My Hundred: The Final Five

5: Joel Garner

The West Indies record books will rightly laud the wicket-taking achievements of Marshall, Walsh and Ambrose but it could be argued that Joel Garner was the superior all-round bowler. Somerset scouted him from League cricket in 1977 when he was already 24 and pretty soon not only was he making a huge impression in county cricket but also as part of the West Indian pace battery.

At 6 feet 8, his name was rarely mentioned without being accompanied by ‘giant’. It might not seem so exceptional these days but forty years ago he seemed freakishly tall. I recall standing next to him in 1981 on the Bath outfield during a pre-match warm-up and, when he released the ball, feeling I was in the company of an alien being, such was his height. Of course ‘Big Bird’ used those formidable wings to great effect, generating unlikely bounce off a length and considerable pace from a short, loping run-up. Add in his unplayable yorkers and he had the perfect game for one-day cricket in particular. He was sensational for Somerset in their glory years but his career highlight was probably that explosive 5-39 in the ’79 World Cup Final.  Imagine what he would have been like as a ‘death’ bowler in Twenty20! 

4: Dennis Lillee

In a decade famed for its aggressive fast bowlers steaming in from a forty-metre run, Dennis Lillee was the original and best of the lot. With straggly locks and that moustache, his was the defining image from the 1972 Ashes series when I was just 11. A stress fracture of the back almost ended his career a year later but then, reining in the pace a touch, he was paired with a young tearaway Jeff Thomson on home territory against England with predictable results.

I remember anticipating the pair in the inaugural World Cup but neither really prospered in one-dayers where containment was just as important as taking wickets and scaring batsmen shitless. I never saw him in the flesh but he grew in my affections  during the ‘Botham’s Ashes’ summer of ’81. Notably slower and that hair somewhat thinner and controlled by coloured headbands, he was the epitome of control, seam and swing. With Terry Alderman at the other end, Lillee took 39 wickets yet still finished on the losing side. His total of 355 Test victims was a world record at the time, captured in only 70 matches. Yes, he could be a temperamental so-and-so but Dennis the menace was one of the most delightful bowlers to watch. 

3: Clive Lloyd

Watching him on the News in January 1984 sloping off the SCG pitch, bat raised in gratitude, having made 72 in his farewell Test innings I had tears in my eyes. The Windies lost that game but, as so often during his 12-year captaincy, they won the series. As with Dennis Lillee I had to enjoy Clivey’s performances on a 24-inch TV screen but he was often on show, not only during the West Indies’ four-year tour cycle but also in between batting for an excellent Lancashire side.

It’s hard to reconcile the big-shouldered brooding presence in the slips towards the end of his career with the slender panther-like covers fielder of the early-Seventies. His athletic pick-up and throw was a thing of beauty, just as his hooking and pulling of anything short was thrilling to witness. The 1975 World Cup Final was a defining moment in my cricket education, and  the indisputable Man of the Match was Windies captain Clive Lloyd. I was furious at having to attend Dad’s school fete that afternoon because it meant missing most of Lloyd’s outstanding 85-ball century. Then, with the Aussies needing to accelerate during their run chase his part-time bowling produced the most economical figures, 1-38, in the whole match. He was incredible. The twenty-first century era has given us some marvellous entertainers but, when on song, none could ever match Clive Lloyd. 

2: Marcus Trescothick

Back in the mid-Nineties, Dad and I began to notice a young Somerset batsman proving extremely good value in Fantasy Cricket. As the decade progressed so did his valuation. Prolific for England Unfer-19s he was 24 by the time the senior call came his way. From that moment on, Somerset didn’t get to see much of Tres as he scooped a central contract and made his mark as first-choice opener in both Tests and ODIs. Sadly, several years of intensive cricket a home and abroad were taking their toll.

I was unimpressed when Marcus suddenly pulled out of the 2006 India tour with no explanation. Back then, mental illness was simply swept under the carpet so it was only reading his heartfelt autobiography Coming Back to Me that I appreciated what he was really going through. International retirement wasn’t far away and he couldn’t even face flying overseas with Somerset. Fortunately, England's loss was Taunton's gain and he remained a stalwart batsman for the county for another ten years, breaking all sorts of records as run-maker and slip fielder, delaying retirement until we won that elusive first Championship crown. By 2019, aged 44, he finally gave up! He may have sported number 2 on his back but he will always be Somerset’s number one. 

1: Viv Richards

King Viv never matched Trescothick for longevity and consistency but for sheer excitement, panache and arrogance Somerset has never experienced anything like the Antiguan. He won the very first cricket match I ever attended with a six into the river at Chelmsford in May ’75 and I was at the same ground sixteen years later to witness his final day as West Indies county tourist. That month I watched him on TV walk out to a warm ovation in his farewell Test at The Oval, tears in my eyes and maybe a few in his, too, although he rarely showed any emotion on the pitch. 

In the 1975 World Cup Final it was his electric fielding which stood out but a year later he was astonishing for the West Indies with the bat. He was everything you’d want to see as a cricket fan: charismatic and a thrillingly inventive and brutal stroke maker. He won so many matches almost single-handed, including both domestic and World cup finals, I wonder what else he would have achieved in the T20 era. To be honest, he didn’t always appear to give 100% in run-of-the-mill county fixtures and I supported Somerset for dropping him in ’85.  Nevertheless Viv is not only my all-time favourite cricketer but also my personal icon of any sport.

My Favourite Bowlers of all time

As with music, football clubs or TV programmes, favouritism makes no claim to equate with sheer quality, no matter how passionately the advocate makes his or her case. My personal favourite cricketers cover a wide range from undisputed giants of the game to aficionados of specific counties and/or those with lengthy memories. The list of bowlers is a case in point.

As a child, I loved to watch bowlers’ actions face-on, a standard perspective in the days when the Beeb could only afford cameras at one end. Many of my most memorable pacemen in particular date from that period when I’d channel my studies of the people I’d watched on TV into personations in the back garden. England’s John Snow had a distinctive delivery action but my first fave was someone whose notable quirk was the way during his run-up he held both arms low.

Sarfraz Nawaz was a staple of Northamptonshire’s attack in the Seventies, winning many caps for Pakistan along the way. Although taller than most, it was his moustache which also made him stand out. More recently he has been credited with inventing reverse swing, which has become an essential part of a fast bowler’s armoury.

Talking of cricketing moustaches, as much part of the mid-Seventies as flares and ‘O’ level revision, Dennis Lillee’s facial fuzz was even more recognisable, and remains his trademark to this day. His bristling, bustling demeanour and devastating pace combined to hammer thorns in the side of England on many occasions, from 1972 to the early Eighties, when his moustache was complemented by a coloured headband. He was no shrinking violet, often controversial for the sake of it, but always watchable. Even in his slower dotage, his skill and accuracy knew no bounds. Had it not been for a few brilliant Botham performances, the 1981 Ashes could well have been named after Lillee and Terry Alderman who between them garnered 81 wickets!

In mid-decade, Dennis and Jeff Thomson wreaked so much havoc against the West Indies that Clive Lloyd fathomed that his side needed to meet fire with fire. Thus the strategy of four-man Caribbean seam attacks was born. At first, this looked thrilling. The brutal bouncers, run-ups so long that they began almost from the laps of front row spectators, the prospect of athletic evasive action or humungous hooks for six  all added to the atmosphere of open hostility. The snorting Andy Roberts, smooth-as-silk Michael Holding, Colin Croft and Wayne Daniel got away with almost anything but after a year or two the novelty began to wear off rapidly. The average over rate dropped from around eighteen an hour to eleven, batsmen suffered more nasty injuries and, much as I adored Caribbean cricket, the bowling philosophy was making Test matches increasingly tedious to watch. Eventually the authorities had to introduce restrictions on the short-pitched stuff and minimum over rules to restore the balance between bat and ball before boredom and broken bones took control.

Holding in full flight was a wonder to behold, and his predecessor Keith Boyce always lively but my favoured West Indian quick was Joel Garner. Apart from the fact he played for Somerset, he didn’t rely on a relentless sprint to the wicket to breed fear in the facing batsman. Off a mere dozen loping languid strides, ‘Big Bird’ could deliver a snorting lifter, in-swinger, off-cutter or devastating yorker at will, using his six feet eight frame to the max. He was equally brilliant in one-dayers as first-class matches; nobody has got close to his career ODI economy rate of 3,09 and his 146 wickets were achieved at under 19 runs apiece. Imagine how effective he would have been in Twenty20!

I was lucky to follow cricket in an era chock full of fabulous fast bowlers. Kapil Dev, Imran Khan, Richard Hadlee, Waqar Younis, Wasim Akram, Allan Donald, Malcolm Marshall, Courtney Walsh and Curtly Ambrose were the cream of an abundant crop. In more recent times I have admired Glenn McGrath’s metronomic line and length, Dale Steyn’s rhythmic action and Shoaib Akhtar’s thunderous pace and Chaminda Vaas' impressive set of initials, but where are the English in my list?

Yes, I am impressed by Jimmy Anderson’s ability to swing it both ways but I can’t say I like him that much. A generation earlier, I was a big fan of John Lever’s left-arm swing bowling. Indeed, I saw quite a lot of him playing for Essex. In the Nineties, I was a fan of another left-arm fast-medium-pacer reliant on movement through the air for his success. This Yorkshire-born Gloucestershire pro became a one-Test wonder in 1997 but he secured my loyalty by dint of his name: Mike Smith, of course!

Top-class namesakes are rare, nor are there a plethora of fellow redheads in the sport. An exception is Glen Chapple, who bowled his fast-medium seam for Lancashire across more than two decades. I was at Lord’s for his almost singlehanded demolition of Essex in the Nat West Final of 1996, the year of his one and only England ODI appearance. Nineteen years later, I again felt deeply sorry for him when, in his forties and his hair less ginger than salt and pepper, form and fitness conspired to end his cricket career with a first-class wicket tally an agonising fifteen short of the thousand milestone.

Another long-standing stalwart of the Red Rose was David Hughes. Although primarily a left-arm spinner, he first attracted my attention with the bat. I was watching live coverage of the 1971 Gillette Cup semi-final against Gloucestershire when, in deep gloom and time running out, he proceeded to flay 24 off John Mortimore’s final over to win the match.

Of those who did manage a longer run in the England side, I quite liked Norman Cowans. His run-up was almost Holding-esque but without his fellow Jamaican’s end product. However, my favourite has to be Gladstone Small. Barbados-born, his hunched physique created an illusion of having no neck, exaggerated by the extravagant shirt collars worn at the time. His comical appearance nonetheless disguised a very useful quick bowler and, as well as a Warwickshire favourite, he was Man of the Match in England’s 1986 Boxing Day Test success in Melbourne.

Spinners have barely featured in this chapter. As with many cricket fans, it’s the pacemen who take my eye, all speed, strength and sizzle. There’s something almost primeval about a middle-stump sent cartwheeling by a 90mph nip-backer, which a gentle bat-pad catch simply cannot match. The slow bowler’s art is very different yet just as vital to an attack. Even in England teams featuring the likes of Snow, Willis or Ward, it was left-armer Derek Underwood who earned the nickname ‘Deadly’! If the Seventies and Eighties had been dominated by sneering, snarling fast bowlers, the subsequent decades were marked by the emergence of world-class spinners.

In any other era, India’s Anil Kumble would have been a global icon. And yet it was the record-breaking rivalry between Muttiah Muralitharan and Shane Warne which stole the show. Murali went on to set the amazing mark of 800 Test wickets and he was a magician of such sleight of hand that I could watch him for hours and never work out how he bowled at all, let alone pick his doosra. In contrast, Warne was a straightforward ‘leggie’ who burst onto the Test scene when leg-spinners were as rare as British Wimbledon singles champions. 

I was to have a love-hate relationship with the Aussie. I couldn’t embrace his bleach-blonde, beer-guzzling surfer-dude personality but there was something endearingly basic about that three-pace amble and roll of the wrists. Whilst an astute captain at Hampshire, he never got to lead Australia in their absolute pomp but he was undoubtedly one of the best bowlers of my lifetime. In particular, anyone who can make Mike Gatting so hilariously bamboozled as Shane Warne so memorably did in 1993 has to be an all-time favourite. And this portrait, which I once saw close up in the Lord's Long Room, captures his charisma perfectly.

Life as a Somerset supporter

Life as a fan of any club, in any sport, is inevitably a rollercoaster ride. Winning matches is great, and doing so in entertaining fashion is a bonus, but the old cliché of ‘It’s all about winning trophies’ is hard to avoid. And that’s where supporting Somerset has been a particularly tough test. So why couldn’t I have simply plumped for a proven champion county like Surrey, Middlesex, Lancashire or Yorkshire? The answer is, of course, because Somerset picked me.

I can’t recall exactly when and where it happened but it must have been inspired by my delightful family holiday spent in and around Minehead in the summer of 1971. As it happened, that was one of Somerset’s best cricket seasons for a while but it had long been considered one of the sport’s sleepy backwaters. There were no international stars, just a few ageing ex-England players in Brian Close and Tom Cartwright plus a motley collection of journeymen and young recruits from that longstanding cricket academy in Millfield School. It was probably the random combo of attractive scenery and sympathy that brought me and SCCC together.

Somerset’s Taunton HQ must be one of the county circuit’s most recognisable grounds. Like The Oval’s gasholders, the trio of sandstone church towers provided a familiar backdrop to the arena for TV cameras set high on the River End pavilion. From the opposite side, the Quantock Hills fill the space between what is now the Sir Ian Botham Stand and the sky. Whilst living and working nearby, I attended several matches there, in addition to a few sneaky peaks through the Garner Gates in lunch breaks, but my introduction to live cricket was Somerset’s trip to Essex at Chelmsford on a cool May afternoon in 1975. It was to be a winning start thanks largely to a then little-known West Indian called IVA Richards. More of him later…..

The following season we came agonisingly close to clinching a first ever trophy. While it wasn’t the featured live game, Dad and I were following the fortunes of Somerset at Glamorgan, watching BBC2’s cricket coverage of the final round of Sunday League fixtures. We lost a thrilling encounter by just one run and the title on away games won, and this teenager was in despair. In ’78 we were again runners-up, not only in the Sunday League but also the premier knockout competition, the Gillette Cup. This has been a recurring theme for the past four decades.

Luckily, the lengthy search for silverware ended the following year. Neither Essex nor Somerset had ever won anything. Then, in one glorious season, the two clubs shared all four titles on offer. For us it was the John Player (Sunday) and Gillette Cup. Under Brian Rose’s captaincy, with Ian Botham an established international all-rounder Viv Richards’ extraordinary batting and Joel ‘Big Bird’ Garner leading the attack, Somerset’s golden era had begun.

The forty-over league proved to be our speciality and yet we could finish only second in three of the subsequent four years. It was in June 1981, following my end-of year exams at Exeter University, that I enjoyed my only live experience of watching our three legends playing together.

It was at the Bath Festival clash with neighbours Gloucestershire but, instead of the current bristling rivalry, the atmosphere was light and friendly and before the game we could stand on the outfield while the players warmed up amongst us. Standing alongside Joel Garner (below) I could appreciate just how tall he was (barely fitting into my lens, below), and he played his part in our 20-run triumph, taking 4-21 as Gloucestershire suffered a catastrophic collapse.  

That memorable summer we clinched the Benson & Hedges Cup (55 overs a side), repeated the feat in ’82 and took Kent apart in the Nat West Trophy final (successor to the Gillette Cup) in ’83. After that, it all went horribly quiet. In 1985 the county tore itself in two, not over Brexit but on the thornier issue of whether to replace Richards with the younger and frankly more conscientious Kiwi, Martyn Crowe. Somerset hadn’t experienced such division since the Monmouth Rebellion three centuries earlier, and that hadn’t ended well! Despite my hero-worship of King Viv, I actually sided with the more forward-thinking members at SCCC. Richards departed, followed by his friends Garner and Botham and suddenly captain Peter Roebuck and Vic Marks were left with some mighty boots to fill.

The victory champagne dried up. For years, we couldn’t even finish second. It wasn’t until 2001 when Jamie Cox’s side ended the barren run with success over Leicestershire in the new 50-over C&G Trophy. It has since gone down in folklore because of Leicester seamer Scott Boswell’s nightmare second over, in which he bowled eight wides. Eight!

It wasn't as if we had no decent players. Quite the reverse. Talented locals like Vic Marks, Colin Dredge, Richard Harden and Marcus Trescothick were supplemented by imports such as Andy Caddick, Mushtaq Ahmed, Steve Waugh, Graeme Smith and Jimmy Cook. The latter spent only three years at Somerset, yet racked up 28 centuries and almost 7,000 first-class runs. And still we struggled.

Then in 2007, following the arrival of Justin Langer, a new golden age beckoned. We returned to Division One, tightened up on discipline and discovered that the exciting new Twenty20 format played towards our strengths. Somerset were great to watch, competing in every competition. And yet, for some reason, the fates conspired against us. Apart from the solitary T20 success in 2005, we crumbled under the weight of destiny and expectation. Between 2009 and 2012, we were beaten finalists five times in the Blast and 40-over CB40 trophy, and runners-up twice in the Championship. Surely we would win something? No.

For years, the Taunton pitch was notoriously batting-friendly, ideal for high scores but useless for taking the twenty wickets needed to win matches. It made for some incredible run chases though. In 2009, I was invited to join some old BBC friends to watch day one of Somerset’s home fixture against Yorkshire. Jacques Rudolph piled on the runs and the draw seemed inevitable right until the final day. As I followed proceedings online, Arul Suppiah and Peter Trego crashed centuries in the last two sessions to pull off a remarkable victory. Heartwarming stuff.

Marcus Trescothick’s age and fitness have restricted his appearances but he resolutely refuses to retire until the elusive Championship pennant flutters proudly above Taunton. I fear he’ll have to be batting in a wheelchair. For all the talents of the much-loved Trego, James Hildreth, Lewis Gregory, Tom Abell, Dom  Bess, Jack Leach and the Overton twins, another county always seems to do just that little bit better. In 2018 it was Surrey, while an excellent T20 season ended in the semis. 

                                

Could 2019 see us get over the line at last? Old hands like me fear the worst but if the planets of batting and bowling align, anything’s possible. Please let it happen, even if it’s just to see the smile on Marcus Trescothick’s face.