We are living through a moment where righting wrongs is to the fore. The Black Lives Matter movement is challenging the status quo and opening a wide ranging discussion about doing things in the here and now that will affect how we look at history.
Apparent injustices are more prevalent in sport than in politics or history. The cries of ‘we were robbed’ or ‘the best team lost’ can be heard every week during the football, rugby or cricket seasons. Inside the constant and abundant exchange of views that constitute the social media age there are countless cases made for players that should have represented their country or didn’t get the rewards their talent suggested they should have.
But in cricket, and in Wales, there has been a smouldering sense of injustice that has been around for as long as we can talk about the modern game and at least for the last fifty years. Mention the names Alan Jones or Don Shepherd to most Welsh people who know anything of the game and they will tell you that one had the dubious record of having scored the most first class runs without being picked for England and the other the most wickets without being picked.
Other counties may have had players who were similarly overlooked but in Wales this took on a sharper, more pronounced theory that talked of selectors whose predilections did not include venturing over the Severn Bridge or players who built their careers on wickets other than the hard flat tracks of the Home Counties.
The strangest thing about this sense of injustice is not that it made for strong views west of Offa’s Dyke but that it was embraced by those living east of it as well. As one fortunate enough to interview some leading Test cricketers of the past I am certain in my assertion that they, too, shared a certain disbelief that these two gentlemen cricketers had not received the call from Lords.
Perhaps on the day that Alan, at least, has had his exclusion from the Test cricketing fraternity overturned, it is worth looking briefly at what he did achieve. The first table below shows the top seven run scorers in Glamorgan’s history as a first class club. You can see that Jones was head and shoulders above not only his contemporaries in Wales but those that came before and after him.
His total places him 35th on the All Time run scorers list for English cricket sandwiched between Vivian Richards and W G Quaife. That ‘s more than Zaheer Abbass, Glenn Turner, Alan Lamb, Cyril Washbrook, C B Fry and Peter May to name just a few. Another left hander who had a glittering Test career of more than 100 Tests, David Gower, only managed 26,339 first class runs. If totals and names don’t impress you, perhaps consistency might. From 1961, when he became a regular in the Glamorgan team until his retirement in 1983 he scored over a 1,000 runs in every first-class season. His temperament and technique were outstanding and should have stood out against some of the names that got into the England side during the peak of his career from the mid-60s to the mid-70s.
The table below demonstrates that Alan’s contribution to the Glamorgan team was not only a personal success but demonstrated the ability of a batsman to create strong and enduring partnerships with other openers. Jones and Hopkins may not have had the best average of Morris and Butcher or the cumulative total of Emrys Davies and Arnold Dyson but their runs kept Glamorgan afloat in the difficult years of the mid to late 1970s when the club’s fortunes were at their lowest ebb. As a young opener he forged a partnership with my father, Bernard Hedges who, at that stage of his career, was the old veteran. The pupil was to become the master and Alan’s skills were not only recognised on the pitch but in the coaching schools of South Wales as well.
Here was a player who thought about the game and was able to change with it. From uncovered to covered wickets, from caps to helmets, from county cricket to the one day game, from home bred heroes to the Galactico’s that were overseas cricketers, Alan’s career was a testament to a man who had strong cricketing fundamentals allied with a deep national pride that had, as its focus in cricket, the wearing of the daffodil emblem of Glamorgan.
If exclusion and omission were the sins of previous England regimes, what of today. Surely as we see an injustice put right we can feel more secure in the knowledge that it would not happen again? Such a feeling could well be misplaced.
The young Glamorgan batsman Aneurin Donald left the club for Hampshire two seasons ago despite delivering a world record equalling innings at Colwyn Bay and being tipped for greater things. Whilst he and the club were at pains not to explain the reasons why, one report could state that ‘it appears to be the realisation that England selectors do not often pick batsmen from struggling division two teams that has prompted Donald to move.’ The article from which this quote was taken also mentioned previous departees from Wales, James Harris (2013) and Tom Maynard (2011).
In addition to the pressures to retain their Welsh players Glamorgan are under extreme pressure in the now business oriented market-place that is first class cricket. In a recent series of articles covering each of the counties Scyld Berry in the Telegraph bemoaned Glamorgan’s reliance on overseas players in recent years. There is no doubt that Glamorgan have used more than their fair share of these. The Hundred, the ECBs new flagship for domestic cricket, whenever it runs, will have a Welsh franchise but with only one Glamorgan player in its squad and no Welsh born players at all.
Alan Jones can rightly be proud of his England cap and playing for England must still be the highest of accolades for any Welsh player. But the modern game and its high end corporate requirements make the chances of a present day Welsh born player receiving the Lions cap as likely as . . . well . . . as likely as a player of yesteryear.
At least we know what to say when it happens.