Bev Lyon relished playing cricket at Cheltenham and would have been dismayed at Gloucestershire's record there over recent years.

Eighty summers ago he was appointed the county's captain and was the finest they ever had. Twice under him they finished as championship runners-up.

The pros liked him when he led them on to the field at Lord's through their own class-divided gateway. He piled them into his Bentley after a hard-earned win and took them to his pub, otherwise known as the Dorchester.

He always wore his wristwatch when he played. His sight was so bad that he needed glasses – yet he was one of the best close fielders in the country.

In the post-Douglas Jardine days he was even pencilled in as an England skipper. But would the game's grandees ever have risked him and his unconventional hunches?

Lyon was a daring innovator, speaking out publicly in fearless tones against the starchy, bewhiskered occupants of the Lord's committee rooms.

Even in the 1920s and 30s he believed first-class cricket would die through lack of support, unless given a radical overhaul.

His contentious ideas didn't find universal favour, but that didn't bother him.

The critics would read his latest, well-reasoned outburst at a county cricket dinner and claim he was looking for a cheap headline. They failed to realise what a realistic thinker he was. He dared to turn Gloucestershire's final trial match of 1932 into an experimental 12-a-side grand-slam at Stinchcombe, with neither team being allowed bat for more than two-and-a-half hours.

It was controversial new ground and it attracted a crowd of 3,000 to the village.

Then there followed a Sunday fixture at Stanway House, near Moreton-in-Marsh. Six from the glamorous MCC party which had toured Australia the previous winter took part.

The churches were outraged. It was agreed that as a compromise, the players would attend morning service first.

Lyon knew it was the way cricket would have to inevitably go. The daughter of his senior engineer, valet and chauffeur, Margaret Luton, who lives in Knowle, still recalls the fertile mind and enthusiasm that Bev conveyed to her father.

Knock-out competitions and matches geared to the clock were the indisputable forerunner of the one-day tournaments and even Twenty20 with its unprecedented riches and appeal.

Some will claim that Lyon's dynamic radicalism went too far and eventually distorted the spirit of the game.

At this distance, we can only marvel at his vision and brave disregard for the sceptics.

He had the public largely on his side. It helped that he carved 16 hundreds for his county and was always an amateur worth his place.

It was surely his contempt for cricket's establishment that ruled out those rational murmurs that he deserved to be considered as captain of his country. But in the ever topsy-turvy history of Test match selection, it must have helped if you toed the social line.

Jack MacBryan, the talented Somerset amateur, seldom had a good word to say for those who ran cricket in this country. He used to recall that when his batting was likened to that of a Yorkshire pro, it was the biggest compliment ever paid him.

The tetchy Jack, who played for Somerset also at golf, hockey and rugby, was surely attractive enough to open the innings regularly for England. Instead he was chosen just once, at Old Trafford, and because of the bad weather, didn't even walk to the crease. He wasn't picked again and was left to make it bitterly clear just what he thought of his fellow amateurs.

And then there was one of the most bizarre pieces of Test selection ever.

David Townsend played three times for his country, against the West Indies in 1935. He was the last to have been a Test player without once representing a first-class English county.

Just like Somerset's Mandy Mitchell-Innes, he got his surprise cap because he'd been doing rather well for his university.

He was part of the locally famous Townsend dynasty, from Clifton and was the son of Charles, the leg-break bowler who made such a sensational arrival as a Gloucestershire spinner almost straight from school. But a cap and not a county appearance to show for it ?

"I say, old chap, pass the port. I rather like the idea of having a whirl with England in the morning….."