Sheffield Cricket Lovers' Society Year Book 2013

36 Sheffield Cricket Lovers’ Society And 20 years later, there were joyous scenes when Trueman led the county to a fabled victory over the Aussies by an innings and 69 runs. By that time, however, the fight for a four-sided football ground was already underway and closure for cricket was just five years away. The last match was played between August 4 and 7, 1973. The scorecard carried an advert from the local paper offing the chance to “win Bramall Lane cricket pitch and play in your front garden!” Fittingly, perhaps the opponents were Lancashire. Many an attritional battle between the trans-Pennine rivals had been fought out here. Only 10 years previously, one G Boycott had announced himself by becoming the first player to score a century on debut in a Roses match. There was to be no repetition, alas. Boycott was out for nine in a Yorkshire first innings of just 99. Lancashire didn’t do much better. They were eight wickets down when they declared on 111 in search of a result after the Monday had been washed out by rain. Yorkshire’s second innings started at 3pm and by 5.30 they were 114 for two when Jack Simmons bowled the final ball to Colin Johnson, much to the frustration of a local resident who leaned out of his window and enquired plaintively: “Dosta think I pay rent to live in Bramall Lane for this?” It seems unlikely that he would have travelled out to Abbeydale Park to watch Yorkshire.