Vintage Summer: 1947 - John Arlott

“For me,” writes Joh Arlott, “1947 was a summer of joys which, it had sometimes seemed during the war, could never return. It was my good fortune to watch cricket, up and down England, on almost every day. But everywhere throughout the country there were men who saw every moment of play they could contrive. There was a warmth of feeling and enthusiasm which has rarely been recaptured since.”

This was not foreseen at the start of the season: England has been badly beaten in Australia the previous winter, and the South African side looked strong enough to beat us again. On the very cold evening before the tourists’ opening game only Reg Perks od the Worcesters players was optimistic. “We might all be surprised,” he said/ “This could be a better season than we thing – even without Wally.” Hammond, of course, has retired at the end of the Australian tour.

As it happened, everything combined to make the 1947 season a glorious success. The sun shone; Compton and Edrich got rapidly into their record-breaking stride; the South Africans – particularly Melville, Mitchell and Nourse – played magnificent innings; the public, which has been starved of cricket, flocked not only to Lord’s but into every ground in the country. John Arlott follows both the Test Matches and the extremely exciting battle for the county championship which Gloucestershire, thanks largely to the fine bowling of Tom Goddard, so nearly wrested from Middlesex. He gives fascinating portraits of all the leading players, and revives also memories of others who may now be half forgotten.

Middlesex’s victory over The Rest in the last game of the season was yet another triumph for Edrich and Compton. “On that last day at the Oval,” John Arlott recalls, “many of us felt strangely reluctant to go home. We did not want it to end. Did we sense that it would never be quite the same again?”

Perhaps it never has been; and if that is true John Arlott shows why, bringing back vividly to mind the reality of that ‘Vintage Summer’ twenty years ago.