the only one ever performed in a Lord’s Test. After this he did not bowl again on the tour. Bill’s last first-class match was that between Warwickshire and Somerset at Edgbaston, two weeks before the end of the 1967 season, when he stood with Peter Wight, whose own umpiring career went on until 1995. By deciding not to apply to join the umpires’ list for 1968, Bill thus made a clean break with first-class cricket at the age of 59 and settled down to enjoy the remainder of his life in Clay Cross where he lived at 59 The Broadleys. He continued with his job at the Clay Cross Company: no doubt he would have been looking forward to his retirement. His son Michael married in 1968 and had moved to Gloucestershire early in 1971. On 13 September, Bill had gone to work as usual, when he complained of feeling unwell. He was brought home, where he died within the hour, of an aneurysm of the aorta. He was 63. His devoted wife Emily was by his side. The funeral service was held at the parish church of St. Bartholomew’s, Clay Cross on 17 September and he was cremated at Brimington, just outside Chesterfield. In his will he left the sum of £5,016, worth now just over £62,000 according to the retail price index for 2008. Sadly Emily Copson was diagnosed with cancer shortly after Bill’s death, and she died in December 1972, only fifteen months after her husband. Michael Copson had a son, Nicholas, born at Cheltenham in 1975, but he never met his paternal grandparents. There were many tributes paid to Bill Copson in local newspapers. Many of these concentrated on the story of his introduction to the game in 1926. In the opinion of his son Michael, one of the most moving, which spoke more of his personality, was by John Twells of the Raymond News Agency which appeared in The Derby Trader , an odd place for Cardus-style reminiscence. He described his thoughts after he ‘bumped into’ Copson in the street: Umpiring and Retirement 81 41 Griffin had previously been no-balled in matches in South Africa, while playing for Natal.