This, I hope, is the re-drafted version of the Loyal of Lhasa opus on the early post World War 2 campaigns of the county. I haven't altered it, except to emphasise players' names. Hope you enjoy it as much as you did the first half and thanks again LoL for getting it to me.
After two years of coming last, Somerset made radical changes to the team in 1954, and the situation was complicated by the premature departure of the great Harold Gimblett after only two matches. The county still finished bottom. New names included Lomax, Hilton and McMahon as well as Saeed and Wight. In an undistinguished game at Glastonbury, Somerset had Hampshire at 44 for 8 in the second innings but still could not force a win. In the next match, it was not astonishing that Hanif of Pakistan scored a fine century but we were amazed that he bowled with both right and left hands and that Shua-ud-Din, down to bat at number 11 in the first innings, scored a century in the second. This, I think was 16 year old Graham Atkinson’s first match for the county. He did not make any significant runs but took a quite amazing catch running round the square leg boundary over by the Stragglers’ Stand. We were at Taunton yet again a few days later for the privilege of seeing glorious centuries by Emmett and Graveney; Gloucestershire always seemed too good for Somerset in those days, but we didn’t hate them like we hated Glamorgan. It was no surprise that in this lamentable summer our Welsh adversaries humiliated us at Clarence Park. What was truly upsetting was that in the final match of the Festival we were denied by the rain when we needed only 72 to beat Essex. The last treat of the summer was to see Lomax score a century against Northants, but we still lost the match.
At the very end of the season we spent a few days holiday in Hampshire. The usual ritual of cricket playing in the park was interrupted by the frequent passage of a football across our pitch, propelled by local boys. Somewhat foolishly, my brothers and I made some pathetically patriotic remarks about it being no surprise that Hampshire were no good at cricket and fisticuffs ensued. Then we went to Dean Park for our first away match and had to eat our words, for our heroes were soundly trounced by ten wickets. Six seasons had now passed without my seeing a single Somerset win.
In mid-July of 1955 my mother and father managed to get to Taunton on a Friday afternoon to see Somerset beat Worcestershire by nine wickets but I had to go to school. Childhood can be incredibly cruel sometimes. Later that month we saw most of the match against Yorkshire at Taunton. Somerset dominated the first half of the match, but were humiliated in the second, losing by 8 wickets, Brian Close not yet having appreciated that Somerset was the county he was destined to lead to better things. However, the ever-cheerful Brian Lobb had arrived and the cricket was always a delight to watch when he was on the field. Wooller was no longer around, but we still had to endure the embarrassment of annihilation by Glamorgan at Weston. In the final home match we nearly achieved an astonishing victory over Northants, batting against the clock. Tremlett, Wight and Stephenson batted like millionaires but it was not to be. Surprisingly, the county committee, while glad to accept my junior membership fee of fifteen shillings a year (seventy-five pence in this funny new money), had not yet realised that my attendance at any match guaranteed we could not win.
The revival started in 1956, aided not a little by the arrival of the sturdy Colin McCool. Other regular players included Lew Pickles, who scored 1000 runs and – back from National Service – Graham Atkinson, one of the most under-rated opening batsmen of his generation. Our first day’s cricket was at Taunton in early May, but was more memorable for an altercation between my mother and an elderly female driver (both proud owners of Armstrong Siddeleys) over an alleged collision in the car park, than for the batting of Hampshire. (“Madam you have dented my car” became a family catch phrase thereafter) Much more exciting was Tremlett’s Benefit Match at Glastonbury, where the glorious Compton made a century in his second match after a knee operation. I had attended school all day on Monday and Tuesday, but got back to the ground early enough each evening to see some excitement. On Monday, Lobb dismissed Bick and Hurst with the last two balls of the day, and on Tuesday Somerset failed to win by a mere five runs. This was definitely the nearest I had ever been to watching a Somerset victory.
The next match was drawn and then between 14th and 31st of July the county managed to lose five consecutive matches, all heavily. Was the revival an Illusion? The corner was nearly turned in the bank holiday match at Taunton (in the days when it was always against Gloucestershire). We saw the first and last days and losing by just one wicket at the end hinted that my jinx on the team was almost at an end. But there were to be no more wins that season, though Somerset dominated the match against Glamorgan at Weston. My mother suggested that Wooller had probably arranged for the rain to fall in time. The highest individual score in the next match was 32 by Dyson of Lancashire. This was a typical Weston match, with wickets falling every few minutes, fourteen to Lancashire’s Hilton and eight to his Somerset brother. Amazingly, Langford who had taken eight wickets against Glamorgan now took only one.
The summer of 1957 saw further evidence of the revival, aided by the arrival of the amiable Alley, who was awarded his county cap after only four matches, and was one of four bowlers (with Langford, McMahon and Lobb) to take over 60 wickets and of four batsmen (with McCool, Wight and Tremlett) to score over 1000 runs. I watched Alley for the first time against Gloucestershire in early June, but he made only five. One week later, I visited the Bath Festival for the first time on the first day, the occasion when Horton was “run out” twice in the same innings. On the first occasion he was recalled from the pavilion with the explanation that it was his partner, Gray, who should have been dismissed. Later in his innings he was genuinely run out. For a while, at the beginning of that innings, Roy Marshall looked like the most devastating batsman in the world.
Then at the end of July, something quite extraordinary happened. My parents and I booked into a Taunton hotel and I watched almost every ball of the match against Kent. Tremlett inserted the visitors and we wondered at his judgement when they scored 305 and dismissed Alley cheaply at the start of the Somerset innings. The rest of the match was a glorious experience, for Somerset totalled 467, with 92 from McCool, with lots of punches square of the wicket, 47 from Brian Roe on debut, and an unbeaten 104 from our long-established hero Stephenson. Then Lobb and McMahon ran through Kent, the last wicket falling at ten to four on the third afternoon. With apparent ease, Pickles and Alley scored the 55 required for a ten wicket victory. Thus, after waiting almost eight years, I saw a Somerset win for the very first time, a thoroughly professional performance which appeared absurdly easy. At last my loyalty was vindicated. The “team of surprises” had finally surprised me by winning. The surprises have continued ever since, but the jinx was well and truly broken on Friday 26th July 1957, and my loyalty has never since been challenged as seriously as in those eight early painful years.
Let those whose faith in our mercurial men is sometimes sorely tested be assured that such trials only serve to strengthen one’s allegiance to absurd excess, incomprehensible, perhaps, to those who have never endured the ordeal of supporting the most infuriating and most delightful county side in England.
Loyal of Lhasa
Redrafted: September 2005
