Title
Mike Denness OBE
Subject
Mike Denness OBE
Description
An as-told-to biographical account of the sporting life of Mike Denness OBE, based on a telephone interview recorded on 8 February, 2013.
Creator
Chris Wilkins
Publisher
Kent's Sporting Memories
Date
Interview recorded on 8 February, 2013.
Contributor
Mike Denness; Chris Wilkins
Rights
Kent's Sporting Memories; Chris Wilkins
Format
Word document
Language
English
Identifier
Mike Denness OBE
Text
Mike Denness OBE
A biographical account of the sporting life of Mike Denness OBE, based on a telephone interview recorded, edited and revised by Chris Wilkins of the Sporting Memories Foundation. The interview took place on 8 February, 2013.
Growing-up and Playing for Scotland
I was a very fortunate young man as my Father was a keen sportsman; he was a rugby man, a cricket man and a golfer and it rubbed off. When we moved to Ayr, when I was about seven or eight years old, there was a plot of land adjacent to Ayr cricket club which my father bought and built a house on. There was nothing but a hedge between the house and the cricket ground so I spent all my school holidays in the summer on the cricket pitch with the Pro there enjoying every minute of it. As a ten year old the Pro allowed me to go on the roller and roll the wicket; not something that health and safety would allow now.
Friday night was junior night and there would be anything up to a hundred youngsters of different ages, all playing cricket and being coached. My interest just kept going on and on and on. We had visits from professional coaches from the Caribbean and from England; people like Charlie Oakes, the Sussex cricketer. He was absolutely magic. I would sit and watch test matches at home on the television and watch people like Tom Graveney. I would watch some of his shots and then go into the nets on a Friday night and ask the coach to show me how Tom Graveney played a particular shot. He would then teach me how to play it. It was very encouraging to a youngster like me at the time.
But my other interest and perhaps my greater passion at the time was Rugby union because we had a very good school side which went for two years undefeated. (We didn’t play cricket at school). In that side we had people like Ian Ure who played football with Dundee and then went down to Arsenal before transferring to Manchester United; ‘Mighty Mouse’ Ian McLauchlan who captained the Scottish rugby team and went on to play for the Lions in 1971 and myself. Ian Ure played Stand-off and I played Centre. If Ian got injured I would move to number ten. I worked my way up to trials but by the time I got to the Scottish junior trial I was on already on my way down to play cricket in England and at Kent we weren’t allowed to play an amateur sport in case we got injured. At that time they were looking at building a Kent side to be successful and so I had to give up Rugby at the age of twenty-one.
As I grew up my cricket heroes were players like Tom Graveney, Peter May and Colin Cowdrey; it was a great England side during that period. I was fortunate enough to see Jim Laker’s great test match when he got all ten wickets in one innings at Old Trafford; it was one of those moments when people ask “where were you when…” and I’m able to tick the box and say “I was there”.
When I left school I went to work in Glasgow for the Scottish Widows Fund in the insurance world and learnt a trade which was to be useful for me when I went down to England to play cricket. At the same time in my cricket I progressed into the Scottish international side and we played five three-day International games during this period against the likes of Warwickshire, MCC, Ireland, the Tourists and Yorkshire. I was very fortunate to get that job because the Chairman of the Scottish Widows Fund was also President of the Scottish Cricket Union. It was a really nice tie-up as he was able to say to the Glasgow office ‘I think you should employ this lad and let him have a few days off when he needs to play cricket for Scotland’. It didn’t go down too well with some of my colleagues in the office but I remember a group of us used to often go down to House of Frasers for their special luncheon where my brother, who was an accountant in Glasgow, also used to join us. I can remember one day in particular when a chap decided to come through the skylight of the roof down onto our table, which wasn’t very pleasant for us, for him or our soup!
All my international cricket at that time was played in Glasgow, either at West of Scotland or at Pollock, or Edinburgh and once at Ayr when I was twelfth man. One incident I remember in particular was playing Australia in Edinburgh in 1961. Richie Benaud was the captain of Australia (sadly I got out caught in the slips by him that day, bowled by Bobby Simpson). The grass was a bit long at the Grange and Benaud had cut the ball down to third man and I ran round to get the ball. Benaud just thought he had got the four runs in the bag. I eventually picked the ball up and threw it in to Jimmy Brown the wicket keeper. Benaud and his fast-bowler colleague were just having a chat in the middle of the wicket and we told Jimmy ‘take the bales off’. As they stood and chatted they must have crossed because the tail-end bowler was out and that was the end of the innings. What we didn’t know was that Benaud was about to declare anyway but it became clear that he wasn’t too happy about what had happen and his colleagues got the instruction to steam in - and that’s exactly what they did! It wasn’t a very pleasant time for us after that. One thing you don’t do is upset fast bowlers and that’s what we did I’m afraid that day.
In the Scotland/Warwickshire game, one of the colleagues who played with me was Jim Allen who played for Kent in 1955/56. (He was a slow left-armed bowler but as night watchman he actually got a hundred for Kent on one occasion). Unbeknown to me he actually wrote to Les Ames, the Manager of Kent, and said ‘we’ve got a young lad here playing in the side and maybe you should be inviting him down for a trial and see what you think of him?’ That coincided in that same Warwickshire game with M.J.K.Smith, the captain of England, seeing me get some runs. He later came into the dressing room and said to me ‘you know what, have you ever thought about coming down to England to play County Cricket – we would offer you a post down there?’ That was really the first time my mind had been turned to ‘would it be an opportunity for me?’ and ‘would I be successful?’ I didn’t know the answer to that one. ‘Were they all a lot better than me?’ I didn’t know that until I gave it the opportunity. By the time I got home from that Warwickshire game there was this letter waiting for me from Kent inviting me down to a trial. I went down, did the trial, played a few games and finally went down and joined Kent in 1962 on a full-time basis.
Playing for Kent and England
The great thing I experienced at Kent was the fact that we had a very, very successful side. In Kent, and sadly in many ways, we are still talking about the ‘Glory Years’ because in the seventies we were the leading side country. We weren’t necessarily winning championships, although we won it in 1970, but we won the Gillette Cup in 1967 and ‘74. We were winning all the one-day competitions and we were the side to beat. When you are part of that you have to say to yourself ‘you’ve made it’ because you are part of a successful team. You are having success and the people around you are as good as you are or you are as good as they are; so one never felt inadequate in any way, shape or form, playing in county cricket.
There were many other highlights; not least playing on tour, the enjoyment of being able to be part of a test team, to go around the World and be able to play against the West Indies, or on the Asian continent, or Australia, New Zealand. I was fortunate enough to play and either captained against all of the countries except South Africa, where we weren’t allowed to tour, or vice-captained when we toured the Asian countries.
The toughest times we all had were in ’74/’75 when I took the side out to Australia and New Zealand and we came across Lillee and Thomson together for the very first time. Lillee had a broken vertebra a year earlier and we didn’t know whether he was going to play, but he did and he was very hostile. ‘Thommo’ was unknown to us; all he did was say in magazines that he just wanted to hit players in the ugliest part of their anatomy and you don’t have to be on Mastermind to know where he was talking about. They were quite ferocious individuals to the point where players would say ‘thank goodness we got out of that alive!’ It makes you wonder how much it affected a lot of the England players. Fortunately none of them got ht or injured. But to put it into perspective, although we got beaten the West Indies went to Australia a year later and were white-washed. They were saying that the pair were too quick for them and the West Indies were World Champions at the time. The England lads stood up to it at the end of the day and although we did get beaten quite badly we did win one test match which was a great effort by the players. Although Thommo got injured and didn’t play in that match and Dennis Lillee broke down you still have to win test matches and the Aussies don’t like losing test matches. My 188 at Melbourne in that game was one of the highlights that I will cherish because it was the highest score in a test match for me as an individual and it is still a record by an England captain, in Australia in a test Match. Somebody’s got to break it soon and I hope it might be the current captain. It’s a long time since ’75 and I hope ‘Cookie’ will get over 188 in Australia at some point.
In those days the players always used to have a ‘hospitality room’ in our hotel and that was the meeting point for everybody. So after a day’s play it wasn’t back to your own bedroom, you would get back to that hospitality room, get the newspapers out and have a bit of banter and then get a drink going and decide where you were going to get something to eat. In Australia we had characters - people like (and you’ve only got to watch the television now to see what he’s like) David Lloyd, “Bumble”, and what a ball of fire he was! To have him in hospitality room joking and mickey-taking the whole time was absolutely wonderful even though he probably suffered as much as anyone else on that particular tour batting, as he did, up the order and having to duck and weave against Lillee and Thomson; a very, very amusing man as many of them were. Mike Hendrick, one of our fast bowlers was another very funny man but many people probably don’t realise how amusing he could be. You learn about these things when you’re on tour. When you’re on the County circuit you don’t actually get to know them that well. When you do get to know them is when you’re living out of a suitcase the whole time. Bear in mind we left on the 20th October 1974 and didn’t get back until, I’m guessing, the end of March ’75. We were out there for the whole duration and that is a long time to spend in a Hotel with your friends and colleagues without the home atmosphere.
A biographical account of the sporting life of Mike Denness OBE, based on a telephone interview recorded, edited and revised by Chris Wilkins of the Sporting Memories Foundation. The interview took place on 8 February, 2013.
Growing-up and Playing for Scotland
I was a very fortunate young man as my Father was a keen sportsman; he was a rugby man, a cricket man and a golfer and it rubbed off. When we moved to Ayr, when I was about seven or eight years old, there was a plot of land adjacent to Ayr cricket club which my father bought and built a house on. There was nothing but a hedge between the house and the cricket ground so I spent all my school holidays in the summer on the cricket pitch with the Pro there enjoying every minute of it. As a ten year old the Pro allowed me to go on the roller and roll the wicket; not something that health and safety would allow now.
Friday night was junior night and there would be anything up to a hundred youngsters of different ages, all playing cricket and being coached. My interest just kept going on and on and on. We had visits from professional coaches from the Caribbean and from England; people like Charlie Oakes, the Sussex cricketer. He was absolutely magic. I would sit and watch test matches at home on the television and watch people like Tom Graveney. I would watch some of his shots and then go into the nets on a Friday night and ask the coach to show me how Tom Graveney played a particular shot. He would then teach me how to play it. It was very encouraging to a youngster like me at the time.
But my other interest and perhaps my greater passion at the time was Rugby union because we had a very good school side which went for two years undefeated. (We didn’t play cricket at school). In that side we had people like Ian Ure who played football with Dundee and then went down to Arsenal before transferring to Manchester United; ‘Mighty Mouse’ Ian McLauchlan who captained the Scottish rugby team and went on to play for the Lions in 1971 and myself. Ian Ure played Stand-off and I played Centre. If Ian got injured I would move to number ten. I worked my way up to trials but by the time I got to the Scottish junior trial I was on already on my way down to play cricket in England and at Kent we weren’t allowed to play an amateur sport in case we got injured. At that time they were looking at building a Kent side to be successful and so I had to give up Rugby at the age of twenty-one.
As I grew up my cricket heroes were players like Tom Graveney, Peter May and Colin Cowdrey; it was a great England side during that period. I was fortunate enough to see Jim Laker’s great test match when he got all ten wickets in one innings at Old Trafford; it was one of those moments when people ask “where were you when…” and I’m able to tick the box and say “I was there”.
When I left school I went to work in Glasgow for the Scottish Widows Fund in the insurance world and learnt a trade which was to be useful for me when I went down to England to play cricket. At the same time in my cricket I progressed into the Scottish international side and we played five three-day International games during this period against the likes of Warwickshire, MCC, Ireland, the Tourists and Yorkshire. I was very fortunate to get that job because the Chairman of the Scottish Widows Fund was also President of the Scottish Cricket Union. It was a really nice tie-up as he was able to say to the Glasgow office ‘I think you should employ this lad and let him have a few days off when he needs to play cricket for Scotland’. It didn’t go down too well with some of my colleagues in the office but I remember a group of us used to often go down to House of Frasers for their special luncheon where my brother, who was an accountant in Glasgow, also used to join us. I can remember one day in particular when a chap decided to come through the skylight of the roof down onto our table, which wasn’t very pleasant for us, for him or our soup!
All my international cricket at that time was played in Glasgow, either at West of Scotland or at Pollock, or Edinburgh and once at Ayr when I was twelfth man. One incident I remember in particular was playing Australia in Edinburgh in 1961. Richie Benaud was the captain of Australia (sadly I got out caught in the slips by him that day, bowled by Bobby Simpson). The grass was a bit long at the Grange and Benaud had cut the ball down to third man and I ran round to get the ball. Benaud just thought he had got the four runs in the bag. I eventually picked the ball up and threw it in to Jimmy Brown the wicket keeper. Benaud and his fast-bowler colleague were just having a chat in the middle of the wicket and we told Jimmy ‘take the bales off’. As they stood and chatted they must have crossed because the tail-end bowler was out and that was the end of the innings. What we didn’t know was that Benaud was about to declare anyway but it became clear that he wasn’t too happy about what had happen and his colleagues got the instruction to steam in - and that’s exactly what they did! It wasn’t a very pleasant time for us after that. One thing you don’t do is upset fast bowlers and that’s what we did I’m afraid that day.
In the Scotland/Warwickshire game, one of the colleagues who played with me was Jim Allen who played for Kent in 1955/56. (He was a slow left-armed bowler but as night watchman he actually got a hundred for Kent on one occasion). Unbeknown to me he actually wrote to Les Ames, the Manager of Kent, and said ‘we’ve got a young lad here playing in the side and maybe you should be inviting him down for a trial and see what you think of him?’ That coincided in that same Warwickshire game with M.J.K.Smith, the captain of England, seeing me get some runs. He later came into the dressing room and said to me ‘you know what, have you ever thought about coming down to England to play County Cricket – we would offer you a post down there?’ That was really the first time my mind had been turned to ‘would it be an opportunity for me?’ and ‘would I be successful?’ I didn’t know the answer to that one. ‘Were they all a lot better than me?’ I didn’t know that until I gave it the opportunity. By the time I got home from that Warwickshire game there was this letter waiting for me from Kent inviting me down to a trial. I went down, did the trial, played a few games and finally went down and joined Kent in 1962 on a full-time basis.
Playing for Kent and England
The great thing I experienced at Kent was the fact that we had a very, very successful side. In Kent, and sadly in many ways, we are still talking about the ‘Glory Years’ because in the seventies we were the leading side country. We weren’t necessarily winning championships, although we won it in 1970, but we won the Gillette Cup in 1967 and ‘74. We were winning all the one-day competitions and we were the side to beat. When you are part of that you have to say to yourself ‘you’ve made it’ because you are part of a successful team. You are having success and the people around you are as good as you are or you are as good as they are; so one never felt inadequate in any way, shape or form, playing in county cricket.
There were many other highlights; not least playing on tour, the enjoyment of being able to be part of a test team, to go around the World and be able to play against the West Indies, or on the Asian continent, or Australia, New Zealand. I was fortunate enough to play and either captained against all of the countries except South Africa, where we weren’t allowed to tour, or vice-captained when we toured the Asian countries.
The toughest times we all had were in ’74/’75 when I took the side out to Australia and New Zealand and we came across Lillee and Thomson together for the very first time. Lillee had a broken vertebra a year earlier and we didn’t know whether he was going to play, but he did and he was very hostile. ‘Thommo’ was unknown to us; all he did was say in magazines that he just wanted to hit players in the ugliest part of their anatomy and you don’t have to be on Mastermind to know where he was talking about. They were quite ferocious individuals to the point where players would say ‘thank goodness we got out of that alive!’ It makes you wonder how much it affected a lot of the England players. Fortunately none of them got ht or injured. But to put it into perspective, although we got beaten the West Indies went to Australia a year later and were white-washed. They were saying that the pair were too quick for them and the West Indies were World Champions at the time. The England lads stood up to it at the end of the day and although we did get beaten quite badly we did win one test match which was a great effort by the players. Although Thommo got injured and didn’t play in that match and Dennis Lillee broke down you still have to win test matches and the Aussies don’t like losing test matches. My 188 at Melbourne in that game was one of the highlights that I will cherish because it was the highest score in a test match for me as an individual and it is still a record by an England captain, in Australia in a test Match. Somebody’s got to break it soon and I hope it might be the current captain. It’s a long time since ’75 and I hope ‘Cookie’ will get over 188 in Australia at some point.
In those days the players always used to have a ‘hospitality room’ in our hotel and that was the meeting point for everybody. So after a day’s play it wasn’t back to your own bedroom, you would get back to that hospitality room, get the newspapers out and have a bit of banter and then get a drink going and decide where you were going to get something to eat. In Australia we had characters - people like (and you’ve only got to watch the television now to see what he’s like) David Lloyd, “Bumble”, and what a ball of fire he was! To have him in hospitality room joking and mickey-taking the whole time was absolutely wonderful even though he probably suffered as much as anyone else on that particular tour batting, as he did, up the order and having to duck and weave against Lillee and Thomson; a very, very amusing man as many of them were. Mike Hendrick, one of our fast bowlers was another very funny man but many people probably don’t realise how amusing he could be. You learn about these things when you’re on tour. When you’re on the County circuit you don’t actually get to know them that well. When you do get to know them is when you’re living out of a suitcase the whole time. Bear in mind we left on the 20th October 1974 and didn’t get back until, I’m guessing, the end of March ’75. We were out there for the whole duration and that is a long time to spend in a Hotel with your friends and colleagues without the home atmosphere.