In the wild, wild west

"That summer," Gloucestershire's John Mortimore remembers, "there was a prize for the side who reached 200 the fastest." It was August 1962. Gloucestershire were set to play at an unfamiliar venue: Margam, the ground of the Steel Company of Wales. "On the way down we suggested to the batsmen that Margam might be the sort of small ground to go for the prize."

They arrived to find an open, windswept field beside the steel works, a sulphurous smell of rotten eggs in the air and smoke billowing out of the chimneys. "I have this vision," he says, "of red smoke, and everybody coughing their hearts out. We got there, the pitch was soft and we were struggling to score at one run an over."

There were 17,500 employees at the works, and their cricket team had risen rapidly to the first division of the South Wales League. "We used to pay a shilling a week to the Sports Club," former secretary Colin Davies says. "It was deducted at source." Facilities were established for 17 sports: from angling and sailing to archery, rugby and golf.

In 1953 they hosted a friendly fixture between Glamorgan and the Gentlemen of Ireland. Seating was brought in, marquees erected and a new scoreboard built by works apprentices. "They wouldn't let us put the scoreboard by the ground," another veteran Ken Hopkins says. "There was a football pitch next to it, so it had to be beyond that. A two-storey building, with the numbers high up. Big numbers, too. Otherwise you couldn't have seen them from the middle."

Rain ruined a low-scoring game and it was 1960 before the county returned. "The sun never shone in the three days we were there," says Sussex's Len Lenham, who carried his bat for a four-hour 51. "Don Shepherd bowled superbly, and after every ball I had to go down the pitch and slam back down these great chunks of earth. It was an extraordinary place. You had to walk about 75 yards from the pavilion before you reached the boundary."

"It was so far away," Glamorgan's Peter Walker adds, "that you had to leave two balls before the bloke was out in order not to be timed out under the two-minute rule. In that Sussex game I used a bat that was made four inches longer. The wicket was so slow and low, it was perfect."

The next year Leicestershire came. Set 274 to win, they reached 63 for 1 when `Ginger' Evans took 6 for 8 and they were all out for 95. "We didn't get a chance to watch the county games," Davies says. "We had to work. The only time I went was the last day of that Leicester match. In the time I took to walk from the manager's office to the boundary, and stop for a couple of chats, seven or eight wickets fell and it was all over. They were coming off."

But 95 was more than any of the four innings when Gloucestershire visited. Twenty wickets fell on the first day: Gloucester 88, Glamorgan 62, then Gloucester 34 for no wicket. "On a spongy pitch," the Times reported, "few batsmen could play any sort of scoring shot." "Martin Young hit a six right at the end," Gloucestershire's Tony Brown recalls. "Even when you hit the ball, it slowed up in the outfield. That six was just about the only boundary of the day."

Worse was to follow. After a washed-out second day Gloucester slumped on the final morning to 92 all out, scored off 70 overs. At one stage Tom Pugh, the visiting captain, grew so frustrated that, when he went out to bat, he flailed wildly for 15 minutes before returning: bowled Shepherd, 3.

"Sam Cook was watching from the dressing room," Tony Brown recalls. "The windows were very high and he was standing on a wooden, slatted bench. Tom Pugh took his pads off and Sam said to him, `Skipper, it looks as if that swarm of bees has gone now.' `What swarm of bees?' `The ones you were trying to swat out there.'"

Glamorgan had more than three hours left to make 119 but such was the state of the pitch that they finished up playing for the draw. "Those who succeeded in staying for a time," said the Times, "survived perilously with five and sometimes seven fielders clustered only a few yards from the bat." "All the close fielders were in there," Brown says. "Tom Pugh tried to come up, too, and we had to send him out. `There's not really room for you.'" The end came with nine minutes remaining. In the 67th over Glamorgan were all out for 49. Mortimore bowled 26.4 overs, 5 for 10. "We came off the field," David Allen says, "and we were all covered in this red tinge from the steel works."

"The game was farcical," the Gloucestershire handbook recorded, "but the hospitality of our hosts will be remembered by all those who took part." On only one other occasion in England since 1906 has a game of four completed innings produced fewer runs, and that too was on a works pitch: the Ind Coope ground at Burton-on-Trent where on one damp 1958 day 39 wickets fell. At least on that occasion the runs came at 2.34 an over. At Margam the rate was 1.23.

The next year Margam was given the Cambridge University fixture, with the students batting through the third day for a draw. They used 105 overs for 157. There was not one paying spectator all day and near the end the players came off for a while for bad light. "There wasn't a cloud in the sky," Peter Walker says, "but this orange smoke came over and obliterated any possibility of seeing."

For all the hospitality, county cricket did not return. Then over the years the work force declined to 3,500. The square was moved to make way for a rugby pitch, the scoreboard was taken over by the golfers, and the club sank down the league.

"Glamorgan were trying to take the cricket out," says Glamorgan's prolific run-scorer Alan Jones. "We always got a good crowd at Llanelli, and Neath was a good ground. It was trial and error, I suppose."

Now there is no such effort. Half the 1962 fixtures were in the west, now there are just a few days at the St Helen's ground in Swansea. The county side no longer draws most of its members from the west. "It bothers me," says Tom Cartwright, for many years the Wales national coach. "All the folklore was in the west. Now there's getting to be a disconnection with the first-class game."

"It's like taking cricket off terrestrial television," says his son Jeremy, development officer for south-west Wales. "It gets less likely that children will chance upon cricket."

"It's important for kids to see their heroes," Jones says. "I queued up for hours to see the West Indians at St Helen's in 1950. Just to have Everton Weekes walk by was such a thrill."

Several of the works grounds have gone - to car factories, soccer pitches, housing - but the Margam one has survived, and in recent years there are signs of revival.

No longer does the works, Corus now, subsidise the sports club, but the members have raised money to improve the square with help from groundsman Wayne Duggan, they have bought covers, and now their Saturday scores are rising. "We've had the Wales Under-15s down here," Paul Donovan says proudly, "and we're hoping for the Under-17s and the Glamorgan 2nd XI."

There is still a smell of sulphur in the air but modern-day pollution controls mean that the yellow smoke is never as dense as it was in the 1950s. "It should never have been a venue for county games," Davies says. "It didn't have the pitch preparation or the atmosphere. But the players would have been well looked after."

So is it the grimmest ground on which county cricket has ever been played? "Oh no," Leicester's Jack Birkenshaw says. "That has to be the Snibston Pit ground at Coalville. There was a slag heap alongside and, if the wind blew the wrong way, you were in trouble."