Graham Cowdrey: Declaring from the car to catch up with Van Morrison

There is a lovely story in Roger Alton’s Spectator column this week about the late former Kent batsman Graham Cowdrey, who when captaining the second XI once declared their innings at 6.20pm — ten minutes before the scheduled close, to nobody’s benefit — by winding down his car window and whistling as he drove out of the ground. He was late for a Van Morrison concert.

That’s the problem with cricket: it can eat into your evening plans. David Gower famously got up and left during a difficult post-play press conference in 1989 when he was England captain, announcing that he had theatre tickets. While the press sharpened their stilettos, Gower was enjoying Anything Goes.

The great Johnny Dennis, the professional actor who handled the Lord’s public address system for years, would happily gossip during an interval about playing at Chichester with Tony and Larry (Hopkins and Olivier to us). Often he would try to juggle day job and night job, until a match overran and he left Lord’s by moped 20 minutes before he was due on stage in the West End. “I don’t mix the jobs any more,” he told me in 2009. “That way lies madness.”

Woe betide any journalist who leaves early. It guarantees something will happen. The prime lesson is Henry Blofeld departing a game before stumps at Chelmsford in 1983 for a social engagement. Having filed for his newspaper on Essex’s innings, his final line said that in the time remaining Surrey made X runs for Y wickets, asking the office to fill in the gaps. Later, he rang to check. “Did Surrey score many?” he asked and was told they had got to 14. “Any wickets down?” Blowers asked. “Yes,” came the reply. “Ten.”

Land of Pope and glory in Barcelona
I love trivia that sounds as though it can’t be true, such as the Atlantic end of the Panama Canal being farther west than the Pacific end. A good one popped up on Twitter this week when the journalist Will Jeanes said that every time Barcelona have played during a conclave to choose a new Pope, they have won 4-0.

Barça beat Real Madrid by that score when John XXIII was elected in 1958, then Las Palmas during the election of John Paul II in 1978 and AC Milan when Pope Francis was picked in 2013. (They didn’t have a match during the conclave in 2005 but won the game after Benedict XVI’s election 4-0 against Malaga.)

With admirable pedantry, Damian McBride, a former Downing Street press secretary, begged to differ. He observed that Barcelona had beaten Servette, a Swiss club, 6-1 and 6-2 during the conclave to elect Pius XI in 1922. But they were friendlies, not official games. I think the record stands.

Boycott cashes in
An auction of Sir Geoffrey Boycott’s cricket memorabilia raised more than £200,000 this week, £43,750 of which was bid for the bat with which he made his 100th first-class century in 1977 and £10,625 for a West Indies cap worn by Viv Richards.

A red scorebook that featured “J Boycott” (sic) making nine not out at No 8 on his senior debut for Ackworth as a 13-year-old in 1954 fetched £350. And it seemed revealing that a bat used in 1978 was not labelled as the one he had when he was England captain but as “The Run Out Bat”, the one he held when Ian Botham called him for an impossible single. That grievance still festers but it has now made him £1,000.

Someone even paid £500 for a straw hat with the billing “As eaten by Jonathan Agnew on Test Match Special”. This was his co-commentator’s punishment for saying a decision in the 2019 World Cup final would not be overturned. Describing the nibble he took out of the brim, Agnew said: “It was tougher than old boots. I might have known.”