by David Lloyd
Clive arrived at the club during the same year as Farokh but only played a couple of second XI Championship fixtures in 1968 before making his mark the following season. You would have thought the club would have been moving heaven and earth to ensure that we looked after this rising star of the world scene. Oh no, they had found a cut-price deal on accommodation and ran with it, failing to view his address in the centre of Manchester, Unit Two Sauna, with any suspicion. Clive had to make do with kipping in this rather sordid establishment, until word got back to the committee that these actions were insulting to our new guest and besmirched the image of the club.
Thankfully, he overlooked this indiscretion and stuck around to become a great team-mate. The pair of us used to have real fun, telling people we were brothers by a different mother, and when it came to Lancashire he really was part of the family. Like me, he would go on to be club captain, in two stints in his case, shortly after conquering the world with his great West Indies team. But when it came to the captaincy at Old Trafford, it was my turn first.
CHAPTER 6
The New Bond
It might not have been broadcast on the jungle telegraph around Manchester, but the 1972 season coincided with an important change in my status. Although my team-mates were completely unaware, I had been chosen to work-shadow Jack Bond, having been identified by the man himself as his successor as Lancashire captain.
The grooming process, which began soon after Jack decided to call it a day, meant I spent as much time as possible by his side, so that I could learn from his methods and how he implemented certain things during his daily duties. Once you are placed in the situation of captain-in-waiting, it’s amazing how much more intently you watch and how much more empathetic you become.
Undoubtedly, it altered my standing within the playing group, with those out of the know suspecting that my alignment with Bond – we got on pretty famously previously but I now spent extended periods of time in his company – was to win the captain’s ear and be in pole position for a captaincy nomination as and when the change came. Even some of my staunchest pals, like Jack Simmons, saw my actions as some Machiavellian scheme. Little did they know that the club already had their captain for 1973 being groomed by the incumbent.
Lancashire’s policy was for the captain of the club to be involved in the appointment of his successor, and later that decade that meant me putting forward a recommendation for Frank Hayes, who was actually a few months my senior. In this instance, though, my contemporaries might not have viewed me as a candidate to take the baton from Jack because I was only twenty-five.
My first game in charge actually came on German soil. Yes, that’s right. I led my men onto the field for the first time in Mönchengladbach of all places. As a reward for another Gillette Cup-winning season, the club hierarchy rewarded us with an overseas post-season jolly. The only two catches in an otherwise well-received act of generosity were that we were not being dispatched to one of cricket’s colonial strongholds and that we were required to play some cricket.
Not that we let that get in the way of our revelry at the army camp where we were based. The full eighteen-man squad was in attendance and the first night was the kind you envisage from a group high on the fumes of success. This had been the third end of season in a row that we were celebrating claiming a Lord’s final trophy, and at this event there was strong German beer at hand, initially provided by the wallet of the club secretary Jack Wood and then by whoever, after a couple of pints had loosened everyone else’s purse strings.
Jack Bond had made it clear he would sit out the first match to allow me to cut my teeth as captain. So, intent on taking the job seriously, I slipped off early and headed back to the military housing block where we slept to sketch some fielding plans for each of our bowlers. Prepared for each individual, I would have a word or two in their shell-likes in the morning before play to show that I had given serious thought to their best-laid plans.
Only none was there to chat with at the appointed meet time, having fallen prey to the continental draught’s extra strength. To the Army team this was a crack fixture against the English domestic one-day champions, and make no mistake, they wanted to scalp us. However, there was only myself and Edward Slinger available to scalp at the time of the toss, which thankfully I won. With no option but to ask our hosts to field, I hot-footed it back to the dormitories to arouse what resembled a bunch of extras from Michael Jackson’s Thriller video.
Few were overly eager to participate, even fewer did themselves justice and thanks to the carnage enacted on a coconut matting pitch by a West Indian fast bowler called Corporal Williams, I began my captaincy reign with a chastening defeat.
It was a great honour to be Jack Bond’s choice because I had such a huge respect for his views on the game and his eye for a player. He had an unerring habit of making calls on people and getting them right, when others dismissed them as fancies of a madman, most notably when Northamptonshire released the fast bowler Peter Lee. There was nothing like a successful record behind Leapy nor a queue of suitors forming when it became public that he was surplus to requirements at Wantage Road. But Jack saw something in him that others didn’t, and his faith in my credentials to become a leader in this context felt like a huge feather in my cap.
People might have thought I was still a bit green to be taking over from him, but he thought I’d had enough experience and was ready for the next career step. In one way, I was on a hiding to nothing because at the time there was no harder act to follow, other than perhaps Morecambe and Wise. I was certainly not going to be able to match his trophy haul, despite an enviable playing squad and the club’s sound investment in those two crack overseas players Clive Lloyd and Farokh Engineer.
With them aboard we were simply irresistible at times, and we remained the force in limited-overs cricket for a good period. However, we relinquished the Lord’s winning habit, losing there twice, which meant that the 1975 final triumph was my sole success. Clive was magnificent on these types of occasion and, having been the only man on either side to make 20 in a low-scoring defeat to Kent in 1974, took the man of the match award with an unbeaten 73 to complete a seven-wicket win over Middlesex on their home ground twelve months later. Receiving the cup surrounded by our band of travelling supporters on the outfield in front of the Lord’s pavilion was a pretty special feeling. As I jumped off the podium, I let out a sigh. It was one not of relief but fulfilment.
Our one-day game plan was always to set off as if it was a normal cricket match and then go berserk at the end. That tactic did not alter through the transition from Jack’s team to mine, and neither did our attention to detail when it came to fielding. Like Jack, I wanted my best two or three fielders in those key areas either side of the pitch, and so the players in question would be Clive Lloyd, David Hughes and Frank Hayes. That trio were all exceptional, as good as anything you have seen.
Despite his stooping gait and ponderous mannerisms, Clive was arguably the very best cricket has ever seen – quick, with great hands and a rocket arm. In fact, he was so unbelievably flexible that he carried a scar on his right hand to prove it. Can you believe that he would bend down to pick up the ball at pace and regularly end up spiking himself in the process? He was that supple that it caused him to cut himself several times, some wounds being more serious than others.
His agility meant he was able to do things others could not, and it caused much mirth when later in our careers he and I were doing our advanced coaching badges together at Lilleshall under the guidance of Les Lenham. One of the exercises was a fielding drill to be used to demonstrate to your charges how to pick up, turn and throw. The ball was rolled out, and we would run from the starting position near the stumps, track it down, and pick it up with your foot on your throwing hand side aligned next to the ball. You would then pivot round and return it to the person stood at the stumps.
However, Clive, bless him, could not get the hang of it. He was that good that he couldn’t
bring himself to carry out this simplistic exercise, preferring to pick it up in one motion and flick throw it back through his own legs. ‘I know you’ve knocked the stumps out of the ground, Clive, but you’re doing it completely wrong!’ Les told him. Poor bloke just couldn’t get the hang of fielding like a mere mortal, and so for the purposes of his coaching qualifications, it got to the ludicrous situation where we had to walk him through step by step. Chase, stop, turn, throw. That’s it, Clive. Tick.
With cheap singles cut out, the onus was on the new-ball bowlers to take wickets. We would start off with two slips and a gully, and sometimes a short leg. If a team got 160-170 you were out of sight in a 40-over Sunday League match, while scores in the 55-over and 60-over competitions were routinely between 200 and 250, so disrupting the early innings was priceless. In fact, if you had to pinpoint the biggest change in the way the game has developed, it would be in the totals being strung together. Of course, you expect tactical changes to develop in any sport, but the way we have seen this reflected in cricket’s shorter formats is something I don’t believe any of us could have anticipated.
Folk will argue that it is because contemporary batsmen hit the ball further as big bats promote bigger hits, but the square was only rotated at Old Trafford as recently as 2012 and yet the only players I ever recall hitting the ball over the pavilion there, as the ground was previously configured, were Clive Lloyd and Jack Simmons. Another lad, Bob Entwistle, a player who mainly played in the seconds and was involved when I came through, would regularly hit the ball into the adjacent railway track with his forte shot, the pull. Now, the pitch didn’t move in the interim and neither did the railway, but he was the only one I saw do it regularly. Equally, Frank Hayes hit one off Bishan Bedi onto what was then the nursery ground and has more recently become the net practice area. That’s a really big hit.
It also went down in local folklore when Peter Marner cleared H stand with an enormous hit off the Leicestershire off-spinner John Savage, becoming the only batsman known to do so. In those days, there was no need for fancy stand names after former players, they were all just plain old A, B, C, D etc, and H had its own notoriety as underneath it was the old Draught Bass bar, a real ramshackle old thing that despite its appearance appealed to plenty with a thirst.
During the 1960s, one of the bar’s patrons in particular was known for frequenting this stand, a supporter known to all of us as Draught Bass Harry. He liked his ale did Harry, and his party piece was to have a pint of Bass every time a Lancashire wicket fell. Now, even our staunchest supporters would admit we weren’t a great batting side in those days, and that meant we regularly slipped to 90 for eight before lunch so that poor old Harry had slipped into the most drastic state of inebriation. On our worst mornings of the season, you would see three or four of his mates carrying Harry out.
The bars used to do a roaring trade for Sunday League matches when our attendances were regularly in five figures. Competition rules meant that you had to finish bowling the first innings by 4.10 p.m. and so, as captain, I was responsible for not allowing us to slip behind time and be punished with a loss of overs when it was our turn to bat. This is when another infamous Old Trafford regular would come to the fore. With ten minutes left, often with the opposition going well, and the ball flying all over the place because it was the end of the innings, distraction was always an unwelcome guest. All you wanted to concentrate on is which bowlers to put on at each end, where to get your field set and how to get through as quickly as possible.
But another one of our notorious hecklers, Harry Bowker – the proprietor of the Harry Bowker Food Store in Ramsbottom and known to everyone around the members’ area as Harry from Rammy – would stagger from the bar, where he’d been supping gin shandies all afternoon, at four o’clock every Sunday and ring the bell, usually coinciding with me looking exasperated, trying to work out how to protect the short leg-side boundary.
DING-A-LING!
The rest of the crowd were sent into hoots and used to respond with shouts of ‘Go on, Harry!’ not that he needed any egging on.
‘Lloydy! Marshall your men! One more time down the line,’ he would shout before making his way back to the bar in the most exaggerated stagger imaginable. This performance was as regular as clockwork on a Sunday. You could set your watch by Harry and his drunken bell-ringing.
The Pit of Hate – positioned under the clock of the Old Trafford pavilion – had its own notoriety. This was an area where like-minded fellows gathered to put the world to rights. Sat side-on to the umpires, they would provide running commentaries for those around them. They say that you can tell a Yorkshireman but you can’t tell him much. It was similar with this group of Lancastrian diehards. There was not much they didn’t know and they ensured that the umpires were always on their game, regularly shouting out welcome advice like: ‘Watch that front line now, he’s getting close to a no ball. In fact, you’ve just missed one there.’
The gang members in the Pit of Hate included Billy the Butcher, John the Bore, Mr Jinx, The Scribe, Rubber Duck, Rubber Duck’s brother and Throbbin’ Robin. Of course, their barks were far nastier than their bites and there was something pseudo-comical about their passion. Their reputations went before them – after all, how many sets of players at sporting clubs know the nicknames of a band of supporters? From the dressing-room balcony we used to be able to identify each of them whenever they imparted their public advice.
On one occasion the players got our own back when our chief prankster Mick Malone, the Australian fast bowler, dropped a rubber snake on a string right in among them as they were shouting and balling. Positioned on the balcony directly above this volatile lot, Mick lowered it into one of their pints and with a flick of his wrist whipped it back up again. ‘Did you see that? It was a flying snake,’ one said, after dropping his glass. ‘Give me a pint of what he’s drinking!’ shouted another. We were all gathered behind Mick, having a right old giggle.
There was an affinity between the club’s players and supporters during the 1970s fostered by the number of big matches we played and the success we enjoyed in those matches. Although the Lancashire side I took over was slightly on the wane, and Jack Bond was always going to be a tough act to follow, we still got to three more Lord’s finals. Up until then, history had shown that we didn’t lose these pressure matches, so it was something of a shock when that changed – in fact, it made them fairly devastating losses. None more so than in the 1973 Benson & Hedges Cup semi-final when our former player Jim Cumbes, who would return to Lancashire as chief executive in future years, came to the crease at No. 11 and helped Worcestershire secure their passage to Lord’s on losing fewer wickets after they matched our all out total of 159.
Revenge came twelve months later when we won a Gillette semi at New Road via our trusted method of putting runs on the board and squeezing the game in the second innings. However, we were soon to find out that while there is no better place to win than at Lord’s, equally there is no worse place to lose. The four-wicket defeat to Kent left us with the inescapable feeling that we had let the fans down. That has been a well-versed expression over the years, but during our one-day heyday it genuinely felt like you were playing for them. Thousands of folk would organise their weekends away to come and cheer us on, and it was their cup as much as ours. They expected to win too.
On Gillette Cup final day, the ground would be full in absolutely no time, the atmosphere building up well before the toss. Even entering the ground held a special feeling. We would stay at the Clarendon Court Hotel on Edgware Road, arriving on a Friday to drop all the kit off at the ground. That meant that instead of arriving on a coach as was the tradition for FA Cup finals, we would arrive on foot and saunter through the Grace Gates with the words of well-wishers ringing in our ears. The buzz of cup final morning was intoxicating.
As a Lancashire player, these occasions were not daunting; they were addictive, and full of positive memories. We knew what to do to get over the wi
nning line. The atmosphere held no surprises, it was second nature to us. Success breeds success, as they say, and it felt like we always had one-day finals under control. Until that match against Kent, that is: a really low-scoring affair even by the standards of the age. Realistically we were never going to defend a score of 118, made from exactly 60 overs, although we gave it a bloody good go and caused more than a few jitters in reducing Kent to 75 for five and 89 for six. But once they broke into three figures, the writing was on the wall. Then, and perhaps only then, did we see that we were fallible in this new form of the game.
They were never high-scoring games, played as they were at the back end of the season on pitches that had seen better days and the light disappearing fast by the match’s final throes. Yet, we never spent too much time fretting about early morning movement from any moisture that lay under the surface on these September days – I believe the mind-forged demons about the nibbling surface developed some years later when uncovered pitches had long since gone – nor the light issue.
Never was this better emphasised than in 1971 when we won a Gillette semi-final against Gloucestershire courtesy of some wonderful late-innings hitting by David Hughes. A most resourceful cricketer, Hughes offered a plentiful supply of tail-end runs throughout his career, but never were those runs to prove more valuable than the ones made in near darkness against that fabulous Gloucestershire team. When concern was expressed over the light during this late flurry, umpire Arthur Jepson offered the legendary retort: ‘I can see the moon – how much further do you want to see?’ Thankfully, Yosser saw us all the way to St John’s Wood.
The only time I can recall a pitch being juiced up so severely that it caused a major advantage for one team over another was nothing to do with rain or early morning dew but snow. Yes, snow, in a game against Derbyshire at Buxton in June 1975, and we were the beneficiaries.
It was in glorious sunshine that we launched a batting blitz on Saturday 31 May, after I won the toss. It really was short sleeves, deckchairs and ice creams – a batting utopia. My contribution was 69, but Frank Hayes, with 104, and Clive Lloyd were the real stars of a total of 477 for five declared, with Clive’s unbeaten 167 coming at a rate of a run a minute. We scored so quickly, in fact, that I was able to pull out and allow our bowlers an hour at the Derbyshire top order that evening, a short session in which we reduced our hosts to 25 for two.