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decent fielder too, as a startled Geoff Miller found out at Lords when he was run out at the bowler’s end by an 80 yard throw from fine leg.
    Baptiste did OK with the bat as well. His average of 34.8 was better than all the Englishmen in that series apart from Allan Lamb, and he was South African anyway. Younger readers who might be concerned by the recent presence of Pietersen and Trott in the England team may take some comfort in the fact that South Africans playing cricket for England is nothing new. Before Lambthere was Basil D’Oliviera and the one and only Tony Greig, and afterwards came Robin Smith.
    Smith’s older brother Chris and Greig’s younger brother Ian also played for England. It’s just a shame that we couldn’t have got Barry Richards or Graeme Pollock or Mike Proctor. If you are going to have South Africans playing for England you might as well have the best. As The Times editorial put it when Barry Richards was in his pomp: “Is there no way in which Richards of Hampshire could be co-opted into the English Test side? Can no patriotic English girl be persuaded to marry him? He is quite personable. Failing that, could not some elderly gentleman adopt him?”
    As it happened, it was just as well that Allan Lamb was turning out for England in 1984. He got centuries in three successive Tests, the first batsman to do this for England since Ken Barrington in 1967. All the other English batsmen that series made heavy weather of the West Indies attack, although Graeme Fowler got a brave century at Lords in the Second Test.
    Ask anyone when the last pitched battle to be fought on English soil was and, if they are still there by the time you have finished the question, they might say the Battle of Sedgemoor in 1685. That was when the Duke of Monmouth, Charles II’s illegitimate son, landed on the Dorset coast and unsuccessfully tried to seize the throne from James II on the grounds that he was a Catholic. If they know their history well, they might say the Battle of Clifton (Cumbria not Bristol) in 1745. This was a preliminary engagement prior to the Battle of Culloden the following year. A real ‘clever clogs’ might say the Battle of Bossenden in 1838 when the self-styled Sir William Courtenay, claimed to be the Messiah (see later reference to Arthur Scargill). He preached to the poor rural labourers of Kent that if they followed him he would lead them to a land of paradise. They were simple folk and had little to lose buttheir lives, which a number of them did when the army was called out to suppress the uprising.
    Sedgemoor, Clifton, Bossenden are all good answers but all wrong. On 18 th June 1984 just as West Indies were putting the finishing touches to their victory in the First Test at Edgbaston, thousands of police fought a pitched battle with thousands of miners at the Battle of Orgreave in South Yorkshire.
    Brutal force, overwhelming odds, battered heads, glimmers of hope relentlessly crushed, desperate self defence to avoid serious injury, yes, Edgbaston in 1984 was not a happy place for English cricketers.
    Gower won the toss and felt obliged to bat first because he had two spinners in the side. He soon regretted his decision. Garner immediately had Fowler caught behind for a duck. This brought Derek Randall to the wicket rather sooner than he probably would have wanted. Randall was not afraid of fast bowling, as his epic 174 against Dennis Lillee in the Centenary Test had shown, but that had been seven years before and now he was exposed rather too early to the West Indian pace attack. Randall was more vulnerable early in his innings than most batsmen. Joel Garner soon bowled him, also for a duck, and England were 5 for 2.
    Andy Lloyd, who was making his Test début on his home ground, had opened with Graeme Fowler. The benefit of familiarity with the ground was probably outweighed by having to face Garner, Marshall and Holding in your first match for your country. He played soundly for a while