When three became one
Stephen Chalke recalls Norman Gifford's dramatic introduction to first-class cricket
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"It was my first experience of a three-day game," Norman Gifford says, recalling the day in June 1960 that he made his first-class debut.
Three summers earlier, as a 17-year-old apprentice decorator, he had been bowling his slow left-arm spinners for Ulverston 2nd XI in the North Lancashire League. "I had no idea what my standard was," he says. Then an older club member spotted an advert in The Cricketer Winter Annual: `Worcestershire County Cricket Club require top-class spin bowler.' He approached Norman's father. "If I can get my boy a trial, would Norman want to go with him for company?" The following April, after three days at the Worcester ground, Gifford was astonished to be offered terms.
"People say that, when you start in cricket, you dream of playing for England. I think that's crackers. For me, just to get on the Worcester staff and be paid was way beyond what I'd dreamt of."
The next big step came in 1960. Playing a 2nd XI match at Maidstone, he received a call to join the county side at Tunbridge Wells. "I'd played one-day games for the Club and Ground and two-day games for the 2nd XI, but I'd never played the longer game. And I suppose I was thinking, `Can I hold my own at this level?'"
The senior players went out to inspect the pitch while he unloaded the bags from the Worcester coach. "When they came off, I said to Dick Richardson, `What's the wicket like?' He said, `You don't want to know.' It was just a rolled piece of mud, like a strip of plasticine. Had it been dull and overcast, it might have stayed like that. But the sun was out, the moisture went out of it, and the ball started to break through the surface."
Kent won the toss and batted, reaching 41 before debutant Gifford, with his third ball, bowled Arthur Phebey. "If we get 200 on that," the batsman said when he returned to the dressing room, "we'll win by an innings."
The Nevill ground was owned by the council, with a new groundsman with no knowledge of cricket pitches. In unsettled weather he had somehow managed to remove all the grass, and his late addition of marl (a fertilising agent) was a disaster. "Even in club cricket," Gifford says, "I'd never seen anything like it. At first there were indentations where the ball pitched. Then the whole wicket disintegrated. It just collapsed."
Kent's Peter Jones took his life in his hands. Dropped at long-on by Gifford, "he mixed good strokes with bad," according to the Worcester Evening News, and his 73 took Kent to a total of 187. They were all out at 3.40pm and by this stage "the pitch had broken up into a gravelly bed, more in keeping with a seaside beach".
Gifford, with 4 for 63 in 17 overs, was happy - "I'd got four first-class wickets" - but his figures looked very different once he found himself padding up at 9 for 6. They needed 38 to avoid the follow-on, but - despite two fours by Doug Slade - they were all out for 25 and batting again by 5.35. Dave Halfyard, a master of seam and cut, had taken 4 for 7 while Alan Brown, just by dropping the ball on to the broken surface, out-bowled him with 6 for 12. "In the end," Gifford remembers, "Halfyard was complaining. `I've developed the skill of bowling cutters, and he just runs up and does more than me.'"
"Dave was a great complainer," Brown confirms. "One day he came back to the dressing room without a wicket. `I'm doing so much with the ball,' he said, `that they're playing up the wrong line and middling it.'"
The Worcester second innings soon reached 18 for 5, with pairs for Ron Headley and George Dews. "Dick Richardson used to have a cigarette before batting," Gifford says. "He put it down and said, `Don't put that out. I'll have it when I come back.' And he did. There was that sort of feeling in the team."
Back in 1954, on a treacherous Oval pitch, Worcestershire had been bowled out for 25 and 40, the lowest two innings aggregate in England since 1908. Somehow at Tunbridge Wells, thanks to a gutsy 22 by Bob Broadbent, they managed to do better - with a final total of 61 that included a wide from Halfyard that had pitched in line with off stump. They were all out at 7.15, the last occasion on which a first-class match has finished in one day.
Roy Booth, the Worcester keeper, nursed a black eye, "a brute of a ball" having reared up to have him caught off bat and cheekbone, and he recalls going across to the Lady Mayor's marquee for close-of-play drinks. "As we arrived, we heard her saying, `Here come the Worcester side. Of course, they've ruined the Festival.' I don't think we stopped long."
Back in Worcester the next afternoon they were summoned for net practice, and Norman Gifford returned to the second team. He would have to wait a little longer for another taste of three-day cricket.
This article was first published in the January issue of The Wisden Cricketer.
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