Back to the 60s...

When you get to a certain age (I'm told…!) there is a tendency to look at the past "through rose-tinted spectacles," where everything was always better than it is today. Take the weather - it seemed so much better years ago and when I think of my childhood, I only recall days out at the cricket, or going around Derbyshire's many sights in my Dad's old Ford Anglia. In my mind's eye the sun is beating down and the radio is playing "I Can't Let Maggie Go" or "California Dreaming" as we head out on the open road, as most of them were.

They were great days, but I'm sure there were many more when I was cooped up in the house as it was raining. A look through the old Wisdens and county yearbooks highlights that there were some pretty poor summers at that time, but of course, we never headed to the ground when the rain was forecast and our memory blots out all but the most miserable days.

What about cricket in the late 1960's? Was it better than today?

In short, no. Something that crossed my mind after our assault on Yorkshire in the T20 was that it took Derbyshire several seasons in the old John Player League before they reached 200 in 40 overs. Now it is pretty much taken for granted as a par score and is gettable for the team batting second, as the Netherlands proved last week (sorry if you'd nearly forgotten that…)

There were a lot of great players around in the late 1960's, but for the greater part they played shots from the coaching manual and were not used to hurrying unduly, certainly in the first few years of the Gillette Cup and John Player League. Bowlers put it on a line and length and few batsmen made any attempt to knock them off it by using their feet. Some of the shots that we now take for granted, such as the reverse sweep and the scoop were many years away and someone attempting it may well have been dropped for careless play. Some of the better players - Barry Richards was one - might play the "inside out" shot over extra cover or go down the track to the bowlers, but few others did.

Of course, I saw many of the giants of the game in that era. No one will convince me that players like Garfield Sobers, Mike Procter, Keith Boyce, Majid Khan, Faroukh Engineer, Clive Lloyd, Greg Chappell, Rohan Kanhai and Glenn Turner are bettered today, but the overall package and style of play was more….attritional, certainly as played by those around the big names. When they came to Derby or Chesterfield, I hoped to see them score a hundred while we bowled out their side for 180. Had it happened, the likelihood was that the other eighty would have taken much longer than the individual century...

Younger fans used to scoring rates of 3-4 an over in the Championship will have found the earlier version much harder going. If Derbyshire lost Mike Page and Peter Gibbs early, you knew that it was going to be a day of graft. David Smith, Ian Hall, Derek Morgan et al were worthy cricketers, but were a long way from being labelled entertainers.

Sussex were the first team to "master" the one day game, with hard hitting batsmen like Ted Dexter, Jim Parks and Tony Greig, together with good bowlers like the Buss brothers, John Snow and Don Bates. It made our beating them at Queens Park in 1969's Gillette Cup semi-final at Chesterfield all the more remarkable and the fact that they were bowled out for less than 50 extraordinary.

160 was a good score in 40 over matches and you would win more than you lost with such a total. In sixty over cricket, more often than not you would be safe with 200. We won very few if the opposition got so many in either competition. While Page and Gibbs could bat attractively, they played the right shot for the ball and rarely improvised. John Harvey and Ian Buxton could occasionally hit hard, but neither were batsmen of the highest rank. Derek Morgan was a fine cricketer but an accumulator of runs. If we needed to boost the run rate, the solution was often to send in Alan Ward…

Ward was, on his day, a very fast bowler, the fastest domestically-reared I have seen for the county. He could bat reasonably well, but his usual range was something in the mid-teens, perhaps twenty-odd if it was his day. Put another way, he wasn't in the same league as Steffan Jones as a batsman, yet how many times have you seen him promoted in the order to boost the scoring rate?

What we had, thankfully, was a terrific seam attack on wickets that were left uncovered once the game had started. Harold Rhodes was in his final seasons and a veteran, but rarely bowled a loose ball and could still make batsmen hurry their strokes. Alan Ward and he made up an oustanding opening attack and then, in one day cricket, we had the Pickwickian figure of Fred Rumsey, a left arm seamer who couldn't bat and wasn't much of a fielder, but kept the pressure up by bowling tight lines. There were few occasions when these three went for even three an over. There was also Peter Eyre, whose golden day was against Sussex in that semi final and who should have had many more with his late swing and useful tail end batting. Illness and injury hit him badly and he departed from the scene much earlier than he should have done. Derek Morgan could bowl niggardly seam or off cutters, while Ian Buxton bowled the biggest in-swingers I have still ever seen, "big banana benders" we called them. "Bucket's" deliveries seemed to swing from the hand and would have been a potent weapon in the modern era, when I'm convinced he would have been a handy T20 player.

That attack was backed up by some excellent catchers, with Mike Page brilliant at slip. Peter Gibbs was also a fine fielder and Morgan dropped very little. At the centre was "Brilliant Bob" as we called him. Neat, unobtrusive, efficient and reliable, Bob Taylor was of a completely different class behind the stumps. He was so good that we were shocked if he occasionally dropped a ball, while dropped catches in the course of a summer perhaps required only one hand to count.

Having said all that, it is generally reckoned to be a batter's game and while our attack was respected and our fielding impressive, the team was a long way from feared.

Unless, of course, you'd to open the batting against Ward and Rhodes...