The 1975 triumph of Leicestershire without home-grown players and the hilarious fruition of a 69-year-old prophecy

In 1975, Ray Illingworth led Leicestershire to a win without a Test player nor a home-grown player.

In 1975, the Ray Illingworth led Leicestershire side triumphed in the county championships without a current Test player, and what’s more, without regular home-grown players. Arunabha Sengupta relates how remarkably it fulfilled a 69-year-old prophecy

The same old rants

If we look at the history of great game, amidst the famed names, games and feats, we find constancy. Indeed, the ideas and opinions, and the complaints have remained almost the same since time immemorial.

For example: “A set match at Lord’s ground for money, hard money … between … people who make a trade of a noble sport, and degrade it into an affair of bettings and hedgings and cheatings, it may be, like boxing or horse racing.” This was the novelist Mary Russell Mitford in the 1820s.  “Cricket has become such a business that there arises doubts in the minds of amateur players whether they can continue the sport,” said the novelist Anthony Trollope in the 1860s.

“I am sorry to say that I don’t think the game has improved. There is more self now than there used to be. Men do not play as much for their side now as they did in my younger days … there is far too much of the business element in it all around,” this was observed by the England and Middlesex amateur Vyell Walker, in 1899, bang in the middle of what we now refer to as the Golden Age of cricket, with KS Ranjitsinhji, Victor Trumper and the rest of them going strong.

“Since cricket became brighter, a man of taste can only go to an empty cricket ground and regret the past,” said another novelist CP Snow in 1932. True, the game evolves, moves on, the very definition of tradition changes. Yet, the rants remain more or less identical.

If we look back at the history of county cricket, ever since its inception in the late 19th century, we find the same misgivings over the years. “There are too many teams, there is too little money, the players are not committed, the crowds are dwindling, who has the time to watch all these matches when there is food to be put on the table.” The complaints have remained the same. The doomsday has been predicted over and over again. And it has managed to survive all the dark prophecies of ruination. The sweet sound of the willow on leather has been heard every summer, rather than the anticipated death-knell.

The Rutland prophecy

The circular nature of the complaints can be witnessed by opening the archives of The Times and looking at one particular raving criticism from 1906. It ran:

“County cricket is important and valuable because of the importance and value which it derives from the word county. The county stands for something that is particularly old and particularly English, and in everyday life a man derives advantage or importance merely because his connection with his county dates back a large number of years. County support is extended to cricket on this principle, and it will surely be withdrawn in proportion as latter-day manipulators toy with or disregard that principle in their desire to overreach the county next door.

“The one object of the county championship is to see which county can produce the best cricketers and not which can purchase the best cricketers. Under the present system a millionaire with a hobby for cricket could make Rutland the champion county in around four years time and there need not be a Rutland man in the winning eleven.”

The rant was mainly due to the old world dislike for imported cricketers. It was alarming for the traditionalists that colonial cricketers, some even coloured, were infiltrating into the system and turning out for what were supposed to be pure English counties.

Many were not aware that great pillars of English cricket themselves had foreign roots. Lord Harris had been born in Trinidad, and so had Pelham Warner.  The Hampshire captain Teddie Wynyard had seen the light of the day in India, as had Major Bertie Poore. But, at least they had family connection to the counties.

What irked the puritans was the advent of men like KS Ranjitsinhji, from the far shores of India. Playing for Sussex he crossed 3,000 runs in 1899 and 1900, and injected a strain of eastern magic in the batting that was as mesmeric as novel. Yet we learn that when Home Gordon used flowery prose to describe his 154 not out on his Test debut at Old Trafford, a senior MCC man scoffed at the ‘disgusting degeneracy to praise a black’.

There was also Albert Trott from Australia, bowling fast medium and hitting the ball hard for Middlesex. In his first year, he hit Monty Noble over the roof of the Lord’s pavilion, and for two seasons scored 1000 runs and captured 200 wickets.

Other Australians who played included John Cuffe for Worcestershire, Los Poidevon for Lancashire, Frank Tarrant for Middlesex and Alan Marshal for Surrey.

Then there was Charles Llewellyn from Pietermaritzburg, South Africa, who arrived in Hampshire , perhaps seeking asylum from the discrimination that went with his mixed origins back home. In his first year he achieved the double and was named in the England 14 for the first Test against Australia at Old Trafford. A bemused Warwick Armstrong commented, “I thought we were playing England and not South Africa.”

While Llewellyn was light enough to be taken for a white man, there was no such doubt over Charles Ollivierre. Having toured with West Indies in 1900, he remained in the country to qualify for Derbyshire, and turned out for them for six years, scoring 4,600 runs for the side.

With such an influx of overseas talent, it was perhaps natural for the conservative columnist to pen his apprehensions in such vociferous prose in The Times.

Prophecy comes true

The prophecy of a complete team without a single home-grown player did come true eventually, but it took another 69 years.  In 1975, Leicestershire won the Championship with players from everywhere but Leicestershire. Since then, only Nottinghamshire in 2005 has repeated this feat.

The triumph of Leicestershire, for many a year one of the weaker sides, was a result of foresight and vision. And these were provided by Mike Turner, who was still a young man when he became the secretary in the 1960s.

Turner looked beyond the county boundaries. His first recruit was in 1966. It was Tony Lock, the Surrey and England left-armer, who had been playing in the Sheffield Shield Down Under. Two years later, Turner landed his biggest coup. Taking advantage of a feud between Ray Illingworth and the Yorkshire CCC Chairman Brian Sellers, he signed the England off-spinner for Leicestershire.

Illingworth became the skipper and along with Turner made huge strides in building the side. In 1972, the county won the Benson and Hedges Cup. With membership, and hence funds, on the rise, and Illingworth past his England days, energy and resources went into building the team. Players were procured from all over England and beyond.

Jack Birkenshaw and Chris Balderstone joined from Yorkshire, the brothers Roger and Jeff Tolchard came over from Devon, John Steele was from Staffordshire, Barry Dudleston from Cheshire, and Norman McVicker from Warwickshire. Additionally, there were major overseas wins in the form of Garth Graham McKenzie, the former Australian pacer, and Brian Davison from Rhodesia. Finally, Turner tracked down former England bowler Ken Higgs, then turning his arm over in the Lancashire League for Rishton.

Leicestershire won the Sunday League in 1974. The following year, they triumphed over the touring Australians, won the Benson & Hedges Cup again, and finally, brought the Times prophecy to fruition by winning the County Championship with the first XI having no home-grown cricketer.

Especially so, because the previous year, 1974, had seen the Royal Mail include Rutland in the Leicestershire postal county!

Yorkshire First XI for 1975

(Arunabha Sengupta is a cricket historian and Chief Cricket Writer at CricketCountry. He writes about the history and the romance of the game, punctuated often by opinions about modern day cricket, while his post-graduate degree in statistics peeps through in occasional analytical pieces. The author of three novels, he can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/senantix)