Glamorgan soared back up to fifth place in the Championship table in 1951, besides producing one of their most remarkable victories of all-time by beating the touring South Africans inside two days at Swansea. Both achievements were largely the result of an outstanding off-spin partnership between Len Muncer and Jim McConnon, with the pair sharing 234 out of the 452 wickets taken by Glamorgan’s bowlers during 1951. Muncer already had a track record as a match-winning spinner, but McConnon started the season as little more than a raw novice having only entered professional cricket the previous summer aged 28 after a football career with Aston Villa and a variety of Welsh League clubs.
Indeed, it was whilst based in Newport with Lovell’s that the Durham-born spinner attracted the attention of Glamorgan’s talent scouts and coach George Lavis. At the time, Jim was more of a medium-pace bowler, who dabbled with occasional off-breaks, but with a high flowing action and long fingers, the Glamorgan coaches believed that Jim could, like Johnnie Clay before him during the 1920s, switch from seam to spin.
Opposite – Jim McConnon. Photo Credit – Glamorgan Cricket Archives.
Many hours of practice duly followed over the winter months at the Arms Park in the temporary nets laid out along one of the long corridors in the North Stand. Despite the chilly and austere conditions, McConnon improved his skill sets and developed a clever loop and nagging length. 1951 saw Jim reap the benefits of these long hours in the nets by claiming 136 wickets at just 16 runs apiece and playing a leading role in an amazing victory over the 1951 Springboks at Swansea over the August Bank Holiday as the Welsh county duly became the only county team to lower the colours of the tourists on their visit to the UK.
Click here to read more about the historic victory over the 1951 South Africans.
A month before this historic victory over the South Africans, Wilf Wooller had locked horns with Reg Simpson, the Nottinghamshire captain in their match at Trent Bridge. Glamorgan had batted first and had slowly moved to 330 from 158 overs with Reg taking umbrage at their slow progress by bowling an over of lobs. Wilf’s response was to goad Reg about his pre-match boast about their wonderful new scoreboard at Nottingham, with the Glamorgan captain calling on all eleven players to bowl as the game meandered to a draw.
There was only sufficient space to show ten bowlers, so when Wilf impishly asked Haydn Davies to take off his pads and bowl, he gestured towards Reg on the pavilion balcony and shrugged his shoulders as the Glamorgan wicket-keeper had his one and only bowl in first-class cricket. There was plenty of mirth as the scoreboard operators tried to show Haydn as bowling and in the mayhem, Haydn’s opposite number behind the stumps, Eric Meads, lost control of his bat and was dismissed hit wicket!
Another reason behind Glamorgan’s rise back up the table during 1951 was the decent form of their top order batters. This was epitomised in the game against Derbyshire at the Arms Park where, for the first time in the Club’s history, the top six all scored fifty or more. Emrys Davies and Gilbert Parkhouse set the tone by each scoring high-class hundreds before the good work was continued by half-centuries from Phil Clift, Willie Jones, Allan Watkins plus Wilf himself before he gleefully declared on a record total of 587-7.