Best of the Cs

There are three realistic candidates for the best Derbyshire player beginning with the letter C. One of them isn’t Rikki Clarke…

The club site rightly pays tribute to Sam Cadman, a worthy cricketer and a coach responsible for the production line of talent through the 1930s, while Daryll Cullinan was a fine batsman in but one season. There are, however, only three real candidates.

In third place, Donald Carr was a very fine player and captain of the county for a good part of the 1950s. Though probably just short of the top drawer as a batsman, Carr’s strokeplay was redolent of the true surfaces of the public school rather than the green ones on which he played much of his cricket. He was also a useful spin bowler, but as a captain he got the best out of Gladwin and Jackson. Conversely, it could be said that with two bowlers of such ability, backed up with the likes of Derek Morgan, Edwin Smith and Harold Rhodes, he had some impressive resources to call upon. Had we had one more batsman of ability alongside Carr and Arnold Hamer we may well have won another Championship during that decade, but it was not to be Carr captained an England XI in India too, but highjinks involving an umpire probably cost him any possibility of a permanent role.

Second place for me would be Dominic Cork. A man who polarised the fans, Cork’s combative personality and skills saw him win a good number of matches but lose a few friends over the years. Like Kim Barnett before him, Cork’s tenure as Derbyshire skipper saw some high profile departures and a degree of acrimony, but few would doubt that he was (and still is) a player of great talent.

No one who saw it will forget his innings at Lords against Lancashire, when an unpromising situation was turned into a winning one by Cork and Karl Krikken’s late onslaught. I don’t think Cork ever got the credit he deserved for the remarkable flick to fine leg (from off stump!) that he played off Wasim Akram in the final over. It was a shot that saw acclaim rain down on Viv Richards when he played it, and for me was a nigh-iconic moment that laid down the gauntlet to our opponents. Whether you liked or disliked Cork’s public persona, few would dispute that most sides would be strengthened by his inclusion.

I also think he will become an outstanding commentator on the game when he finally retires, being unafraid to say what others might be thinking. Spiky and articulate, Cork at his best has been very good indeed.

Yet not quite good enough to take my top spot, which goes to Bill Copson. The coal miner from Clay Cross suffered periodic bouts of ill health and injury that truncated several seasons, but when he was fit, as he was throughout the Championship season of 1936, he was deadly. There were 140 wickets at 13 that summer for Copson, who maintained the typically Derbyshire ‘grudging’ line and length that he married to rare hostility. His run was not excessive, but his long arms and whippy action got considerable leverage.

The tactic for most of the decade was simple. If Bill (and brothers George and Alf Pope) could make inroads to the early opposition batting, Tommy Mitchell and Les Townsend would make short work of the lower order and tail. Over a thousand wickets at just under 19 suggests that Copson did that a few times over the years.

Indeed, for his first few overs he was perhaps as quick as any domestically-reared Derbyshire bowler until Alan Ward burst onto the scene. Harold Rhodes was lively in his earlier days and Les Jackson hostile and whippy, quicker than he looked, but Copson at full fitness gained both excessive bounce and extravagant movement that destroyed batting line-ups.

Two examples of his prowess will suffice. Against Surrey at the County Ground in May 1936, a Derbyshire batting collapse (it has been known…) left the visitors chasing just 94 to win. At 49-2 they were coasting it at tea, but afterwards Copson ripped through the batting, taking 7-19 in 14 overs, five of his victims bowled and one lbw. A Derbyshire win by 16 runs looked barely possible, yet arguably served as the catalyst to the season. The following year he took 8-11 against Warwickshire, including seven wickets in 23 balls.

I once saw Derbyshire cricket in the period beautifully encapsulated within a paragraph. I cannot recall the author, but the essence was that there was a good crowd, a close field, a green wicket and a sense of expectation as Copson prepared to open the bowling. A shout often came from an excited member of the crowd, the first word pronounced in the Derbyshire way, to rhyme with howl and suggest that Copson was about to eviscerate the opposition.

“Bow-el the boogers aht Bill.” He often did.

Copson never played cricket until he was 17, bowling a batsman with his first ball, a feat he was to repeat in the first-class game when he dismissed the England batsman Andrew Sandham of Surrey. On both occasions the prodigious movement was deemed a fluke, but that ceases to be the case when you’ve done it a few hundred times.

The excellent Basil Easterbrook, a fine cricket writer, described him thus:

His run up to the wicket was an easy affair and he seemed to hesitate fractionally before releasing the ball. He looked deceptively slow through the air, but he could make the ball swing and swerve either way very late and he also seemed to make the ball gather pace off the pitch. He either forced the batsman to make a hurried stroke or caught him totally unprepared. In his heyday he could bring the ball back so unexpectedly and so viciously that at times he was almost unplayable. Few men of pace in my lifetime have ever been able to extract so much out of an easy-paced, even lifeless, pitch.

His back problems, a result of his work down the pit, probably resulted in an unusual gait, often described as a ‘trudge.’

“Bill, tha bloody walks like Groucho Marx,” said Denis Smith, watching him walk from third man to bowl one day.

“Aye, and sometimes tha bloody bats like him,” replied the bowler, a laconic man, his face deadpan under a shock of red hair.

Nine wickets at Lords and 3-33 at Old Trafford against the 1939 West Indians suggested that Copson could have become a good international player, but his only other Test appearance came against South Africa in 1947, when he was 39 and past his prime. Nonetheless, three wickets saw him far from disgraced. That he headed the bowling averages on the 1936-7 tour to Australia and still didn’t play a Test speaks volumes for the selectors of the time.

With better luck with health and fitness and without the loss of six seasons to the war, Bill Copson could have put the Derbyshire record for most wickets taken out of reach. A few have since surpassed his aggregate, but not many better bowlers have worn the county colours.