ONE MORE RUN
At
Cheltenham’s Cricket Festival Gloucestershire entertain a Yorkshire side
bristling with stars: Fred Trueman and Brian Close, Johnny Wardle and Ray
Illingworth. “To us Cotswolds lads,” one spectator says, “they were like
a visiting Test team from a distant Northern kingdom.”
It
is Sam Cook’s benefit match. Saturday dawns, and the beer-loving plumber
from over the hill in Tetbury looks anxiously at the sky from his council
house. Will the crowds be large enough for him to buy his bungalow? “There
were certain matches you couldn’t choose for your benefit,” his bowling
partner ‘Bomber’ Wells says. “Versus Yorkshire at Cheltenham, he did
well to get that one.”
Has
there been a more unlikely professional cricketer than Bomber? He is
overweight, he bowls with a one-pace run-up, and his batting consists of a
great agricultural swing. The crowds love him, and he learns the art of
story-telling. Nearly fifty years have passed, but he still enthrals us with
the tale of his debut: “I was courting, and I was out in the park, eating
fish and chips. About half past nine or ten in the evening. This huge chap
came across. Old Tom Goddard. ‘Are you Bomber Wells? … Get down to Bristol
tomorrow. You’re playing against Sussex.’”
This is another world - large crowds at county cricket, spin bowlers in the ascendancy, natural cricketers emerging from the local clubs - but, even as we reminisce, Bomber watches today’s game with a keen eye, and his humour is laced with sharp observations on our world.
We sit beyond the boundary in 1999, and we relive the dramatic Yorkshire match of 1957. In the intervals of play we hear about wartime childhood and Cotswold forestry, modern coaching and the pleasures of listening to the old. Our conversation is joined by Tom Graveney, Arthur Milton, Ray Illingworth and Tony Brown, as well as spectators and players’ relatives.
It
is a highly original book, and it leaves us reflecting on so much more than
cricket.
READERS SAY