If this is now the Headingley reminiscences thread, this is mine.
In 1979-80 I lived in Leeds. Headingley in fact. In a house which backed onto the cricket ground. If play was interrupted by rain I could go home and turn the TV on and when the umpires emerged from the pavilion for a restart I could leave the house, turn into Kirkstall Lane and be in my seat on the Western Terrace before the white-coated ones had reached the square.
There wasn't much cricket at Headingley during my time there, and apart from a B&H tie v Warks and the Roses match the most memorable cricket I saw there was a 1-day international against Clive Lloyd's West Indians (1-day in name only - rain delays meant it spilled over into the next day). My overwhelming memory was of Chris Tavare's first England appearance, with him playing as if it was a timeless test, leaving everything outside off stump and barely hitting the ball off the square.
But a look at the scorecard 40+ years later reveals something quite different:
- Tavare scored 82* off 129 balls (cf Boycott 5 off 40, Gordon Greenwich 78 off 147, Desmond Haynes 19 off 48). Perhaps he started to hit out when he began to run out of batting partners and/or when the part-time bowlers Richards and Greenwich were on
- There were brief cameos from Gower (12 off 16 incl 2 4s), Botham (30 off 22 incl 5 4s) and Bairstow (16 off 23) but no-one else got into double figures
- WI's total was 198 (in 55 overs - 3.6 an over!) England were all out
24 25 short with 22 balls remaining.
- It wasn't Tavare's batting which was to blame, it was the inability of other batsmen to stay in (albeit against Holding, Roberts, Garner and Marshall)
Scorecard
