17 JUNE 1993
Cricket has always bred characters rich and rare and in any such gallery Lindsay Hassett commands a place all his own. Ray Robinson called him ‘Puck in Flannels’. He was five feet six – the height of Hanif Mohammad, and Willy Quaife of earlier days – an inch below his great contemporary Neil Harvey. He showed in his cricket the inner toughness associated with his Australian countrymen, yet could lighten the tensest moments with spontaneous humour. In the 1948 Old Trafford Test the crowd showed their displeasure at some short fast bowling by Lindwall and Miller. Cyril Washbrook hooked high to long leg where Hassett waited underneath just inside the boundary, and dropped the catch. A little later the same stroke was repeated and this normally impeccable fielder dropped it again. Whereupon he removed the helmet from the nearby policeman and held it upside down like an offertory bag: general laughter and the situation defused. In Lahore one very hot afternoon an Australian bowler left the field, returning only hours later when the tail-enders were in. Lindsay fiddled about, moving him, first a little one way, then the other, before finally motioning him back through the pavilion gate.
He batted in two contrasting styles divided by the War. In his early manhood he was a free, uninhibited stroke-maker – not only a brilliant cutter, hooker and glancer, befitting his size. By nimble footwork and precise timing he drove powerfully. He was the only man to hit separate hundreds in a match against the great O’Reilly, going down the pitch and repeatedly hitting over his head.
He made a marvellous start to the England tour in 1938 with successive scores of 43, 146, 148 run out and 220 not out. His first major impact on the Test scene occurred in July at Headingley on a difficult wicket, in atrocious light, with a storm threatening and Bradman and McCabe just out. He went in at 61 for four. Australia needed another 44 to win the match and retain the Ashes, which they did; Hassett contributed a cool 33 in half an hour.
In 1945 he was a sergeant-major when appointed to lead the Australian Services team. He declined a commission, thereby confining himself to Service pay of twelve shillings a day, as against the 16s 6d for Pilot Officer Miller and other officers. Considering that the team – who fulfilled nearly fifty fixtures involving almost continuous travel – brought back a love of cricket to crowds estimated at three-quarters of a million, the wage was a sparse recompense, though it appealed to the captain’s whimsical humour.
Hassett was thirty-three when Australian Test cricket restarted in 1946–47. The need for a steadying hand was no doubt a factor in his decision to eliminate all risk from his batting. The touch was still there, the method flawless. Only the aggressive spirit was missing. An inexhaustible patience now brought him all his ten Test hundreds, a number incidentally unapproached after that age by any other Australian. Watching a stubborn innings from the Lord’s press box one day, he remarked: ‘I’m glad I wasn’t up here when I was down there.’
Though he had been an ideal vice-captain to Bradman on the triumphal 1948 tour of England, when it came to the choice of captain for the visit to South Africa in 1949–50 it was said that only the last telegram in a postal vote by the Australian Board of Control ensured his selection. Possibly Hassett’s inconsequential manner had ruffled a few dignitaries. At all events this marginal support was made to seem foolish by the overwhelming success of the tour. A fundamental difference of attitude between Australian and South African cricketers in those days was exemplified most starkly in the Durban Test on that tour. South Africa, having made 311, bowled out Australia for 75 but, with a lead of 236, failed to enforce the follow-on. They were then got out a second time for 99. Needing 336 to win, Australia battled away for seven hours and got home by five wickets.
Hassett led Australia in 1950–51 to four victories before F.R. Brown’s M.C.C. side broke the monotonous post-War pattern by winning the last Test at Melbourne. The Ashes, after eighteen years, at last changed hands in 1953 at the Oval where England won by eight wickets. Hassett’s humorous speech of congratulation to the crowd thronging in front of the pavilion sealed an emotional moment. When, afterwards, an England selector said: ‘Well done, Lindsay, that was perfect’, he replied with a hint of reproach: ‘Yes, not bad considering Tony Lock threw us out.’ No Australian team exceeded this one in popularity, nor has any captain left behind warmer feelings of regard and affection.
The only things that broke his composure were breaches of the rigid standards he observed himself and required of his men. In 1981–82 he bowed out of Test commentating, saying that he was fed up with players’ misbehaviour. Lindsay’s philosophy and that of too many of the moderns were oceans apart.
Arthur Lindsay Hassett: b Geelong, Victoria, 28 August 1913; d 16 June 1993