Overseas Inspirations

At the start of each year, county cricket club websites are full of excited reports raving about their new overseas signing for the forthcoming T20 Blast or maybe three Championship games in May. Rolling my eyes at such promotional puff I recall the days when many of the world's biggest stars would appear for the same county, year after year, April to September, first-class fixtures and one-dayers.

Long before I was born, overseas players would extend their earning period by signing as a professional in the Yorkshire or Lancashire leagues. This continued well into the Eighties – imagine taking guard at say, Haslingden, watching Rishton’s Michael Holding steaming in towards you! – but I feel fortunate that my initiation into the joys of cricket coincided with a golden era of international cricketers on the county circuit.

It was probably no coincidence at all. In the early Seventies, watching live coverage of one-dayers, especially the Sunday League, I was thrilled by the performances of the overseas recruits. Most of them were West Indians or Pakistanis, who seemed to play a different way from the home-grown contingent. It’s cricket, Jim, but not as we know it. The Caribbean crew in particular seemed to boast the fastest bowlers, most athletic fielders and finest strokemakers. Watching the likes of Clive Lloyd (Lancashire), Roy Fredericks (Glamorgan), Alvin Kallicharran (Warwickshire) and Vanburn Holder (Worcestershire) also meant I didn’t have to wait four years for the next West Indies tour to enjoy their unique approach to the sport. I vividly recall the black and white images of Nottinghamshire’s Garfield Sobers at Swansea heaving poor Malcolm Nash for six sixes in an over in 1968.

It wasn’t just about telly. At my first taste of live cricket in May 1975, it was the batting of Somerset’s Viv Richards and fielding of Essex’s Keith Boyce which made the greatest impression on me. Later that summer, I became engrossed in the inaugural Prudential World Cup, noting that many of the biggest names were already on the county scene. If they weren’t at that stage, I wouldn’t have long to wait.

They weren’t the modern day ‘blink-and-you-miss-it’ contracts either. Lloyd, Richards, Kalli, Greenidge, Walsh, Marshall and Zaheer Abbas each represented their respective counties for a decade or more. With none of today’s distractions of year-round T20 tourneys and short ODI series, they racked up career tallies of first-class runs and wickets which dwarf those of current Test superstars. Boosted by their prolific seasons at Gloucestershire, Hampshire and Northants, Courtney Walsh, Malcolm Marshall and Bishan Bedi each retired with well over 1,500 first-class scalps to their names. At the time of writing, Dale Steyn has a mere 612, and even the perennially fit Jimmy Anderson remains ninety short of the thousand landmark.

Throughout my life I haven’t attended a huge volume of county matches but I’ve been lucky to have witnessed some superb international players in action, even if they weren’t necessarily at their best. In addition to the incomparable Viv and Joel Garner for Somerset, Essex used to feature batsmen of the quality of Andy Flower, South African Ken McEwan and Aussies Allan Border, Mark Waugh and Stuart Law.

Other personal highlights have been the giant Sarfraz Nawaz bowling for Northants and Younis Ahmed’s resounding crack of an off drive for Surrey in ’76  (it resonates in my mind still), the jaw-dropping pace of Warwickshire’s Allan Donald (bowling second change) at Ilford in ’95 and Mike Procter almost singlehandedly saving Gloucestershire against Somerset at Bath in ’81. I’m glad he failed in the end!

My favourite Procter moment, however, was when he destroyed Dad’s beloved Hampshire in a 1977 B&H Cup semi-final, this time with his pace bowling. It must have been the first time I’d seen a hat-trick. Had South Africa not been isolated by their country’s political apartheid abomination, Procter would surely have gone down as one of the greatest ever all-rounders. His compatriot Barry Richards was similarly disadvantaged but he and Gordon Greenidge (below) formed for several years the county game’s most formidable opening partnership.

In subsequent decades, other Southern Africans opted to seek international cricket with England by serving their seven-year county apprenticeship to achieve residential status. Allan Lamb, Graeme Hick and Kevin Pietersen spring to mind. It’s not all about traditional Test playing nations, either. I recall in the ‘80s/’90s the extremely economical Danish seamer Ole Mortensen for Derbyshire and Somerset’s profligate Dutchman, Adrian van Troost promoting the European Union.

Imran Khan graced the county circuit for many years, too, first with Sussex then Worcestershire, by which time Pakistan’s Wasim Akram (Lancs) and Waqar Younis (Surrey and Glamorgan) were also on these shores. Banned rebel West Indian Frankly Stephenson twice achieved the 1000 runs/100 wickets double for Notts in 1988 and 1989. In the Nineties, it was against Durham at Edgbaston that Brian Lara stunned the world with his record-breaking 501 not out, and two decades later with Surrey that both Ricky Ponting and Kumar Sangakkara opted to end their first-class careers, the latter in stunning style in 2017.

In more recent times, county fortunes have often been galvanised by the arrival of foreign internationals. Mushtaq Ahmed’s leg-spin transformed Somerset and especially Sussex for whom he helped win two Championship titles. Shane Warne’s overall aura and astute captaincy gave Hampshire impetus in the Noughties, and the veteran Ottis Gibson bowled Durham to success. Several Aussies, unable to break into a formidable Baggy Green batting line-up, also proved influential over here, notably Stuart Law, Michael di Venuto and Chris Rogers, while Michael Klinger’s batting and leadership took Gloucestershire to T20 glory.  

All this brings me back to the current fetish for ultra-brief stints by the likes of Muralitharan, McCullum and Gilchrist, plus jobbing Twenty20 specialists such as Dirk Nannes, Aaron Finch, Kieron Pollard and the Sultan of Sixes himself, Chris Gayle. These stars undoubtedly help shift season tickets and advance Blast sales. Unfortunately, when in 2015 Somerset snapped up the Jamaican, the biggest star of them all, it proved to be a bittersweet experience. In the January, it was revealed he’d made good on a three-year promise to join the county for a maximum of six T20 fixtures. Six games! Yippee! He was certainly a huge draw and demonstrated the right attitude towards promotional appearances in schools, etc.

On the pitch, too, Chris Gayle fulfilled the hype with devastating innings at Taunton, even if his 151 not out against Kent wasn’t enough to win the match. If only I’d crippled the visitors’ team bus the day before at Membury Services maybe the result would have been different! Sadly he decided that three matches were enough and duly buggered off. Remember that “maximum of” prefix to the six? He did return to play what must have been an exhausting five matches the following June but with considerably less impact.

It's all a far cry from those dizzying days of Asif Iqbal, Farokh Engineer, Glenn Turner and Sylvester Clarke, who’d delight county crowds week in week out. And when they weren’t representing a county, such cricketing celebs would also grace our grounds as part of their respective country’s tour schedules, which deserves a blog entry of its own.