From heroes to zeroes

It began at Bishop Auckland Grammar School, where first form cricket was compulsory, continued through several years' country membership and almost ended at Chester-le-Street last Friday.

First formers were allocated, arbitrarily, to "counties". We were the Somerset set, the column crouched clumsily behind the stumps - an aspiring, though hopelessly ineffectual, Harold Stephenson. We won nowt then, either.

Subsequent heroes have ranged from W E Alley to I T Botham, from Fred Rumsey to Colin Dredge, the dear old Demon of Frome. Somerset have had both wyvern and why-aye-vern.

There was the sun-blessed day at Worcester when Viv Richards and Dasher Denning hit scintillating centuries and the heavily pregnant lady of this house fell asleep behind the heavy roller, the Weston-super-Mare festival with marquees merrily around the recreation ground, the Sunday afternoon at the Imperial Ground in Bristol when the unamused Boycott was run out without facing a ball and there was the debacle of last Friday.

Though Durham led by 200-odd on first innings, the home crowd was risibly restless. Lewis, the captain, had failed to enforce the follow-on.

Theories abounded, the most popular either that he'd never been in such a position before and didn't know what to do, or that they'd ordered Saturday's pies.

We sat with the BBC, Spennymoor area lads mainly.

It stands not for British Broadcasting Corporation but Boundary Bull**** Club, and they did their best to live up to the self-denigration.

Durham were dismissed for 168, leaving the visitors 375 to win. If they did it, broadcast the BBC, Lewis would have to go.

The skipper, of course, had simply realised the gossamer fragility and supine mentality of the Somerset line-up but may never have imagined how spinelessly they would submit.

Within three overs we were 1-4, soon afterwards 2-5 and 8-6. Someone remembered India being 0-4 but couldn't think where or when. It ended at 56 all out.

"Abject," we said to Mervyn Hardy, a fixture on the Riverside boundary when not on the Peterlee bench.

"They'd have better words for it than that in Shotton Comrades club," said Mervyn.

They would in Shepton Mallett, an' all.

Harold Stephenson was a Haverton Hill lad and ICI sheet metal worker, played both football and cricket for Billingham Synthonia before making his Durham County debut in 1947 - so adeptly that he kept the legendary Arthur Austin out of the side.

Not a couple of miles up the road, the young Dick Spooner was simultaneously keeping canny for Norton before going on to Warwickshire and England.

In 17 Somerset summers, Harold Stephenson played 463 first-class matches, five times topped 1,000 runs for the season, totalled 13,195 runs and had 1,080 victims - almost a third stumped.

Now 83, he is still in the Taunton area, but is said to be unwell.

Perhaps with Somerset and sticky wickets in mind, recent columns have wondered about the term "treacle" as applied to cricket - generally believed to be a sort of sporting witch's stool for juvenile batsmen disputing their dismissal.

Lez Rawe in Bishop Auckland remembers it differently. In his Toft Hill browtins-up you were given a "treacle" or trial ball, he writes, from which the batsman could neither score nor be out.

"That way your innings always lasted more than one ball. They were kindly folk in Toft Hill."

Lez also has a much more coincidental connection with today's column. It was he, all those years ago, who was sports master at Bishop Auckland Grammar School. It is he who is to blame for Somerset.

South Shields FC, to whose friendly with Gateshead we fled after the Riverside rout, have welcomed Paul Wealands to the committee. His son Keith, the Mariners' 22-year-old centre half, was killed in a car crash on his way home from a match last season. "It makes me feel as if I'm still involved with him," said Paul.

Michael Kinnair, known as Dirty Kinnair for reasons which are wholly ironic, marked his 500th match for Marske United with a testimonial on Sunday.

Central defender, lovely feller, he has only once been sent off - for a "last man" offence at Thornaby in the early days of that ultimate legislation.

Even then, everyone agreed, he was the last man on earth of whom they'd have supposed it.

Still just 29, he joined Marske from Rotherham United, scored in his second game and by 1997 had amassed nine. In the 233 games since then, however, he has failed totally to find the net.

"A bit of a dry spell," mused Sunday's programme, loyally.

The opposing All Star XI, assembled by former Boro and Northern Ireland man Terry Cochrane, may not have been quite as luminous as had been hoped but still included the evergreen likes of Jim Platt, Alan Shoulder, Paul Dalton and Barry Dunn, the gas board man who briefly became a favourite at Sunderland.

Now 51 and as enthusiastic as ever, Barry had new boots for the new season. "£10 from Makro, it's all I can afford these days," he said.

The column had hoped to chat to Gary Bennett, Sunderland icon and former Darlington manager, but he must have been playing elsewhere. Word is, however, that the 42-year-old has signed for an Albany Northern League club next season.

The league gave Michael a salver, the club a This Is Your Life compilation. Still a bit bairn, there's a lot more life in the lad yet. "I want to go on so that no-one will ever beat the record," he said.

Clearly it's the time of year for first footing in Makro boots. Over 40s League secretary Kip Watson reports that John Stanham, secretary of the Sportsmans Arms in Sunderland, gave his new pair a run-out on Saturday. It was only then he discovered that one was a size nine and the other a ten.

"I think he wore three pairs of socks," says Kip.

And finally...

What stumped absolutely everyone at the Chester-le-Street Riverside on Friday afternoon was that morning's poser - the identity of the five England one-day cricket captains whose surname has begun with the letter G.

Gooch, Gatting and Gower tripped easily from the tongue; Greig might fairly easily have been teased out. The fifth was Norman Gifford, assistant manager on the 1985 tour to India and Pakistan, who became captain for two Rothman's Trophy matches in Sharjah.

He was 45, failed to score but bagged four wickets.

Gifford's first-class debut, adds Steve Smith, was for Worcestershire against Kent on June 15, 1960 at Tunbridge Wells - the last first-class match to end in a day.

Kent reached 187, young Gifford claiming 4-63, before dismissing the visitors for 25 and 61. Kent captain Colin Cowdrey declared the pitch a "brute" - Gifford's debut was over by ten past seven. Steve Smith, again, today seeks the identity of the ten Durham cricketers in Minor Counties days who won man of the match awards in the Gillette Cup and its successors.

Razor sharp again on Friday.

Published: 05/08/2003