Last in the Tin Bath

by David Lloyd

  Once established on the county scene, it’s about demanding attention from the England selectors through consistent performances, then waiting for your opportunity. If and when that opportunity knocks, you have to ensure you’re on top of your game. It’s important in that situation for the two things to marry, and thankfully for me others believed they were happily wed when Boycott’s omission opened up a spot. There were those who would have taken private pleasure at his rare lean patch on the international stage, but I have never had any major beefs with Boycott – a minor charge sheet containing a couple of unnecessary run-outs, a couple of heated exchanges when I was England coach and the fact that my wife Diana thinks he’s essential listening notwithstanding. I simply wanted his England place.

  Boycs had moved aside amid all kinds of conjecture. The rumours were of no real interest to me, however, because as an England aspirant his demise led to my rise. Reports surfaced that he was preoccupied with the organisation of his benefit and the demands of his position as captain of Yorkshire; there was even talk of him falling out with the then captain Mike Denness (only later in his own autobiography did Boycott reveal he believed the Scot had ‘wanted as much to do with me as the Black Death’). From my point of view, though, everything else was immaterial – I was selected by Alec Bedser and his co-selectors as his direct replacement as opening batsman.

  As far as I was concerned, he was just out of the reckoning, I had been picked, given the chance to fulfil a dream and play for my country, and everything else went over my head. I was concentrating on the business of scoring runs to better myself, focusing on that red, spherical leather object being hurled down at me from twenty-two yards – not analysing personality clashes, or the torment Boycott surprisingly suffered at the hands of the innocuous-looking swing bowler Eknath Solkar at the start of India’s tour.

  The chance to promote my own case against the Indians came in a Lancashire fixture at Old Trafford in May. I always felt confident against spin, had a good gameplan against it, and wholeheartedly believed I had done enough to earn a touring place to the subcontinent two years earlier because of this. So it had been something of a heartache that I was overlooked for that assignment and Barry Wood, my opening partner at county level, chosen in my place. My form at the end of 1972 had also been rich, but the hundreds I reeled off towards its back end had, according to Cyril Washbrook, the Lancashire man on the England selection panel, come too late to influence their thinking. My consolation for this near miss was a £50 fee to be a standby tourist.

  However, it did confirm that I had made it onto the periphery of national selection, and showed me that the target I was striking at was only an arm’s length away. As it happened, my three-figure effort against an attack including spin trio Bhagwath Chandrasekhar, Srinivas Venkataraghavan and Bishan Bedi was well positioned, sandwiched as it was between matches in which Boycott chained a succession of failures.

  In four innings for Yorkshire and MCC, Boycott was dismissed three times by the left-armer Solkar and didn’t make it out of the teens in any of them. It almost beggared belief that the finest opening batsman of his generation, he of the impenetrable defence and astute judge of stroke who had more than 4500 Test runs to his name, could have a problem with such an innocuous trundler whose career return on the same stage was eighteen victims at 59.44. But, when he became one of that fairly exclusive set in the second innings of the first Test at Old Trafford, I got my chance.

  In truth, I had felt close to selection for a couple of years and knew the kind of figures necessary to catch the right eyes – those of Alec Bedser and the rest of the national selectors. One thing that hasn’t changed over the decades is the batting benchmark of a minimum of 1000 first-class runs a season. My two previous campaigns had been the best of my career, bounties that would not be beaten as things turned out: the 1510 runs of 1972 followed by 1405 in 1973. Undoubtedly, 1972 represented my career turning point. Although it was the fourth year in a row I broke into those four figures, crucially I had begun to turn scores into hundreds. There had been only five in my career to that point, but six that season pointed to a greater maturity to my game. Confidence in my ability was abundant, perhaps boosted by my new role as heir apparent to Jack Bond, and at twenty-five you are undoubtedly at the peak of your powers as a batsman.

  In addition to the 1000-a-year tally, I worked on the principle that you needed at least three first-class hundreds as the kind of form to merit selection. By the time the series against India began in June 1974, I already had two hundreds to my name for the season, including the one against the Indians in Manchester.

  For some time I’d wanted to read the kind of headline printed in the Daily Mirror on 15 June: ‘Boycott out – Selectors go for Lloyd’. Five days later, I was Test debuting at Lord’s, making 46 – caught at leg gully, prodding forward – in a crushing innings victory. I actually discovered news of my selection as all players omitted or selected did at the time, via an announcement on radio. There was nothing sinister in this, it was just that the game was not as it is today, with email communication and mobile phone contact from the chairman of selectors. We are so used to our world of 24/7 connections that we forget an age when discoveries were made via television and radio. Official confirmation came within twenty-four hours.

  As the debutant, I took all the telephone calls from the press men on that Sunday before the match to discuss my situation. If I was defensive about my selection during these interviews, it was nothing to do with not wanting to be cast as Boycott’s Roses rival – which I can now see was an intriguing sub-plot – just that I think I was slightly taken aback still. Therefore, I didn’t offer much other than the usual banalities about dreams coming true. The first thing you come to realise when you’re sitting on the other side of the fence when it comes to the media is that 99 times out of 100 they want to chat to you because you’ve done well. They’re not trying to catch you out, they’re only looking for some colour to your story. But despite being in form over a lengthy period of time, my progress towards the England team had not all been one lengthy up-curve. Indeed, there had been several troughs in among my peaks.

  Although I had maintained high standards for Lancashire, I kept flunking in higher company. Take the 1973 Test trial for example, a match between all the hopefuls including automatic picks, scheduled in early May, the first of its kind for twenty years. This match was down at Hove and, although I arrived in a positive mood, I departed cursing the very presence of this contest in the itinerary. I literally showed them nothing of my ability – pinned leg before for nought in the first innings, I trumped that by being run out without facing a ball in the second. I was not the first player to have suffered that fate while partnering Geoffrey, and far from the last.

  Having arrived in such high spirits, I was mortified in the dressing room to reflect on such a wasted opportunity, and therefore thankful for John Snow’s balm. A man of relatively few words, he suggested I forget about it ‘because tomorrow’s another day’. Even then, I don’t think I was sad to see the back of this fixture.

  When it had come round the following season, there was a hint of my place in the pecking order when I was chosen in the England XI against the Rest. Boycott and Dennis Amiss were the opening pair, with me following at No. 3. Trying to read too much into these kinds of selection can be fraught with danger, and I was unable to ascertain where I stood with any certainty thanks to another piece of misfortune.

  While Boycott made a hundred in each innings of this match at New Road, Worcester, suggesting talk of his demise was premature, I was bowled by the off-spinner Jack Birkenshaw for my third successive duck in these fixtures. Even though I struck 50 in the second innings, further calamity followed when I injured a finger in the deep trying to catch John Edrich. Not only did I fail in this pursuit, he would finish with a century and a 95 as the contest petered out into a draw.

  That had effectively ruled me out of contention for the first Test on my home patch in Manc
hester, because even if my injury had healed in miraculously quick time, Edrich had a stronger claim to a place in the top order. Indeed, Edrich took his place at No. 3 during that series, with Boycott and Amiss starting off, before the switch and my call-up for Lord’s.

  They say making a good first impression is crucial, but unfortunately I failed in this department when it came to my Test debut. Gubby Allen, one of the central figures in the dramatic Bodyline series of the early 1930s and a man who effectively ran English and world cricket in various capacities for the next four decades, was not someone to get on the wrong side of. So it was lucky for me then that he didn’t take offence at our first meeting.

  One of the aspects that has changed on the international scene is the arrival time of the home team before a match. Now it tends to be on a Sunday evening or a Monday morning for a Thursday start, with net practices of varying intensity in the lead-up days. In 1974, it was as late as the afternoon before, and due to my nervous excitement I turned up ahead of schedule, wearing my pride and joy – a rather snazzy yellow double-breasted leather jacket. To put this fashion accessory into context, in terms of its appeal one might consider it to be the equivalent of red trousers in 2015. Safe to say, I believed I was cooler than the Hofmeister bear in this get-up, as I strolled into the home dressing room at Lord’s and put my bag down.

  On entering I noticed there was this chap sat at the table, and not knowing who he was, asked: ‘How do?’

  ‘Hullo,’ came the rather authoritative reply.

  Although I tried to strike up a conversation, as much to help me work out who the hell he was as anything else, it was proving a bit of a one-way street, and it entered my head that he might have just been a member of the public who had wandered in. In no uncertain terms, I advised him that the rest of the England team would be on their way in shortly, hinting that he might like to make himself scarce.

  ‘You’ve no idea who I am, have you?’ he responded.

  ‘No, I can’t say I have, sorry.’

  ‘The name’s Gubby. Gubby Allen.’

  ‘How do you do?’ I said, sheepishly, still brimming with uncertainty.

  Thankfully, he didn’t hold my ignorance against me during our evening gatherings in the MCC committee room as his guests.

  In contrast to Allen, who was then MCC treasurer, his successor as chairman of the England selectors, Alec Bedser, was a lot more like one of the boys. Clocking me in my yellow jacket that week, he put me at ease with the blunt inquiry: ‘What the bloody hell’s that?’

  These days if you get picked for England, you turn up in the full suit for a Test match, what the players refer to as their number ones. Back then you were only kitted out afterwards, hence my turning up looking like a stunt double from Starsky & Hutch. I was yet to receive my England jacket or indeed my MCC piping blazer that I would be sporting on tour that following winter, and there was no elaborate presentation of your cloth cap as happens in public now. It was just placed under your peg in the changing room.

  As it was I was quite happy in this yellow fashion accessory that I viewed as the dog’s proverbials. It had been purchased from a bespoke gents’ outfitters in Rawtenstall called Nobbutlads. At least, that’s how it was written phonetically in our local dialect – in the Queen’s English you might say Nowt But Lads.

  This jacket proved something of a home comfort to me that week, and there were heaps of telegrams offering good wishes from friends and family back in Lancashire when I arrived in the dressing room to remind me of my roots too. Unfortunately, Susan and my parents could not make it down for the match, but Dad scored it in one of his books, watching on the BBC back in Accrington. Any lingering nerves were settled by my negotiation of the new ball and indeed making it back in for lunch unscathed after Mike Denness won the toss, and Dad was so very nearly registering a debut half-century. However, I was snared in the leg trap by the off-spinner Erapalli Prasanna just a boundary shy, and reaching my first England landmark was left for another day.

  At that stage, it was difficult to shake the feeling that I was keeping Boycott’s place warm, but the way to do so was to score runs if given another opportunity, which I duly was a fortnight later when the series moved to Edgbaston, and possibly the flattest pitch I had experienced in my life. I could not have wished for a better surface on which to play my second Test and stake a claim for a place in the touring party destined for Australia the following winter.

  When everything about your game is working in unison and things are going in your favour, that’s the time for you to cash in as a batsman. One match into my England Test career, I could hardly claim to be comfortable in my surroundings, but I felt in decent touch and I had now had a couple of lengthy looks at the Indian bowlers. There was nothing to strike fear into me despite them possessing a trio of slow bowlers in Prasanna, Bedi and Venkataraghavan each of whom would take in excess of 150 Test wickets.

  This was a pitch on which to score a hundred and an attack that suited me, because I always fancied myself against the spinners, particularly when using my feet to hit them down the ground. I set my stall out to achieve that target. Rain washed out the opening day’s play, but it mattered not to an England team with the upper hand in the series. India were shot out in no time and I was batting on Friday evening; and into Saturday evening as it turned out.

  It was during that Saturday evening session that I achieved a new career high. Never before had I scored a double hundred and it was a real sense of achievement breaking that duck while playing for my country. Not that there were any over-the-top celebrations. No French kissing of the badge, beating of the chest or pumping of the fists. I simply took off my cap and held it aloft along with my SS bat to acknowledge the crowd.

  Others recognised its worth, too. I got a friendly handshake from the left-armer Bedi, who I had nurdled behind square on the leg-side for the single that took me there, and another one a few seconds later from Keith Fletcher, who had hurried through from the non-striker’s end. I offered not much more than a restrained smile of satisfaction and have no memory of feeling fatigued despite having batted all day. I was in the zone, in the bubble.

  Farokh Engineer, a great colleague at Lancashire and a true gentleman, recognised it too, and he kept whispering over my shoulder: ‘Keep going Bumble, you’re in for a big one.’ Do not think for one minute that this was a little soft for international sport. Had I made the mistake of lurching out of my crease at any point, those bails would have been off in a flash. Farokh played hard but fair and there is a lot to be learned from that kind of attitude.

  Edgbaston had never witnessed a 200 by an England batsman before, but not everyone in attendance was impressed because as I was calmly taking in the magnitude of the moment a voice from the stands demanded: ‘Here, Lloyd. How much f***ing longer?’ I seemed to be a magnet for chaps like this – the one-line wits who got those around them chortling – and it always put things into context. Sport is a pastime, a bit of fun, and I was fortunate to be able to participate all the way to the top level. I finished on 214 not out after almost seven and a half hours at the crease.

  As well as having a maiden Test hundred behind me, I finished that summer of 1974 with another in a limited-overs international match at the end of a troubled tour of England by Pakistan. Relations had become quite strained between the teams after the Pakistanis levelled accusations of skulduggery during the Lord’s Test when Derek Underwood bowled them out. But these accusations that we were somehow complicit in the state of the pitch were codswallop.

  If there was any damp around Deadly was, well, as you can tell by the nickname – deadly. Persistent showers meant water had got under the covers and left a wet patch on the pitch. He kept hitting it and they simply couldn’t cope. I was stood at short leg and it was like picking cherries. Pakistan were decimated by Underwood in the first innings on a drying surface after a lengthy downpour on the opening day, and then – after we batted to secure a 140-run lead – rain struck again when Pak
istan came out to bat for a second time.

  It was actually on the Sunday, the traditional rest day of Test matches in this country, and Monday that London was the subject of some major downpours and when the temporary tent-like covering was removed, the pitch was discovered to be sodden. The rain had seeped through and in these conditions it was a different game altogether.

  Underwood bagged half a dozen wickets with his idiosyncratic left-arm-round stuff once the match finally resumed at around 5 p.m. on the fourth evening. In plunging Pakistan from 192 for three half an hour into play to 226 all out, he took his innings haul to eight and match figures to 13 for 71.

  It left England 87 runs for victory, 27 of which were wiped off by Dennis Amiss and myself before the close of play. But our efforts in ten overs against the new ball were far from the most newsworthy event that evening, due to Pakistan manager Omar Kureishi’s utter indignation. Kureishi slapped in an official complaint, accusing MCC of ‘negligence’ and ‘incompetence’ in their attempts to cover the wicket. In those days, if it rained after the Test match was underway then the run-ups and edges of the square were protected but the pitch itself was exposed to the elements. On rest days, however, every effort was made to protect it, and Pakistan’s argument was that they were entitled to bat on a pitch of similar condition to that when stumps were drawn on Saturday.

  As it turned out, we didn’t get back on. Despite the re-marking of the pitch during the final session on day five, the rain returned, and the contest, which had become more political than sporting, was abandoned to leave the match and series drawn. I failed to make headlines during these contests against Pakistan, although I top-scored in the first innings at bowler-friendly Headingley, and celebrated the news that I was in the winter tour party to Australia with 116 not out in the one-day international at Nottingham a matter of hours later.