1964 and English Cricket

1964 was a tough year for the English cricket team as they fought to regain The Ashes led by Bob Simpson. At the provincial front, Sussex county cricket club retained the Gillette Cup List A Competition and Worcestershire club won their first ever County Championship.

At the county championships, Worcestershire played 28 matches and emerged victorious in 18 of them along with losing 3 amongst them. 6 matches ended in a draw and Worcestershire topped the points chart with 191 points. Warwickshire followed Worcestershire at 150 points having won 14 of the 28 matches and losing 5 of them. Others that concluded the top five teams included Northamptonshire at 130 points, Surrey at 129 points and Yorkshire at 126 points. The lowest scoring team was Gloucestershire that managed only 43 points. They lost 15 of the 28 matches and won only 3 of them.

Two clubs, Derbyshire and Hampshire shared common place as the 12th team overall with 68 points. Although, Derbyshire won 1 more match as compared to Hampshire while Hampshire ended up with 2 more draw matches as compared with Derbyshire. Surrey’s Kenneth Barrington played with the best averages amongst all at 60.14 with 3 centuries and 6 half-centuries and a highest score of 207 runs. Although, John Murray portrayed best bowling averages of 1, but he delivered only 1 over. Significant averages were delivered by Thomas Cartwright with 13.78 from 5,792 balls with best bowling figures of 7 wickets for 28 runs.

At the test series, Australia fought a hard-to-win Ashes battle and won against England with a 1-0 lead. The unique fact about this series was that only 1 match yielded a deciding result with the rest of all ending in a draw. Australia won the 3rd test of the series at Headingley. Last batsman for Australia, Peter Burge scored the winning century for the team along with Wally Grout and Neil Hawke, all of which contributed 211 runs from the last three wickets. For the fear of losing the tournament, Australia went into the 4th test with a view of finishing it in a draw, as that would ensure that they will retain the Ashes.

Australia scored 656 runs in the first innings before declaring at a loss of 8 wickets. Bobby Simpson scored a triple century, his first one at test matches, to contribute 311 runs to the total. England, in dire need of a win, went on to score 611 runs with the spectators witnessing the dullest draw ever for a test match. Ken Barrington emerged with the top averaging batsman with 62.40 under 35 innings with 4 centuries. Bob Simpson scored 5 centuries along with Tom Graveney while Geoff Boycott and Mickey Stewart went ahead with 6 centuries. The topmost score was achieved by Bobby at 311, while the topmost unbeaten score was by Stewart at 227.

Ian Thomson ruled the bowling charts with an average of 16.30 followed by Tom Cartwright at 15.97. Derek Shackleton took a maximum of 142 wickets with Roger Harman taking 136 wickets.