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Cricket Diary: More than the trophy to play for today

Stephen Brenkley
Saturday 06 September 1997 23:02 BST
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When Ian Thomson made the ball curve like a banana at Lord's one September morning in 1964, he launched two cricketing customs. The first is that whoever bats first in the one-day knockout final is up against it and the second is that there is no better place to influence selectors about to pick the winter touring party.

Thomson's incisive opening spell for Sussex in the Gillette Cup final, as it then was, reduced Warwickshire to 21 for 3. They never recovered, were all out for 127 and lost by eight wickets. Thomson finished with 4 for 23 from 13 overs and three days later at the age of 35, found himself in the England party destined for South Africa and on the verge of starting his brief Test career.

"I thought it was far too late by then," Thomson said. "I'd been on the tour a few years before but never played in an international. What helped in the Gillette final was that MJK Smith was captain of Warwickshire, and he was also the England captain. But I was still astonished when my name was announced."

Thomson had probably entered into Smith's thinking earlier that summer in a championship match when he took all 10 Warwickshire wickets in their first innings. But he remains convinced that what did it for him was his performance in the final. "It's such a big stage," he said. "There are so many people watching they tend to remember it.

"The funny thing is that I don't know why the ball swung as it did that day. Conditions hadn't changed at all when Warwickshire bowled, but Tom Cartwright, who was a better bowler than me, couldn't get it to deviate at all. We put it down to the ball itself."

Thomson, 68, remains the oldest and perhaps oddest example of a player getting himself into the England Test team via his performance in what is now the NatWest Trophy. Actually, some of those reputed to have followed him in the past 30 years have not been so clear-cut. Clive Radley's 85 not out for Middlesex in 1977 cannot have been the sole factor because he had just come off the back of a prolific season. Similarly, it is usual to suggest that Geoff Cook earned his tour place by scoring 111 for Northamptonshire in 1981 but he also averaged more than 40 in first-class matches that year. Roland Butcher made a quickfire 50 to win the match for Middlesex in 1980 and was picked for the West Indies the following week. But Butcher had also scored two huge August hundreds.

What the NatWest final gives players is a chance to make a last-ditch bid. Chris Cowdrey and Vic Marks are another pair who may be grateful to it for sealing winter employment.

Back in 1990, Phillip DeFreitas, after enduring a wholly indifferent season in which his wickets cost more than 40 runs each, took five wickets on a balmy morning and earned a tour. Last year Glen Chapple of Lancashire took 6 for 18 against Essex and made England A's tour. Today, Nick Knight, Doug Brown, Graeme Welch, Ashley Giles, Ashley Cowan and Robert Rollins, to name but six, have more than a trophy to play for.

STEVE JAMES, who deserves more than almost anyone to be selected for a winter in the Caribbean, is enthusiastic about his admiration for Graham Burgess. The former Somerset all-rounder nurtured the Glamorgan opener as a pupil at Monmouth School before leaving to become an umpire.

"We still keep in touch," James said the other day. "He still helps my technique an awful lot but he's also not averse to giving me out lbw." Fateful words. At The Oval last week James made his way to 23 when he was leg- before. The man with the upraised finger was Burgess.

TO GET away from cricket, Don Robson, the driving force behind, and chairman of, Durham, decided to take a holiday.

Ignoring suggestions that all he had to do to get away from cricket was to go down to the Riverside Ground, he went to Canada. "My wife, Jennifer, was very keen to go somewhere where she wouldn't have to watch me watching the game," said Robson, who is also leader of Durham County Council. Naturally, therefore, the first sight they saw while walking round Vancouver was a club cricket match. A good standard it was, too, said Robson, who stayed to watch "far longer than I should have done". But there was nobody good enough to help out even his embattled side.

He should not have been surprised to see the game there. Canada played America at cricket in 1844. It is held to be the oldest international match of all.

Book mark: "The Yorkshire cricket tradition has been built by sound legislature and grand cricketers, and we who have been given the honour of carrying it on are proud of our responsibility. We wear our white rose badge defiantly, and we hope that those with whom we play understand that our defiance is based not on the success that has attended the work of our team but on our jealous love for our county." No, not the present Yorkshire captain, David Byas, but Herbert Sutcliffe in his autobiography For England and Yorkshire, published in 1935.

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