The way it was: 1954

Trevor Bailey: a true allrounder's part in setting England on the way to victory © Getty Images

Sabina Park, Jamaica. March 1954. England were 2-1 down going into the last Test and the pitch looked a dream for batting. "Bat first, and you should make 700," the groundsman told Len Hutton and, with Brian Statham unfit, England opted for a team with only two seamers, Fred Trueman and Trevor Bailey. "Our only hope was to bat," Bailey recalls, "then bowl them out with spinners. And Len lost the toss."

Bailey, the vice-captain, struck three times in the first half-hour, finishing with 7 for 34 as West Indies made only 139. "I was bowling at the wrong end," he says, "and everything went right. By evening I was going out to bat with Len." He was not out till the next afternoon, Sobers' first Test wicket, and, though he scored only 23, he had played a true allrounder's part in setting England on the way to victory.

Fifteen years earlier his prep school headmaster, the Essex captain Denys Wilcox, had tried to persuade him to give up bowling. "He told me that I wasn't big or strong enough to be a fast bowler and that I should concentrate on my batting," but he rejected the advice: "I loved bowling. And being an allrounder suited me. I was always in the game. I wanted to bat like Bradman, bowl like Larwood. Straightforward. Simple."

It was his fast bowling that got him into the Dulwich School team at the age of 14: "Seeing my name on the team sheet for the first time, that was the greatest moment in my whole career. Undoubtedly. I was sitting in class and I put my hand up to be excused. Just to see it again."

It was his bowling, too, that got him into the England team in 1949, where he took six New Zealand wickets in the first innings at Headingley. "I don't remember much about that. Only that I took my wife to Harrogate on the Sunday, to the seaside. When we got off the bus, I was looking for the people with buckets and spades, to follow them."

But it was his batting that made him a national hero, starting with the all-day partnership with Willie Watson that defied the Australians at Lord's in 1953. Originally a free-scoring player, he came to be the Barnacle, a man with an impeccable forward defensive. "It became part and parcel of me. Like the singer with his top hat. `Give me the moonlight, give me the girl.' People expected it of me."

In South Africa in 1956-57 he topped the bowling averages and opened the batting all series. In 61 Tests he scored 2,290 runs at 29.74, and he took 132 wickets. Until Ian Botham emerged he was the only homegrown Test-class England allrounder of the post-war era. Now he thinks we might be seeing a third. "I saw Flintoff get a hundred five years ago and he looked very good indeed. He's very talented."

So why only the three of them?

"It's a hard life for an allrounder in county cricket. If you want a Test quality allrounder, assuming he's a seam bowler, he's got to be opening the attack for his county. As a batsman he's got to be in the first four or five. And if he's a spinner, he's got to be the No. 1 spinner.

"Ray Illingworth was pretty good but he played for a county where he wasn't required to score as many runs as he would at another. And if Ben Hollioake had played for Essex or Leicestershire, he might have become an England allrounder. He'd have come in at five or six and his runs would have been needed. But Surrey will never produce allrounders on their wicket."

With Essex he was always in the game. They were the only side in 1948 to bowl the Australians out in a day: "They got 721. Tom Pearce was captain. He had a pre-war approach. The idea was to get the opposition out, not to stop them scoring."

He took all 10 wickets against Lancashire at Clacton: "And we lost by 10 wickets." And he's received a booklet from a statistician, setting out that he did the double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets at both Southchurch and Chalkwell Parks. "I'm the only cricketer to do it on two grounds in the same town," he boasts.

Did the 14-year-old who wanted to be Bradman and Larwood expect all this? "Not quite like that. Not as it occurred." And if he were 14 now, who would he want to bat and bowl like?

A smile comes across his face as he thinks. His 80th birthday approaches but his enthusiasm for the game has not dimmed. "Bowl like McGrath. Bat like Mark Waugh."