The story of Harold Gimblett’s first ever game for Somerset at the Agricultural Showgrounds Frome is well known, and has been told many times. How he was originally not selected for the match, as he had failed to impress in a trial and was about to be released by the county. How he hitched a lift on a lorry or a tractor from his home in Bicknoller, and then met Wally Luckes who drove him to the ground, where contrary to myth he did arrive on time. In the telling, the story has always required these rural, Alf Tupper, tough of the track, getting to the ground preliminaries. And of course when he did arrive he didn’t have a decent bat, and had to borrow one from Arthur Wellard.
The scorecard tells it as Gimblett went in at number 8 when Somerset were 107 for 6, with the legend saying there were cries from the crowd of “Leave it to Arthur, son,” a reference to his hard-hitting partner Arthur Wellard. The Essex attack included the England fast bowler Stan Nicholls, who a few weeks later was to take 6-35 against South Africa at Trent Bridge.
After blocking a few balls, Gimblett decided he had nothing to lose and “gave it a go,” as it was late in the innings. He scored a 50 in 28 minutes, his hundred coming in 63 minutes to win him the Walter Lawrence trophy for the fastest century of the summer. He was last out for 123 and a year later the farmer’s boy was playing for England in a test match against India.
It’s a good story that loses nothing in the re-telling, but what of Gimblett’s other matches at Frome, the games subsequent to that? Did it become his favourite ground after the amazing debut innings, or were they an anti- climax, where the weight of expectation rested too heavily on his shoulders, and his performances disappointed?
As well as Taunton Somerset has used a variety of grounds for its home matches. In 1935 there were also home fixtures at Wells, Weston-super- Mare, Yeovil and Bath. Frome Cricket Club was formed in 1925 and the first county cricket match at its ground, the Agricultural Showgrounds where they still play today, was in 1932 against Northamptonshire. With the exception of the war years Somerset played an annual championship match at Frome until 1951, and then three more matches before the final championship game against Hampshire in 1961. It was last used for county cricket in 1970 for a John Player League match against Leicestershire. So, the story of Frome as a venue for county cricket is closely contemporaneous with Gimblett’s career in county cricket.
As the name suggests, the Agricultural Showgrounds was the venue for Frome annual September Cheese Show. At the start of 2006 it’s still very much like an open field; hay is taken off in the summer, and the cricket ground occupies a corner, separated off by white railings. There are no natural boundaries, and the ground has an open feel to it. One writer suggested that the ground inspired Gimblett because it resembled one of his cricket meadows in Watchet, but this may have been a fanciful speculation. When a big match takes place the ground changes in character, for as well as the standing crowds, marquees and seating frame the boundaries. When Gimblett played there was a large stand on the Bath Road side with the pavilion alongside. Neither of these buildings are now standing.
On his return to the ground in 1936, Gimblett scored 3 and 32, in the game against Kent who beat Somerset by 66 runs, despite Arthur Wellard taking 7 for 61in a low-scoring game. But in the following season he made two half centuries (72 and 63) in a drawn match against Leicestershire where Somerset were forced to follow-on.
The season of 1938 was Gimblett’s least successful in county cricket where he averaged 27.16 for the season, and.At this point in his career, on the advice of others, he gave up his more aggressive natural game, and went for a more restrained approach. At Frome this brought him 11 and 5 in what was to be another low-scoring game, on a wicket for bowlers, where Arthur Wellard took full advantage with match figures of 12-128 and Somerset won by 3 wickets.
The match of 1939 saw Somerset’s Frank Lee score 151 in the first innings. His opening partner, Gimblett, was out for 32 when the score was 38, which gives some indication of how aggressively he played. But this game was best remembered at Frome for the appearance of Denis Compton, and his match-winning unbeaten century for Middlesex.
Harold Gimblett was one of the generation of players who lost a significant chunk of their careers to the second world war; between 1940 and 1945 Gimblett would have been 26 -31, the age at which he would have been at the height of his powers. The year 1946, where he achieved his best ever average of 49.92 and scored seven centuries, he unfortunately missed the Frome match against Derbyshire through injury.
Against Lancashire in 1947, he scored 64 in quick time in the first innings, against a bowling attack which included England’s Dick Pollard, the man who bowled Bradman in the 1948 Headingly test. Spectators remember how Pollard’s run-up began close to the boundary of the small Frome ground. A 6-51 from Brislington’s slow left-armer Horace Hazel, saw Somerset win a close-fought game by 36 runs.
The county games at Frome were always popular. Graham Barnes, President of Frome Cricket Club and uncle of Colin Dredge, remembers watching county games there from 1948 onwards, when he sold scorecards which were printed at the ground on the day of the match. “In those days there was double-decker seating on all sides of the ground with crowds of three or four thousand. It was very well attended with people from that end of the county. Before the game there were working parties whose job it was to clear the nettles around the entrances and make the ground spick and span. As a member of the youth section I was roped in for this chore.”
It was in the 1948 game that Gimblett hit his second century at Frome, a 119 against Leicestershire. He dominated in this game and followed this up with a half-century, which along with a 89 not out from Bertie Buse, enabled Somerset to declare in the second innings. They won by 166 runs with a 5-75 from Lawrence. This was the same season in which Gimblett made his highest ever score of 310 against Sussex at Eastbourne.
The Frome fixture of 1949, was memorable for the appearance of the future Bishop of Liverpool, David Sheppard, who at the start of the match was fielding at silly mid-on when Wood, the opening bowler for Sussex coming in from the grammar school end, sent down a long-hop the first ball of the innings. Facing him, Gimblett pulled the ball for six onto the roof of the old pavilion, knocking a hole through the asphalt roof shingle. The trajectory of the ball as it left the bat could be judged for many years afterwards by the patch in the roof of the pavilion.
As Graham Barnes explained: “The crowds always looked forward to a Gimblett innings. In those days there was an elm tree on the long-on boundary and he used to clear that with his sixes. But Somerset relied him, as they didn’t have any other batsman of his standard. So when he was dismissed you would always hear, around the ground. ‘Somerset are in trouble; Gimblett’s out.’”
Harold Gimblett’s final visit to Frome was in 1953,when he was one of the Wisden cricketers of the year. In 1952 at the age 38 of he had scored 2134 runs in the season a Somerset record. In 1953, his last full season of county cricket he came close again with 1920 runs. Successive years at the end of his career produced the finest of vintages. In the second innings at Frome against Worcestershire he scored 66; at the time he didn’t know it, but it was to be his last innings on the ground, eighteen years after his magnificent debut. A year later he was to leave the game for good, in awkward circumstances after warnings about his dressing-room behaviour.
At Frome Gimblett holds the record for the most runs scored in first-class cricket : 741 runs at 39.00; a record that will never be beaten, as the chances of county cricket returning to the ground are negligible. Although he was successful in many matches over the years at the Showground we are always drawn back to the match against Essex in 1935. Gerald Butland, a lifelong supporter of Somerset, remembers talking to Gimblett in 1946, where he was happy to reminisce about his 1935 innings at Frome “He loved it. He always loved talking about that game as it was the one that launched him in county cricket. He said how he came down the wicket and gave it a go, blasting the ball about.”
In 1974, four years before his death, Harold Gimblett wrote an article for “The Cricketer” where he looked back affectionately on his time in the game, remembering his debut innings against an England bowler.
“Now nearly 40 years ago, my appearance for Somerset, by accident, at Frome. Just how or why a whippet should achieve such heights I still cannot find an answer. Is there, or should there be, one? I don’t think so, for this is cricket. The glorious unexpectedness of that innings. Of the many memories, one in particular was the expression on Morris Nichols’ face when I hit him straight and true over the sightscreen when he took the new ball at 200.”
1/03/2006
