All a first-class amateur received was a cleaning allowance for his flannels of £1
The year 1962 saw the release of the Beatles’ first hit ‘Love Me Do’ breaking into the Top Twenty of the British charts in October. It was also the year that cricket lost a little piece of its past as the MCC abolished the game’s amateur status.
No longer would there be a distinction in English first-class cricket between the amateur gentleman and the professional player; from now on there was only a cricketer, dressed all in white and trusted to play the game in a noble spirit regardless of how much he was earning.
The MCC took their decision in November, a month after the Fab Four were shaking their fringes at hysterical teenage girls. It’s unlikely the men of the MCC paid much attention to Paul, John, Ringo and George, but they were doubtless aware that the country had changed post-war, particularly in the four years since they had last discussed abolishing cricket’s amateur status in 1958. On that occasion the committee, chaired by the Duke of Norfolk, decreed that: ‘The distinctive status of the amateur cricketer was not obsolete, was of great value to the game and should be preserved.’
But in 1962 attitudes were undergoing a seismic shift as the Swinging Sixties transformed urban Britain and the young and the working class found their voice, be it through the Beatles or John Osborne and the other Angry Young Men. ‘Put simply, the era of social deference was over,’ wrote author and television producer Colin Schindler in an essay for the 2012 Wisden (commissioned to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the demise of the amateur). ‘The wave of consumer-spending encouraged by the Macmillan government… the rising tide of immigration and the increasing influence of grammar school graduates – all contributed to Britain’s changing public face.’
Amateurs were thus viewed as archaic in modern Britain, even though thirteen of the seventeen county sides were captained by amateurs. One of them, Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie, had skippered Hampshire to their first championship title in 1961. But many of the amateurs struggled to support themselves in an age when even aristocrats were having to work; rather as with an increasing number of stately homes, the impressive exterior concealed the indigent interior, and it was hard to make ends meet when all a first-class amateur received was a cleaning allowance for his flannels of £1 and petrol allowance of 6d a mile. England batsman Trevor Bailey was able to captain Essex only by taking a paid job as the club’s secretary, and other amateurs were torn between turning professional or leaving the game altogether to take up other occupations.
All a first-class amateur received was a cleaning allowance for his flannels of £1
So in the end the MCC moved with the times and retired the amateur, perhaps also tacitly acknowledging that if England wished to remain strong in an increasingly competitive Test scene, now that India, Pakistan and the West Indies had emerged from the shadows, they required a more focused approach, one that would more likely come from a professional and not an amateur with other things on his mind. Wisden was unsure of the move, fearing the decision had not been properly thought through. ‘We live in a changing world,’ it accepted. ‘Conditions are vastly different from the days of our grandparents; but is it wise to throw everything overboard?’
The great England batsman Sir Jack Hobbs, who in 1953 had been the first professional to be knighted, saw both sides of the debate, remarking: ‘It is sad to see the passing of the amateurs because it signals the end of an era in cricket. They were a great asset to the game, much appreciated by all of us because they were able to come in and play freely, whereas many professionals did not feel they could take chances. Now times are different, and I can understand the position of the amateur who has to make his living. You cannot expect him to refuse good offers outside cricket.’