Garry, Denis and Bryan

Memories of 1973

Michael Henderson

Following events at Edgbaston from west London, by turns bewitched (Root), bothered (Cummins), and bewildered (Bairstow), I loitered awhile on Memory Lane. As Michael Parkinson has noted, you tend to meet a better class of person there; certainly a more agreeable soul than Ollie Robinson, whose infantile snapping came back to bite him where it hurts, as it always does.

So I reeled in the years, all the way back to that first visit to the home of Warwickshire in 1973, a year of high heels, colourful tops, and charcoal-striped trousers. O wolves of memory!

Was it really half a century ago? Time’s scorecard is merciless. It was August 1973 alright, and I was present on the first three days of the West Indies Test, to witness those players whose deeds resonate down the decades: Alan Knott, Derek Underwood, and Geoffrey Boycott; Garry Sobers, Rohan Kanhai, and Clive Lloyd. Fabled men, as Roy Harper sang in his evocative song about cricketers of the past.

I was staying in Sutton Coldfield with my schoolfriend Bruce, who had spent his early years in Jamaica, and had a soft spot for the men in maroon caps. We caught the choo-choo from Four Oaks to New Street, before taking a bus down Bristol Road, past a cinema that was showing (how well I recall those blood-red letters) High Plains Drifter. A terrific film, one of Clint’s best, though we didn’t see it that week. We did, alas, visit the dismal Steptoe and Son Ride Again at the Odeon in Sutton.