Sure, things didn’t start well. Mike Denness, our captain, suffered from pleurisy in the early days of the tour and that was a major disruption as we didn’t see him for weeks. To dampen my personal enthusiasm, I broke my little finger in one of those darned fielding practices and missed the first Test, in Brisbane, where Thomson spectacularly deconstructed the façade that he was a fast-medium bowler fortunate to double his international caps. John Edrich broke a bone in his hand there at the Gabba and later at Sydney broke a rib. Dennis Amiss also fractured a finger in that first match, and a combination of their ailments meant I inherited one of English cricket’s great statesmen as a room-mate.
Colin Cowdrey was the equivalent of cricket royalty. He was into his 40s and very much winding down his career at that stage – as the fact that he turned up looking rather lavish in a pinstripe suit, and his warm-up at the MCG, walking around the boundary edge as adopted conductor of the brass band, testify. A real gentleman, it was an honour to spend time with him; not that everyone held him in the same regard. Indeed, after one day’s play during that Test, we were making our way out to the cars waiting for us at the back of the ground, when this little lad with his autograph book addressed Colin in a most uncouth manner. ‘Hey, Cowdrey, you podgy f***er,’ he said. ‘Sign us this!’
‘Oh, marvellous!’ Colin said, in his archetypal English gent’s voice. ‘Absolutely charming!’
Rooming with PF, as he was subsequently dubbed on that tour, was almost a throwback to the era of gentlemen and players. Although mild-mannered and warm, his record and standing in the English game was slightly intimidating, and there was also some awkward history between us for me to get over when we were thrust together upon his arrival down under. You see, sharing a room with Colin took me back to an incident that had occurred in county cricket a good few years earlier. I had not really engaged with him since this particular occurrence on the field in a match between Lancashire and Kent in the mid-1960s.
Back in that era, county teams did not tend to travel with a twelfth man in tow to away matches. You went with your XI, and, in the event that somebody got injured, you simply borrowed a player from the home team. This role of loanee was one I fulfilled from time to time when Brian Statham was captain of Lancashire – it was not to be sniffed at for an aspiring young cricketer, particularly given the toffee involved. Doing ‘twelfths’ paid a few bob as a match fee, and in most instances, there was sod all to do to earn it. Unfortunately, however, this was not the case when Kent came to Southport for a County Championship match in 1967, and Muggins here was on duty.
Called on to the field as a substitute for what was a relatively short passage of play, I promptly dropped two catches – one at mid-on and one at mid-off – to besmirch my reputation with all and sundry but most notably the esteemed leader of the opposition.
‘Tell me about your twelfth man,’ Cowdrey said to Statham later that evening. ‘What exactly is his role in the game?’
Fair enough question, I suppose. I was a hopeful 20-year-old all-rounder in those days, not that he would have been interested by the actual answer to what effectively was a rhetorical question. Now, seven years on, we were top-order team-mates – human targets at Lillee and Thomson’s coconut shy.
Felled by the Cracker at the WACA
Talking of coconuts reminds me of the most painful experience I ever had on a cricket field. Even if you have not seen the footage in question, you will no doubt be aware of it, so please remember to wince in sympathy in all the right places, and we’ll go through it here for old time’s sake.
Remember this was an era of uncovered pitches and facing some of those great West Indies fast bowlers was like hanging out the washing on the Siegfried Line. But of all the blows I took, never was I in as much discomfort as that day during the second Test in Perth when, sadly, I lost most of my genitals.
Thankfully this loss proved only temporary and they were returned to me some minutes later, having been found in 77 different parts, the other side of my protective box. They had migrated south (and every other compass point imaginable for that matter) the instant that a 3,000 mph Thomson thunderbolt shattered this plastic protector, turning it into some kind of medieval torture implement.
For the particular delivery in question, I got myself too square on and immediately knew there was trouble looming, hoping beyond hope that I would get some bat on ball as it climbed above stump level. Alas, no such luck. One of cricket’s more interesting facts is that the first testicular guard was used in 1874, yet it took another 100 years for the first helmets to be worn. A relatively short time, I guess, for blokes to work out that their brains could also play an important part in their lives.
Of course, we are now so used to seeing blokes head out into the middle for gladiatorial combat with every piece of body armour imaginable. But we certainly didn’t have things like chest guards or arm guards back then. You would have something resembling a thigh pad, although they were nowhere near the thickness of the ones you see in kitbags down your local club these days. These things were a bit flimsy to say the least. But being that way meant you had the chance to slide a Reader’s Digest or your spare socks down there too to provide extra protection.
Yes, the sight of batsmen wearing helmets was still in its infancy, I wasn’t using one, and I might as well not have been sporting anything between my legs either for the good it did. This pink litesome was completely useless for the job it was supposed to do. If you can’t remember what these litesomes looked like, here’s a reminder: you can still see them in use these days in bathrooms up and down the country – you know, those plastic things you keep your soap in.
Nowadays batsmen are much better protected around the groin but this flimsy thing did more harm than good. Because it was full of breath holes it splintered on impact and concertinaed my knackers. Suddenly, everything that was supposed to be on the inside was now on the outside. If you want to get a tad more graphic, imagine a cactus growing the wrong way out of its pot. Then consider for a moment how that might feel … Was it any wonder that I jack-knifed straight onto my head? Talk about being doubled up in pain. I lose my voice every November in memory of that cracker in the knacker.
Number one priority once back in the dressing room was to release my master of ceremonies from its snare: a pretty unforgiving job for Bernard Thomas, who certainly hadn’t signed up for that kind of thing when agreeing to be England team physio. We didn’t have any medical staff travelling with us in those days, though, so suffice to say I was very grateful for Bernard’s delicate handling of the situation. To be frank, such was the stinging sensation, I wouldn’t have minded a personal visit from the Fremantle Doctor but in the end had to settle for an hour or two of ice treatment once back in the dressing room. ‘Can you take the pain away but leave the swelling?’ I’d pleaded with Bernard upon retiring hurt.
You know as an England opener in Australia that you are going to cop some, and the crowd at the WACA turned gladiatorial, egging their evil henchmen on the next morning when I resumed my innings. The hairs stood up on the back of your neck walking to the crease anticipating a serious going over. A combination of Perth’s extra bounce – even these days batsmen can leave the ball on length in the knowledge that slightly short deliveries will sail over the top of the stumps – and eight-ball overs meant there were plenty of bumpers, as Cowdrey was so fond of calling them, to contend with, and although I didn’t score a mountain of runs – there were very few scoring opportunities against a backdrop of chin music – I was quite proud of sticking it out for six hours in that match against such sustained hostility.
There was no getting away from the fact that batting out there was hellish demanding. I would stop