Butch White played a crucial part in securing Hampshire’s first championship title in 1961. At that time many, if not Fred Trueman, thought him the fastest bowler in England. Some pacemen – Brian Statham, Michael Holding, Glenn McGrath – have been rangy, supple creatures who combined menace with athletic grace. Others – Frank Tyson, Wes Hall, Jeff Thomson – have been obvious tough guys, ostentatiously determined to batter opponents into submission. Butch White belonged very much to the second category: a bundle of muscle, he ran in to bowl from a twenty-five-yard run with fierce, bustling and uncompromising energy, clearly bent on wreaking havoc. His delivery stride, in John Arlott’s phrase, was ‘a mighty, convulsive heave’. Many county batsmen devoutly wished themselves at the other end, save that – and here lay the nub of Hampshire’s success in 1961 – at the other end they encountered Derek Shackleton, one of the supreme medium-pace bowlers of all time.
Sour Yorkshiremen still whinge that Hampshire’s championship triumph that summer depended on generous declarations by other southern counties. The facts, however, do not support them. Hampshire carried off the title because the captain, Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie, was justified in his confidence that his bowlers could dismiss the opposition twice. If the principal honours must go to Shackleton, who took 153 county championship wickets in 1961, it should not be forgotten that White captured 117.
Always given to unpredictable streaks of brilliance, White brought off a particularly memorable performance that August, against Sussex at Portsmouth. On the evening of the second day Sussex, with Jim Parks and Ted Dexter at the crease, were 179 for four in their second innings, 141 ahead, and seemingly in a position to set Hampshire a challenging target on the morrow. ‘Give me just one over, Butch, would you?’ Ingleby-Mackenzie asked. White, who up to that point in the match had bowled with scant success, took a hat-trick with his first three balls, and with his fourth saw the new batsman dropped by Jimmy Gray at slip. The fifth ball passed without incident; off the sixth White claimed another victim, caught in the gully. Sussex were all out for 180, and Hampshire won by six wickets. Jimmy Gray attempted an apology for his dropped catch. ‘No more than I’d expect,’ returned White, who liked to project the image of a fierce and grumpy fast bowler. In fact, he was one of the most popular players in county cricket.
White bowled his heart out at all times, and only wished that he could have produced his all-conquering phases at will. Some suggested that they tended to occur when the pressure was off. ‘I can remember the Test selectors watching, and he’d bowl at medium pace,’ recalled Bryan Timms, Hampshire’s wicketkeeper. ‘If you came back that afternoon when they’d gone, he’d be on fire.’ A left-handed batsman – he bowled right-handed – and very much a tail-ender, White favoured the agricultural in his shot selection. Once every blue moon this method produced sensational results. Against Oxford University, in 1960, he plundered twenty-eight off an over from the off-spinner Dan Piachaud: 0, 6, 6, 6, 6, 4. Much more important was White’s innings against Gloucestershire at Portsmouth in June 1961, as the championship race was developing. Hampshire, chasing a total of 199, seemed likely to lose at 162 for eight. White, however, marched in and to general consternation secured a crucial victory with a speedy 33 not out.
The contribution of White’s bowling towards Hampshire’s title was recognised by his selection for the tour of Pakistan and India in 1961–62. He played in the first Test against Pakistan at Lahore in October, and quickly dismissed the openers, Hanif Mohammad and Imtiaz Ahmed. At the end of the innings he had the respectable figures of three for 65. For most of the tour, however, he was plagued with injury, perhaps a delayed effect of his efforts over the previous two English summers. In 1961, for instance, he bowled 1,010 overs, as compared with Matthew Hoggard’s 277 and Steve Harmison’s 363 in the first-class averages of 2007. White kept fit by running in Army boots during the winter, and, as he insisted, simply by bowling during the summer. Yet in Pakistan and India he proved more fragile than in England, which was all the more serious because, astonishingly, the touring party did not include a phsyiotherapist.
Though White comfortably headed the tourists’ bowling averages with thirty-two wickets at 19.84 apiece (including one match, against a Services side, in which he took four wickets in five balls), he played in only one other Test, against Pakistan at Karachi in February 1962. On that occasion he broke down after sixteen balls and one wicket. It was a severe disappointment to White that he was never given another chance. The supreme moment of his career remained the day that Hampshire clinched the championship. ‘I came along next morning,’ recalled team-mate Alan Castell, ‘and the first thing I saw was Butch White’s car, parked on its own right in the middle of the road. He’d got so pissed someone had to take him home.’
David William White: b Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire, 14 December 1935; d 1 August 2008