Lives in Cricket No 6 - Bill Copson

appearances. It is true that Copson’s total number of first-class wickets fell well short of the achievements of Jackson and Gladwin, but he took his wickets more frequently at one per 47 balls, compared with one per 48 for Jackson and one per 49 for Gladwin. He was slightly more expensive at 18.96 a wicket, with Jackson on 17.36 and Gladwin on 18.30. All in all, not much to choose between them, you might say. He was, though, a rather ‘straighter’ bowler than these Derbyshire colleagues, taking exactly six hundred (55%) of his first-class wickets either bowled or leg before wicket. George Pope secured 54% of his wickets by these means, Les Jackson 49% and Cliff Gladwin 37%. In Copson’s twelve full seasons with Derbyshire, the county finished in the lower half of the Championship table only twice. Since Copson’s retirement from regular play in August 1949, Derbyshire have finished in the lower half of the Championship table (or in more recent years, its Division Two) in 32 of 58 seasons. The county has won limited overs competitions, where Copson would perhaps have excelled, only three times. So the four consecutive seasons in the 1930s, when Derbyshire finished in the top three of the Championship, with Copson taking the new ball, are contrasted with the county’s more recent struggle. Unlike Jackson, Gladwin and Pope though, Copson can point to his performances in 1936, as the leading bowler in a team of local players who brought the County Championship to Derbyshire, as his crowning achievement. Perhaps that, something of more than miner interest, is how he should be best remembered. Umpiring and Retirement 85