England's record 669 has Bumble dreaming of summer of '64 and Draft Bass Harry

Daily Mail​

6 days ago

David 'Bumble' Lloyd leaned on the railing of the third-floor balcony of the Old Trafford pavilion on Saturday morning and gazed out at the ground he graced as a Lancashire player for 18 years and let the memories come flooding back.
Bumble was watching here as a 17-year-old apprentice, who worked as a joiner at the ground during the winter, when Australia hit 656 for 8 against England in the Fourth Ashes Test in 1964 and their opener, Bob Simpson, scored 311.
Now, 61 years on, with a storied career as a player, umpire, coach, author and much-beloved commentator all part of his resume, he looked down from the old pavilion as Ben Stokes and Brydon Carse took England beyond that Australia score and established a new record for the biggest innings ever compiled on this ground.
Bumble thought of the people that have filled the years between that Australia score and the England innings that surpassed it, the characters whose catcalls and antics still dance around his mind.
'To left of where the media centre is now,' he said, 'there was the only covered stand in the ground. It was called H Stand and there was a fella who used to sit there during county games who liked a pint of draft Bass.
'Everybody called him Draft Bass Harry and he drank a pint of Bass every time Lancashire lost a wicket. We were prone to the odd early collapse in the 1960s and it was not unknown for us to be 90-8 at lunch. It did for Draft Bass Harry. They used to have to carry him out.
'Then there was a chap called Ken Dean. We called him Bullet Head on account of the size of his noggin. He used to shout words of encouragement. "You'll never die of a stroke". Or: "Better to be a lucky one than a good one".'
It has seen some wonders, this place. Jim Laker took 19 Australia wickets here in the Fourth Ashes Test in 1956. Richie Benaud, fashioning his leg-spin around the wicket into the rough, bowled England out on the final afternoon of the Fourth Ashes Test in 1961, claiming the wickets of Brian Close, Ted Dexter and Peter May. England surrendered their last eight wickets for 51 runs.
It was here in 1976 when Michael Holding subjected Brian Close to one of the most fearsome, painful spells of fast bowling the game has ever seen, here where Ian Botham played one of the great Ashes innings in that enchanted cricket summer of 1981 and here where Shane Warne bowled the ball of the century in 1993.
'I was in the middle of my playing career in 1976 but I came down to the ground to watch that Test against the West Indies when Tony Greig brought Brian Close back into the team,' Bumble remembered. 'Closey liked a bit of pain but that was a real quick pitch.
'The other thing that stands out for me was the final day of the Third Ashes Test here in 2005 in the middle of that brilliant series. It had already caught the public imagination and there were more than 10,000 people locked outside. It was just a brilliant atmosphere.'
And now there was this, a day and a Test that will live long in the memories of all who have been here, a Test that saw Joe Root move beyond Rahul Dravid, Jacques Kallis and Ricky Ponting into second place in the list of all-time Test run-scorers.
And a day that witnessed the drama and the emotion of Stokes's first century for two years and his pointing-to-the-sky celebration in tribute to his father, Gerard, who died five years ago.
Stokes's innings of 141 and the ninth-wicket partnership of 95 that he shared with Carse pushed England's first innings, which ended on 669, into the history books. It was the biggest score ever here and England's fifth highest Test score on any ground.
There may yet be another reason to remember it: Shubman Gill, India's captain, continued his remarkable series with the bat by ending Saturday on 78 not out and pushing his runs scored on this tour to 697.
He is moving quickly up the list of most runs scored by a batsman in a series. Don Bradman's record of 974, set in England in 1930, may be out of reach but Gill looked dismissively comfortable at the crease here.
When Bumble walked out of the pavilion, he passed lines of photographs of the great Lancashire players who have played Test cricket, starting with Vernon Royle in 1879 and moving on through wonderful players like Brian Statham, Cyril Washbrook, Glen Chapple, Clive Lloyd, Michael Atherton, Muttiah Muralitharan, Wasim Akram, Neil Fairbrother and Andrew Flintoff.
Every picture carries a story. Every picture contributes to the history of this place. And now Stokes, Root and the rest have written a new chapter in its annals.