Our Christmas meeting at the Avenue Methodist Church in Sale was another great success. Not only did we have a great speaker, but coffee and homemade cakes in abundance. (One member brought his own box so he could take some away with him!!!)
Barbados-born Roland Butcher secured his place in history when he became the first black player to represent England, making his Test debut at Bridgetown in 1980-81 (the headline in the local paper was “Our boy, their bat”). Roland was a batsman capable of playing the most thrilling, attacking innings.
He spoke about his time with Middlesex and what it was like to have Mike Brearley as a captain (he would listen to the young players). He moved to England at the age of 14, joined Middlesex in 1974 and was picked for two ODIs against Australia in 1980 on the strength of county form.
Roland spoke very movingly about his doubts about going on the rebel tour to South Africa, his withdrawal which resulted in paying a lawyer to get out of his contract, and then the tour was cancelled after Nelson Mandela’s release.
He gave a very honest account of his cricketing days and was well received by everyone. He brought his book, Breaking Barriers, along which sold well.
Geoff Wellsteed is in Australia for the Ashes and sends his reflections on the second Test at Brisbane.
As certain as the Nunc Dimittis always follows the Magnificat it was a sure-fire thing that England would lose wickets early on Day 1 to Mitchell Starc. And so it proved – England were two wickets down after 2.3 overs! Duckett and Pope both back in the hutch with blobs against their respective names. Later Jamie Smith and Brydon Carse also suffered the same fate, and had that annoying little yellow duck running across the TV screen.
Joe Root, chest puffed out, was magnificent and recorded his long-awaited maiden hundred down-under (138 not out). Crawley, reeled off a string of exquisite shots, but he plays so loosely he never gives the impression of longevity at the crease. Gone at 76 when a big hundred was required. He was bowled by, surprise inclusion, Michael Neser who bowls, like Boland, medium-fast, length and line. You miss, l hit. It was a case of a Tonbridgian, dismissed by a guy with a second forename of Gertges, once of Todmorden and born in the Transvaal.
Disgracefully, Brook and Smith gave their wickets away with poor shots. Archer, sporting a heavy gold chain round his neck, which glinted under the floodlights, saved the day with some belligerent hitting but was 325-9 enough on a blameless surface? At least it gave the Barmies something to be buoyant about in the very few pubs which remain open here after 9.30pm.
Day 2 was a complete and utter shambles. Poor leadership from Stokes, persistent short bowling, weird field placings and schoolboy fielding errors. Dreadful is a fair descriptor. Every one of the Aussies reached double figures and had secured an overnight lead of 44 with four wickets still in hand. England are staring defeat in the face.
If Day 2 was hapless then Day 3 was even worse. Australia, (who, by the way, never miss an opportunity to taunt the Brits and greeted them at Brisbane air terminal with a huge illuminated sign displaying the message, Convicts 1 Poms 0), extended their innings to an all-out total of 511. By the close England were shamefully 134-6 in thirty-odd overs.
The Gabba(toir) is located on Vulture Street and like raptors the Aussies ripped England apart. The tourists embarrassingly surrendered like a family of small garden birds (of which great, blue and long-tailed are varieties).
On Day 4 Stokes and Jacks showed that a modification of Bazball is an option and both batted sensibly through a session and a half and added 96 to the score at barely three an over, but once they had both been dismissed at 224 and 227 the last four reverted to Bazball tactics and added a mere 14 runs. The hosts wasted no time in scoring the 69 runs needed for victory in ten overs.
Twenty thousand Aussies turned up the volume and loved the humiliation of the old enemy. The Barmy Army, ever faithful and always amusing, retaliated with an adaption of the National Anthem singing…..’long to reign over YOU’!! But not as things stand on the cricket field.
Starc, married to Alyssa Healy, was the Man of the Match with 8 wickets and 77 runs. It occurs to me they may be the first heterosexual married couple to play Test cricket since Roger and Ruth Prideaux? Must check that.
Geoff Wellsteed is in Australia for the Ashes and sends his reflections on the opening Test at Perth.
Dejection (day 1 afternoon, England 172ao). Elation (day 1 close, Australia 123-9). Optimism (day 2 afternoon, Australia set 205 to win). Humiliation (day 2 evening, Australia win by 8 wickets).
These four simple one word descriptors vividly sum up this two-day crazy extravaganza. The whole match aggregated a mere 141.1 overs. What can we say and learn from the ashes of this first exchange? Well, when winning the toss, the accepted norm is to bat, but the current England team profess to prefer chasing.
When they won the spin of the coin they elected to bat. What influenced the change? England had the quickest bowlers. Both Archer and Wood (150 km per hour) bowled faster than Starc, but the left arm Aussie has the ability to wobble the ball. High quality wobble seam at 145km is more difficult to play than out and out pace. Giving him, the best three-format bowler in the world, first use of a pitch that the experts said would be at its best for batting on day 2 was, arguably, suicidal.
Traditionally Perth pitches offer steep bounce that makes England’s commitment to Bazball a high-risk strategy until batters can get in and adjust to the conditions. Patience is a virtue, but apparently outwith the approach of the visitors. OK, Travis Head played ‘Bazball plus’, and had a strike rate of 148, but he is very familiar with the rock-hard surface. England are not and stubbornly, avoided warm-up matches. Head was exceptional (and so is his high-sided haircut!). He treated all the England quicks like naive net bowlers.
Brendan McCullum has a reputation as a great psychologist, but trying to rebuild the shattered confidence of a Stokesy team will require a biblical miracle. Never, before have l seen the England captain look so deflated and helpless as he did for the entirety of Australia’s second innings.
There are vast numbers of England supporters here and they undoubtedly deserved more application from their team. Instead, they were on the end of some fearful ridicule from euphoric Aussies who love nothing more than to indulge in abusive pommie bashing.
Footnote
It had absolutely no impact on the result of the match, but Jamie Smith was given out caught on review by the third umpire after a five-minute examination of the available footage.
Apparently, the technology used over here (different from England) has a two-frame gap between the pictures and the sound wave. Former, highly respected international umpire, Simon Taufel, said that the conclusive evidence protocols with the real-time snickometer are such that if a spike is evident up to one frame after the ball has passed the bat that is conclusive evidence of a legitimate dismissal.
He concluded the third umpire could, and should, have pulled the trigger much quicker. All that might have some technical justification, but it is extremely difficult for more than 50,000 spectators watching on the big screen to be convinced by such logic when the spike occurs after the ball is beyond the bat. And you thought football’s VAR was bad!!
Stephen Chalke discusses his book on a legendary Test player
Lancashire & Cheshire Cricket Society met at lunchtime on Monday 10 November 2025 with Stephen Chalke as our guest speaker.
Stephen has spoken to us twice before, first with Fred Rumsey, which was hilarious, and secondly after the publication of his wonderful book, The Summer Crown, his tome on the history of the Cricket County Championship.
I took the chair as Jean has been unwell for some time now. She had a spell in hospital and is now in a convalescent home in Sale. I introduced Stephen as “a writer, publisher and erstwhile captain of Wilmsley 3rd XI,” to which came the aside that he hadn’t played that role for some time. I also said that Stephen always happens to find the human element in all his writing about cricket folk, and he replied that element was the most fascinating and the thing he was interested in. I recalled No Coward Soul, a book about the great Yorkshire cricketer Bob Appleyard and how it had me in tears at some of the revelations.
Stephen first mentioned that he had not attended the AGM of the Society (which took place before the meeting) because he once did and the Secretary mentioned the very poor attendance at the talk and explained that the reason was that they couldn’t attract very good speakers!
His interest in cricket people began by listening to Ken Biddulph of Somerset tell stories of his time in cricket. That coupled with watching Charlie Griffiths and Wes Hall playing for the West Indies in 1963 tests against England; Cowdrey coming in to bat with a broken arm, Brian Close with 16 bruises on the side of his chest, as shown in the Daily Express the next day – these all set off a spark in his young mind. Being a West country boy, born in Salisbury it was inevitable he was drawn to the County team of Somerset.
His interest in Brian Close was sparked by him being the youngest to play for England in 1949 at the Old Trafford ground, gaining his place by celebrating 100 wickets and 1,000 runs in the previous season for Yorkshire. Most of the cricketers in that era were still the pre-war cricketers. He was called up for National Service in 1950 and only played one game for Yorkshire but was still chosen to go to Australia that winter for the Ashes. He threw himself into everything, but was perceived as being rather cocky, and he was somewhat ostracized with nobody speaking to him. In his first innings he was out third ball.
Forward to 1976, Close now playing at Taunton and there was a trial match v West Indies at Bristol where Close scored 88 and was undone by an off spinner, despite Holding, Roberts and Marshall being in the West Indies side. The question often asked at the end of Close’s career was did he make the best of the opportunities afforded to him. There was no doubt he was stubborn and opinionated; one example being on the flight to Australis he read the Kama Sutra from cover to cover. When asked about this he relied that “I’ve learned nowt from that.”
Close was a man who never saw danger; his driving can testify to that. At Somerset he was given a Ford Capri and ran it into a tree on the A1. At the time of the accident, he was mashing his tea on his lap and inspecting what was in his sandwiches. He always said that physical courage was easy; it was the mental courage that was different; it’s sympathy that makes you soft. This might go a long way to explain his isolation. In 1976 when he was surprisingly recalled to England, he was asked to open the innings against the West Indies and their line up of Holding, Roberts and Marshall, despite Bob Woolmer successfully taking that spot in recent times. He asked why he had been picked to open when Woolmer had been quite successful in the recent past, and was told that Woolmer was young and had a future and didn’t want to be killed! Close’s captaincy was in marked contrast to that of Cowdrey who preceded him. He said a good captain needed to involve four important aspects of the game in this order: – Game, Team, Individual, Self.
