“You must change your style of bowling immediately.”
Arthur Gilligan
IN 1921 A Lancastrian teenager by the name of George Hoy Booth decided he wanted to make it as a comedian, just like his famous and recently deceased father. He had tried to become a professional jockey but, despite his wiry build, was too heavy and tall for the world of the turf. There was little else going on, so entering the family business seemed a logical thing to do.
However, Hoy Booth got things the wrong way round. He chose not to adopt his father’s stage name. Instead, for his performances, he adopted the Hoy part of his surname – from his mother’s side of the family – to become George Hoy. But the material he employed was all his father’s. When appearing at southern venues, he came on to the stage and played up his northern-ness, with trite and dated gags like: “I’m fra’ Wiggin. I’ve not been in England long.” This had once been enough for audiences happy to laugh at the country’s cultural divide. Not any longer. Standing in his dead father’s shoes like some cut-price impersonator was not working. The act bombed.
So Hoy Booth had a think. He needed to change the act to something brighter, a bit more original and fresh. To get some instant attention, he took on his father’s stage name. Then he developed a trick of his own. After seeing an actor playing the ukulele between performances, he had a go himself and liked it. In fact, he enjoyed the instrument so much that he bought one and learned how to play it properly.
Gaining in adventurous spirit and confidence, for a bet one night he agreed to strum the ukulele on stage at the Alhambra Theatre in Barnsley. Far from being a disaster, his cheeky singing style brought the house down. George Formby, the pre-eminent British comedian, singer and film star of the 1930s and 1940s, had arrived.
As time passed, the late George Formby senior – one of the biggest names of the early 20th century music hall scene – became known as the father of the film star, rather than a significant comic figure in his own right. The son’s songs, such as ‘When I’m Cleaning Windows’, ‘Leaning on a Lamppost’ and the racier ‘With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock’, are still widely known today. The father’s triumphs, longer ago and without the benefit of preservation on film, are not.
While Hoy Booth was undergoing his complex reincarnation, the similarly likeable Maurice Tate began to have doubts about whether his own father’s way of doing things suited him best. The off-spinners he had been bowling for a decade for Sussex, minus four seasons lost to the Great War, had given him a respectable place as a county cricketer. He had played for The South against the Australians the previous summer but had never managed to be picked for a Gentlemen v Players fixture, the next step down from Test cricket. Life was comfortable, but, at some stage during the 1922 season, he was to discover, like Hoy Booth/Formby, that employing a bit of originality could result in something far, far better. Tate decided to abandon his off-spin and became, in a matter of months, the best pace bowler in the world.
Some of cricket’s greatest bowlers have changed their speed. Often this occurs as quicker men get older and feel their bodies simply are not up to the task anymore. Tom Goddard, the tall Gloucestershire contemporary of Tate, switched from medium-fast to off-spin in the late 1920s, his giant hands making the ball fizz off the pitch. Australia’s Colin “Funky” Miller, a late-comer to international cricket, did the same in the 1990s. His decision to dye his hair blue demonstrated the essence of a free spirit willing to gamble away comfort in his pursuit of success. Conversely, Craig White, born in England but raised in Australia, went from off-spin to pace. He returned to England to play in 30 Tests, taking 59 wickets.
Other players have alternated between the two styles, dependent on the match situation. Left-armer Garfield Sobers, a one-off in his all-round cricketing brilliance, was highly adept at bowling pace, finger-spin or wrist-spin. At a lesser level, Lancashire and England’s Mike Watkinson became known as a “speamer” – a hybrid of a spinner and a seamer – because of his ability to purvey off-breaks and seam-up according to conditions.
Perhaps the most interesting career alteration, other than that of Tate, involved a decision made before the Second World War by Surrey’s Bedser twins, Alec and Eric. They both bowled medium-fast, but reasoned that there would only be room for one such player in the county side. So, via the toss of a coin, they chose which brother would stick with it and which would move on to bowl off-spin. Alec kept the pace and Eric dropped his. Alec became a world cricketing superstar, overtaking Sydney Barnes at the top of England’s wicket-takers’ list before moving on to a knighthood. Eric, however, often struggled for a regular place in the Surrey team, albeit one containing a spin pairing of genius in Jim Laker and Tony Lock. Eric also had to focus more on his batting to justify his inclusion. Tate, in 1922, took the opposite journey to Eric, releasing his ‘inner Alec’ for all the world to see.
As the season began, the English game was still coming to terms with the drubbing handed out by Warwick Armstrong’s tourists the previous summer. The pace pairing of Ted McDonald and Jack Gregory had caused havoc. England wanted some effective express men of their own. The cricket magnate Pelham Warner was to recall years later that the Test team “still needed a really great bowler”. Little did he or anyone else know that one such figure was already playing.
In the off-season Tate had become a father. His twin daughters, Betty and Joan, were born in November 1921. The couple were unprepared, as “times were not too good”, by Tate’s own admission, so one of the girls slept in a cot improvised from a suitcase. The Sussex committee minutes confirm his financial struggles. On 11th January 1922, a letter from Tate was read out “asking if, owing to his heavy home expenses, he might be paid his salary weekly instead of monthly as proposed”. Money, especially given his losses when Farrow’s had collapsed a year earlier, was tight.
But the responsibilities of fatherhood might have buoyed Tate’s sense of manhood and his cricketing self-confidence. In early May, Sussex played Warwickshire and, in the second innings, he beat his previous best first-class figures, taking seven for 24. The Sussex Daily News, ever concise, described the scenes at Edgbaston. The newly appointed county captain, Arthur Gilligan, brought on Tate, and the veteran left-arm spinner George Cox, with “sensational effect”, it reported, adding: “Tate has never bowled so well for the county.”
There was no indication of a notable speeding-up when, a week later, Tate took five for 28 against Glamorgan, although he was opening the attack. He went on to take three or more wickets in an innings seven times over the next couple of months – a very consistent performance. But, seemingly in mid-summer, something changed.
Tate appeared to have started pushing a few more balls through at a greater pace – not absolute express but several miles per hour faster than normal. In the Lancashire game at Liverpool in early July, a Test batsman was said to have made a profound recommendation. “Ernest Tyldesley, beaten once or twice in an innings by Tate’s occasional quick ball, remarked he was wasting his time bowling anything else,” the England bowler Ian Peebles wrote. Peebles had not been present, but was well versed in the stories passed around dressing rooms. Tyldesley’s reported comment came in a game where Tate took none for 15 off 11 tight overs. He had noticed some potential. Like George Hirst in 1914, who had advised Tate to stick to “ah good length”, another canny northerner had seen something he liked.
People’s versions of what happened later that season differ widely. On the one hand there is the story put about by Tate and his admirer, John Arlott. On the other is that disseminated by Arthur Gilligan, who had become Sussex’s captain.
The London-born 27-year-old, who had chosen south coast county over Surrey, was keen to advance his team in all respects, to create a sense of purpose. Fielding was a particular concern and, with his dynamic displays at mid-off and mid-on, the captain liked to set an example. With the McDonald-Gregory lesson still fresh, a good fast-bowling pairing would be useful too, he reasoned. Gilligan, with his long run and accurate pace, could supply one half of the solution. Sussex, though, lacked a serious foil for him.
The words of Tyldesley provided something for Tate to think about, but they needed to be put into action. In his book, Sussex Cricket, Gilligan gave a vivid version of how this had happened “by a piece of luck”. According to this, the team had a day off in July 1922 so put in an afternoon’s practice following some “dreadful batting”. Gilligan faced Tate in the nets. “He ran up and delivered the ball,” Gilligan wrote, “and before I knew what had happened something flashed off the pitch, and there was a terrible noise behind me. A kind gentleman, standing behind the nets, politely asked me if I would like my stump back. I accepted it with my pride, like my wicket, terribly shattered.”
Tate, smiling, then sent down a slower ball, which Gilligan whacked into the outfield. Two minutes later, he sent down another quicker one, which knocked out a stump. The next ball from Maurice did not knock one stump out of the ground; it sent two instead, straight through the back of the net, according to Gilligan. The skipper then rushed up to his team-mate and exclaimed: “You must change your style of bowling immediately. I have never seen anything fizz off the wicket like those fast deliveries of yours.”
Gilligan reported that the team had been enthusiastic about Tate’s new-found pace and that he had tried it out the following day against Kent at Tunbridge Wells. In Kent’s second innings Tate was “unplayable”, he said, taking eight for 32, in what was “the turning point in Maurice Tate’s career”.
The Kent scorecard makes stupendous reading. The details for the top nine in the order were:
Bryan | bowled Tate | 8 |
Hardinge | lbw Tate | 10 |
Seymour | ct and bowled Tate | 9 |
Woolley | bowled Tate | 0 |
Ashdown | bowled Tate | 0 |
Hubble | bowled Tate | 7 |
Collins | ct and bowled Tate | 33 |
Taylor | run out | 33 |
Troughton | bowled Tate | 29 |
In other words he captured his eight wickets all by himself, with no need for fielders. Wisden reported: “Tate for the moment was irresistible.”
It is an enticing tale of sudden stardom. Yet Gilligan’s story contains three basic flaws. First, there was no rest day before the Kent match, which started on a Wednesday. Sussex had been involved in a fixture against Yorkshire, at Hull, ending on the Tuesday. The only chance they would have had for a net was on the Sunday, a rest day against the Tykes. Second, Gilligan’s initial figures were wrong. Tate actually took eight for 67, not eight for 32. This detail was amended for Gilligan’s re-telling of the tale in a Wisden article in the 1950s, but the initial error suggests an anecdotal haziness. Third, the wickets came in the first, not the second, innings.
However, the press reporting seems to confirm the gist of Gilligan’s account. The Sussex Daily News recounted that “the outstanding feature was the astonishing performance of Tate for Sussex”. It said: “[Bill] Ashdown stopped Tate’s hat-trick, but the next ball, a beautiful delivery, broke right across and spread-eagled all three stumps.” Slower deliveries do not usually have this effect. The sheer number of bowled and lbw wickets – six – tends also to imply quicker bowling at play, whether as surprise deliveries or the main mode of attack.
The Cricketer magazine reported, although hardly definitively: “We hear that the bowling in the Kent and Sussex match at Tunbridge Wells last week reached a very high pitch of excellence, Tate in particular sending down some splendid back breaks quite worthy of his father’s best days.” The likening to Fred suggests that some slower balls, indeed many, were still being used.
Gilligan continued his story of the realisation of Tate’s true vocation with a self-deprecating vignette. Five weeks later Sussex were playing at Hastings, when the old Lancashire and England fast bowler Walter Brearley, who had been watching his bowling from near the sightscreen, came rushing into the dressing room:
“‘Arthur la’ad,’ he said, ‘do you know you’ve got an England bowler there for the asking?’” Thinking he meant me, I blushed! But my hopes were again shattered.
“‘That young Maurice Tate, I mean. I have never seen him bowl like that before. He is absolutely international class.’”
Gilligan added that Brearley had passed on the information to a “higher quarter” in the game’s hierarchy.
Gilligan must have been a wonderful captain to play under. His sporting enthusiasm made him popular wherever he went and his players adored him. One of his gestures on assuming the leadership of Sussex was to do away with the most visible differentiation between gentlemen and players. It became his habit to direct the amateurs to the professionals’ dressing room, situated on another part of the Hove ground, before leading them all out together. He also championed Tate and said he could never recall referring to him as “Chub”, only “Maurice”.
Yet Tate, and Arlott, told a different story to Gilligan’s. Tate agreed that, before 1922, he had been “still a very late change, bowling my slow off-spinners and an occasional fast one”. But he insisted the alteration had happened a few weeks after the Kent game, when Sussex hosted Hampshire at Eastbourne.
Tate and his colleagues had for many years struggled against the most cussed of left-handers, Phil Mead. A protégé of CB Fry, Mead is the highest scorer in the history of the County Championship. Unlike Jack Hobbs, Wally Hammond or Frank Woolley, he did not have much of a Test career, so his name is not well known today. But, my, he was a bugger to get out.
Mead, forming a decent partnership with all-rounder Alec Kennedy, had made a typically gritty, painstaking 39, when Tate, according to Arlott, “suddenly, for no reason he could afterwards recall... decided to ‘let him have one’”. Coming in off the usual run, he pushed the ball through at a quicker pace. It was not the usual arm-ball, the slightly faster one that most off-spinners have at their disposal, though. This one swung away from Mead, pitched just outside his off stump and then cut back viciously to take out the astonished batsman’s leg stump.
Mead, outwardly as impassive as ever, turned and trudged back to the pavilion of the Saffrons ground. The Sussex players were more excited. “Tate was both surprised and delighted,” wrote Arlott. “Arthur Gilligan, the captain, standing at mid-off, stiffened, startled.” He added: “It was as near to a cricketing miracle as the history of the game contains. Suddenly the sharpest attacking weapon of his time had been thrust into the hand of an industrious but rather pedestrian county all-rounder.”
Mead, questioned 30 years later, confirmed the tale, saying: “First fast ball, and the best I’ve seen him bowl.” Asked if he had made any comment at the time, he replied: “Not me, I never encourage bowlers.”
The Argus failed to see the significance, though, reporting: “It was not until the partnership had lasted an hour and three quarters and had collected 92 runs that Tate broke it by bowling Mead, whose share was a painstaking 39.” Tate ended up taking four wickets for 69 runs – off 32 overs – in the innings, so the overall effect of his bowling was attritional rather than sensational. In the second innings against Hampshire, Tate lost control a little, but took one for ten.
Tate and Arlott’s version of the change is about the realisation of possibilities. Gilligan’s indicates instant success. If the Mead dismissal was indeed the defining point of Tate’s career, it bore a strange similarity to that of his father. Remember that Fred had been bowled in 1902 by a superb faster ball sent down by the Australian left-arm spinner, Jack Saunders, to destroy his reputation forever. Maurice had released possibly one of the best faster balls ever bowled to send himself on a cricketing journey which would right Fred’s wrongs, and then some.
In Sussex’s next game, against Essex, Tate took four for 25 in 25 parsimonious overs. Then, against Middlesex, in the August Bank Holiday game at Hove, he snaffled six for 30 and three for 28. The Observer newspaper lived up to its name, reporting: “The chief cause of their downfall was the bowling of Tate, who varied his pitch and his pace skilfully.” It seemed he was not an out-and-out quicker bowler yet, but he was employing his new deliveries with improving control and greater frequency.
There was another five-wicket haul against Lancashire at Hastings. Neville Cardus reported on the match, saying that veteran opener Harry Makepeace had been “bowled by a well-pitched off-break, at which he made a stroke with an indecisive swing”. It may well have been his traditional ball. But the terminology of the time is confusing to the modern reader. Spin was not always equated with slow bowlers, perhaps because a previous generation of players, especially Sydney Barnes, had been deemed capable of achieving considerable movement at a decent lick. So, this “well-pitched off-break” could have been fast or slow. It is not described as a slower ball delivered with a rip, nor is it spoken of as a ball which simply broke in naturally off a straight seam.
The following summer, Cardus wrote an article expounding Tate’s virtues, headlined “A Likely Bowler”. He remembered that, at that Lancashire game, Ernest Tyldesley, probably proud that the Sussex man had heeded his advice, had “assured me that Tate, on a good wicket, could bowl the most difficult ball in England to-day”.
Whatever he was doing, it worked. Northamptonshire and Yorkshire suffered the same fate as Lancashire, with Tate getting two more five-wicket hauls. In Sussex’s final game, against Kent, Tate was eclipsed by the diminutive leg-spinner “Tich” Freeman, who took 17 wickets. But his season had been a triumph, bringing 119 wickets at an average of 17.42. Gilligan, who had been picked for England’s winter trip to South Africa, looked forward keenly to nets at Hove the following spring, when he and Tate could hone what was to become a weapon of mass distraction.