Like an each-way punter, Leach is the ultimate percentage player

Monday was a long day but an agreeable one, even though Hampshire were pinned down by Somerset off-spinner Jack Leach at the Rose Bowl. The Platform in Southampton was rather quiet but the rioja very good. My daughter’s cat Dusan was awaiting a midnight feast in Bristol and I am not one to disappoint my feline friends.

She named him after Southampton’s Serbian number 11 Dusan Tadic, which I thought a nice touch. In the Platform there is a sign that says: Not All Who Wander Are Lost. This is from J R R Tolkien, I think, and it will please flaneurs everywhere, especially this one.

Still, ‘not all’ suggests there are still a few wanderers around to bolster public opinion. Having watched Dusan Tadic on the right, the left, and lately in a sort of deep-lying role in the middle – a latter-day Don Revie, someone kindly suggested – the thought crossed my mind that he may indeed have lost his bearings.

Leach is a joy to watch and one of the reasons that followers of the four-day game, their ageing knees freshly pink from last week’s mini-heatwave, will seldom countenance T20.

Watching him closely, I even forgot to back Pat Murphy’s Catalinas Diamond at Chepstow, which was just as well. Leach bowled like someone who bets each-way at 11-2 with a quarter the odds a bonus. To everything pitched fractionally short, Hampshire’s batsmen came down the wicket to smother the spin; anything pitched up, they leaned back and tried to force him away but the field placings defeated them. In 24 overs he conceded only 54 runs and hardly any boundaries. Finally, of course, two 11-2 shots came in as he dismissed Vince and Ervine. The ultimate percentage player.

Live long enough and names come around again. Jack Leach the jockey won the 1927 2,000 Guineas on Adam’s Apple and trained successfully for a short time, when one of his supporters was Fred Astaire. Later he became an amusing and forthright racing journalist with the Observer, as well as writing the very entertaining A Rider on the Stand and Sods I Have Cut on the Turf.

He often rode for Harvey Leader, a former jockey who was very successful under both codes as a trainer. Leader had gambling patrons, most notably the cotton magnate Sidney Beer, who owned the brilliantly speedy Diomedes, winner of several top-class sprints in the mid-1920s. Leader was a big player himself and always gave Leach detailed instructions, until one day he was strangely silent and nervous before a race where the horse seemed to have a leading chance.

Finally, as it was about to canter down, Leader looked up and said: “Jack, I’ve had so much money on this horse I’m going to watch the race from the lavatory window.” I believe it won.

I like the Platform for several reasons, not least the music and the subdued lighting. As a post-racing or football pub it’s perfect, though a few years ago I often mulled things over in the Oliver Goldsmith nearby. It used to be called the Bitter End (no, really), then it gave way to trendier wine bars and finally a convenience store, whatever that is.

The pub sign in Southampton was faithful to Goldsmith’s smallpox-ravaged visage. He was a lifelong gambler, though he held on to the proceeds from She Stoops To Conquer for a while. The sixty pounds for The Vicar of Wakefield went straight to his landlady, who’d had him put away for failing to pay the rent.

It’s hard not to admire him, because in between drinking bouts in the Crown Tavern in Islington and betting stints day and night, he wrote fine articles for the Monthly Review. When he died at 45 he owed two thousand pounds; not a bad effort under the circumstances. They honoured him with a monument within Westminster Abbey and a statue at Trinity College, Dublin.

Things always come around again. I once sold Hennessy to a publican called Ollie Goldsmith in Hounslow but I must say I never thought I’d see another ginger cat starring in a film after Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Quite wrong, as you’ll know if you’ve seen the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis.

I mentioned this, among other things, to Dusan in the small hours but he was well into the generous chunks of tuna I found in the fridge. I told him that Elliott Gould’s cat preferred curry bran in The Long Goodbye.

Sometimes I wish my memory was worth a lot of money. There’s no sign of it so far.