\n A number of their top players from that era had played for or went on to play for Derbyshire, many with great success.\n<\/p>\n
\n Les Jackson and Alan Ward played for the county, the Intake Road side, and England.\n<\/p>\n
\n Opener David Smith played over 100 first-class matches for Derbyshire between 1965 and 1970, the Shipley native scoring nearly 5,000 runs in that format.\n<\/p>\n
\n Smith\u2019s regular partner at the top of the batting card in the Bradford League had a less stellar career in the county game.\n<\/p>\n
\n But his struggles there were Undercliffe\u2019s gain.\n<\/p>\n
\n Jim Brailsford only managed three first-class games for Derbyshire in 1958, but they must have liked him, as he stayed as part of their Second XI team for another decade.\n<\/p>\n
\n But that left him plenty of free time to score runs as Undercliffe opener, which he did in style on this day 60 years ago.\n<\/p>\n
\n They were facing a mouthwatering Division One derby with leaders Idle, with Brailsford sending the ball to all parts of Intake Road, despite the usual brilliant bowling from Dick and Martin Sherred.\n<\/p>\n
\n After some early lucky escapes, he took charge, bringing up the 50 partnership with Smith in no time at all, contributing 43 to that total, before going on to make a scintillating half-century.\n<\/p>\n
\n Idle took the title that year anyway, but Brailsford\u2019s best days at Undercliffe were still ahead of him.\n<\/p>\n
\n Aided by stylish fellow Derbyshire alumnus Ashley Harvey-Walker\u2019s runs, Brailsford captained Undercliffe to the league title in both 1970 and 1971.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A number of their top players from that era had played for or went on to play for…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":681434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-681433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/681434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}