It was like 1947 all over again. Fifty years on from Denis Compton's season of seasons, the crowds were out in force again for his memorial service at Westminster Abbey on July 1. Some 2000 people filled the Abbey's every nook and cranny, and rumour had it that tickets were changing hands on the black market outside. Certainly many people who had asked for tickets were disappointed – total applications were not far short of 3816, the magic number of Compton's first-class runs in his record summer. Officials scratched their heads and said the demand for tickets had been unmatched since Richard Dimbleby's memorial service in 1966.

The Service began, with un-Comptonian punctuality, at 12 noon sharp. Compo's soccer days were brought to mind when Peter Hill-Wood, the Arsenal chairman, gave the first reading. He was followed by Compton's South Africa-based son, Richard, and the seemingly ageless Jim Swanton, who read the famous ` Lord's' passage from Neville Cardus's English Cricket.

The address was given, in jovial vein, by JJ Warr, the former MCC president who was also Compton's Middlesex captain for a time. He recalled asking Compo, by then retired from the game, what he would be doing during the three-day week imposed by the Conservative Government of 1973. `I'm not working an extra day for anybody, old boy!' was the typical response.

The Abbey bells rang – right on time again – at 12.55, and it was all over. The congregation had contained notable figures from football, politics and entertainment – but mainly they were famous names from the cricket world. England players young and old emerged into the watery sunshine afterwards, and ran the gauntlet of the ticketless. It had been a fitting farewell to the man who was one of cricket's greatest entertainers.

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