Dickie Dodds was an opening batsman who played for Essex from 1946 to 1959.
From Hit Hard and Enjoy It (1976).
WHILE MUCH HAS been written on Test cricket, many people have asked me what the life of an ordinary county cricketer was like. We will live through an imaginary season.
County cricket before the advent of the ‘one-day game’ was a comparatively uncomplicated affair. The season started early in May and went straight through to the end of August, with one three-day match following another. Occasionally there was a gap with no fixture, but the impression was of four months’ continuous cricket. It was a wonderful way of life for those who had the good fortune to play then.
I can still almost taste the atmosphere and feeling and smell of those early April days when the Essex players reported for their first nets of the new season. After the constraints of indoor winter jobs, and long dark winter evenings, it was a joy, and gave a marvellous feeling of freedom to be in flannels and run on the newly-mown turf. And there was the inviting sight of the freshly rolled and cut net wickets – the green of the turf set off by the glistening white of the bowling and batting creases.
In those days we would begin straight away with net practice. The opening batsmen would be asked to pad up, and a little self-consciously we would go to the crease (for we had spent the winter in anonymous activity and had got out of the habit of being looked at) and take guard. The bowlers were no less self-conscious, wondering where their first delivery would pitch, if at all. And so, creakily, it would all begin – another summer of history to be recorded in Wisden.
Those first seasons after the war seem very carefree in retrospect. I am sure we were not as fit as we should have been. In Essex, at any rate, physiotherapists, trainers and managers were unknown.
But it was not long before the county moved with the times, and instead of nets we began the season with weight-training and had a full-time physiotherapist to repair the damage to muscles unaccustomed to such violence.
Perhaps I should have done better had I been fitter. I made a serious attempt to achieve this once. I had spent the winter in Stoke-on-Trent. The Port Vale football ground was not far from where I lived and as the season grew nearer I decided I would burst on the cricket scene as the fastest man in the county. Port Vale were glad to let me train on their ground and every afternoon I used to run round their pitch.
The only result of all this activity was that I damaged both achilles tendons and played the whole of the next season with them strapped up and in much discomfort. I was never much of an enthusiast for pre-season training after that.
After a week of nets or sometimes two – depending on when Easter was since we always did a stint of schoolboy coaching during the holiday period – we would have our first practice match. Traditionally this was against Halstead, which is a town on the eastern side of Essex. Their beautiful ground is in a meadow on a hill on the outskirts of the town. The pavilion has a thatched roof. There are tall fir trees on one side and the other is wired off from the park-like field beyond, where cows lazily graze.
The opposition were mostly farmers and occasionally they would import a well-known player or two to stiffen up the side. One such man had a bowling action that had brought him notoriety and a large crop of wickets. As we drove to the ground, those who batted low down the order would pull the legs of their companions higher up, who were going to have to gain their early-season confidence against the projectiles this man delivered on the never very certain Halstead pitch.
Whenever I drive past the Halstead ground I recall with pleasure those springtime games and the fun we had. Once, when Tom Pearce gave the ball to Ray Smith and asked what he was going to bowl, Ray said, ‘Well, at this time of the season, skipper, I think the main thing is to try and hit the pitch.’
Provided the weather was good, it was not long before we had had enough of nets, and practice matches, and were anxious to get going on the real thing.
Our first three-day match of the season was often against Cambridge University. It was a fixture that made a pleasant start to the summer. One would motor up through the lovely East Anglian countryside, wondering what fortune the day would bring. By supper-time one might have 50, 80 or even 100 runs to one’s name, or five wickets, with the glow and promise of a bumper season ahead. Or it might be a low score and the suspicion that this was going to be the year all cricketers dread when nothing goes right.
Cambridge is especially beautiful at this time of the year. The cherry blossom is blazing, the daffodils, wallflowers, and the fresh green of the willow trees give their spring-time dressing to the lovely buildings.
Fenner’s, the University cricket ground, is always a picture. An artist groundsman of the highest skill was in residence there: Cyril Coote, reputed also to be the best shot in the county. He produced superb wickets with the ease of an Academician executing a portrait.
I am told that when it was recently decided to build a new pavilion at Fenner’s, the suggestion was made that it should be put in a position which would have meant moving the ‘square’ on which the pitches are prepared. When Cyril was asked about this, he is said to have replied that it would be easier to move King’s College Chapel. So the new pavilion stands in a place which enabled Cyril’s ‘square’ to stay put.
He and his wife prepared the meals we had in the pavilion. If one felt one was sufficiently senior a player to approach him for his views he would give shrewd judgements on the current crop of cricketers at the University.
Lunches at this match were always interesting. The two teams sat with each other. I would look at and talk to these young men and try and foresee which would be household names in a few years’ time – men like May, Bailey, Insole, Marlar, Dexter, Sheppard.
Although so close to Essex, Cambridge was classed as an away match, which meant we would be staying at an hotel for the first time in the season. Sometimes we stayed at the Boar’s Head and sometimes at the University Arms. The latter adjoins the famous Cambridge greensward, Parker’s Piece, where Jack Hobbs learned his early cricket. This stretch of turf can accommodate half-a-dozen cricket matches. Crossing this from the hotel one comes to a small lane off which the Fenner’s ground is situated.
The feeling of the players at the end of the first day of a new season is a mixture of relief and satisfaction – a bit like after the first day of term at school. In the dressing-room after close of play, the players usually sink on to the bench where their clothes are hanging and have a drink; beer for most, soft drinks for some. Then there are the quick changers and the slow changers. But for almost all cricketers it is surprising how soon their thoughts switch from the activities of the day towards the activities of the coming night.
Phil Tufnell (England and Middlesex) played forty-two Tests for England between 1990 and 2001. From What Now? (1999). ‘Gus’ is Angus Fraser, ‘Embers’ John Emburey and ‘Gatt’ Mike Gatting – Tufnell’s Middlesex colleagues.
BY THE TIME we clocked on for duty in the spring of 1990, Gus had returned from the West Indies with stirring tales of exploits on and off the field. Whereas my own experience of the Caribbean during the England Young Cricketers’ tour had been, largely, a piss-up, this all sounded suspiciously like what every cricketer is in the game for. Given two chances of upsetting the odds against Viv Richards and company, one of which barked, the team had nearly pulled off a major upset, returning as glorious losers of the 2-1 rather than the usual 5-0 variety. At the same time they had obviously enjoyed themselves as well, and tales of rum and ginger tickled up what you might call my thirst for action. I decided that I really did want to play for England, after all. But I was determined that it should be on my terms.
In the immediate short term I was helped in my ambitions by the fact that Keith Medlycott hadn’t really advanced his claims during the tour. Not that he had had much opportunity, for neither he nor Eddie Hemmings – who had been chosen because Embers had signed up on Gatt’s rebel tour – played in any of the Tests. Then when the England selectors started looking around again, the playing conditions in place for the 1990 season could have been made for me. First, the return to low-seamed balls meant that the practice of relying on trundlers to tuck in on helpful wickets was about to disappear. Secondly, the summer was hot and dry, bringing the twirlymen into the game even more.
I began the season in far from auspicious form when, on the first day back at pre-campaign training, the club physio sent me home to get some sleep. But I ended up playing in twenty Championship matches. Embers, who, along with Gatt, was available all summer because of the five-year ban imposed on them for their involvement in the rebel tour to South Africa, played in all twenty-two. We bowled very nearly 2,000 overs between us, took 122 wickets (Embers 57, me 65) and Middlesex won the title. Wallop.
Sending down that many overs and being that involved, it was inevitable that I developed as a bowler more quickly during this season than at any other time during my career. I started to use my brain more, picking up on people’s abilities and weaknesses, setting certain field placings, laying little traps and so forth. I was varying my pace more, and my flight, and I was bowling with good control. I also started to realize that, in order to take wickets, you don’t have to turn the ball square – just enough. But the thing that really swung it for me, so I am reliably informed, came about halfway through the season with the rearrangement of my coiffure.
The hair was long again now, and a bit unmanageable, to be honest. On occasions the top used to flop across in front of my eyes, so that after I had delivered the ball, I was blinded momentarily in the follow through. By the time we turned up at Lord’s for a Championship game against Worcestershire – in which, incidentally, I came up against Ian Botham for the first time, which was a bit oo-er – it was obvious I couldn’t go out to field with the barnet flailing in the breeze. I didn’t fancy asking one of my sausage-fingered colleagues to have a crack at trimming it, so the only thing I could think of was to try and tie it up at the back in a pony tail.
I’d be lying if I said I was unaware of the possibility that this might cause a stir. Who could say what effect the sight of my pony tail might have on the MCC members in the Long Room? As I walked through cricket’s Holy of Holies on the way out to field, I could almost hear the spirits of the giants of the game, some alive, some long gone, calling to me from their portraits. Douglas Jardine in particular was plainly unimpressed. Mind you, judging by that cap he used to wear he is a fine one to talk.
Perhaps I couldn’t hear it for the hair covering my lug-holes, but the game seemed to pass without too much piss-taking. Inevitably, though, the powers-that-be wasted no time in jumping on me again about the usual subjects – my general appearance and approach, etc. – and, as usual, I found it all difficult to get to grips with. Attitude. That was the word I kept hearing. My attitude was wrong.
I never quite saw it like that. In some ways I felt my attitude was too right for some people. Whatever I got up to after clocking off was my business, but the fact was that there was no one with a better attitude than me where it mattered, on the field, trying my hardest to get batsmen out.
There may have been some people at the club who felt that things came a little too easy for me. Perhaps they wanted to see me graft a bit more. The truth is that, had I played the game by their rules, I would have had a much smoother ride. But I just couldn’t see that there was more to playing cricket at this level than bowling. The cream and brown snakeskin shoes, the hair, the ear-rings and all the rest . . . what did they matter as long as I was doing the job, taking wickets and helping the club win the Championship?
After the degree of success he enjoyed as England captain in West Indies and a good start to the international season on their return – including his 333 against India at Lord’s – Graham Gooch was firmly in the driving seat. Having been left out of the squad for the trip to the Caribbean, David Gower was back in favour now, although seemingly on sufferance, but pony tails and scruffy gits with too much lip did not fit into Gooch’s scheme of things.
His greatest friend in cricket, and in life come to think of it, was Embers. Schoolboy cricketers together, mates on early tours, they had the kind of relationship that makes wives suspect their husbands might be on the turn. So whenever Embers perked up on matters pertaining to Gooch and England, everyone in the dressing room listened with more than usual interest.
One day he mentioned my name in that context. ‘Look, Cat,’ he said. ‘I think you have got a good chance of playing for England. You are bowling well, better than any other left-armer in the country, and they are definitely looking.’ So far so good. ‘But,’ he continued, ‘you’ve got to smarten yourself up and buck your ideas up. That means lose the pony tail.’
I knew it was coming and I knew I probably did need a haircut. But I wanted to be the one who decided when to do it, not them. By now I had worked myself up into a bit of serious rebellion. I dug my heels in. ‘I like the pony tail. If they don’t want to pick me, that’s their problem.’ I thought no more about it, and when we went to Uxbridge a fortnight later for the next Championship match, against Yorkshire, it was still there. As soon as Embers saw me he took me to one side. ‘I’m pretty sure that a couple of the selectors are coming to watch you in this match. That thing has got to go. I’m serious.’ And so was I. ‘Bollocks,’ I told him, or words to that effect. ‘I’m sorry, but why does everyone seem to be more bothered about my hair than my bowling?’ Too far gone now, I wasn’t budging.
Very soon, however, the matter was taken out of my hands in dramatic fashion. During the lunch interval, Gatt tapped me on the shoulder and said, quietly: ‘Tuffers, can you come with me for a minute?’ Obviously he wanted to have a chat about tactics, the way I was bowling, or a ploy to attack one of their batsmen in a certain way. I duly followed him out of the pavilion and out of earshot of the opposition for the passing on of the secret plans. But he carried on walking. In fact he speeded up to such a lick that by the time I caught up with him I was virtually running.
Then he pounced. He turned, grabbed me, frogmarched me to his car and bundled me in. He drove me down the road into Uxbridge High Street, dragged me out of the car and into the barber’s shop and, in the manner of the Master of Ceremonies at Madison Square Gardens, announced: ‘Short back and sides.’ I’ve never been so humiliated in my life. There was I, slumped sulking in the barber’s chair having all my hair cut off while Gatt, like a pissed-off dad teaching his naughty little boy a lesson, sat reading the newspaper to make sure I didn’t leg it. We were both still in our cricket gear. Job done, he took me back and made me play without another word.
From then on to the end of the 1990 season, little whispers started being heard. There were a few mentions in the newspapers and the like. I wasn’t bowling any differently to how I’d been bowling before the haircut, but there was definitely a change of mood in the dressing room as well. ‘Tufnell for England,’ one or two of the boys would jokingly chant after a good spell. Except that it seemed to be more than a joke. I kept grooving along the way I had been, paying no real attention to the rumours. Around early September, the squad for the upcoming England tour to Australia and New Zealand was announced. And I was in it.
Get your hair cut, play for England. Simple.
Marcus Trescothick made his debut for Somerset in 1993 and played seventy-six Tests for England between 2000 and 2006. The Test match referred to is England v.
Australia at Headingley in 2001. From Coming Back to Me (2008).
BY NOW I WAS firmly established as the man in charge of looking after the ball when we were fielding. It was my job to keep the shine on the new ball for as long as possible with a bit of spit and a lot of polish. And through trial and error I had finally settled on the best type of spit for the task at hand.
It had been common knowledge in county cricket for some time that certain sweets produced saliva which, when applied to the ball for cleaning purposes, enabled it to keep its shine for longer and therefore its swing. As with most of the great scientific discoveries, this one happened quite by accident. While at Warwickshire, Dermot Reeve noticed that his bowlers somehow had the ability to keep the ball swinging far longer than any team they faced. The problem was no one in their side knew why. By process of investigation and elimination he realized the reason was that the player in charge of polishing and keeping the ball clean was his bespectacled top-order batsman Asif Din, or rather, what he did to keep his concentration levels up, chewing extra-strong mints.
It took a while for word to get around the circuit but once it did the sales of sweets near the county grounds of England went through the roof.
I tried Asif’s confection of choice but couldn’t get on with them. Too dry. Then I had a go at Murray Mints and found they worked a treat. Trouble was, even allowing for trying to keep one going as long as possible I still used to get through about 15 a day and the taste soon palled. Still, at least I never had to pay for them. Once Phil Neale came on board as our operations manager it was one of his jobs to make sure the dressing-room was fully stocked at all times. We even tried taking them on tour a couple of times until we realized that they didn’t work as well on the Kookaburra balls used overseas as the Dukes we used back home.
On the first day of the match in Leeds, an unfortunate fielding incident almost gave the game away to the Aussies for the first time, as I dived to gather the ball at square leg, I landed on my side and a shower of Murray Mints spewed out of my trouser pocket all over the grass right in front of the umpire. Fortunately, neither he nor the two batsmen seemed to take much notice as I scrambled on all fours trying desperately to gather in the sweets before they started asking awkward questions.
Mike Brearley (Middlesex and England) captained England on thirty-one occasions, losing only four times. From The Art of Captaincy (1985), which won the Cricket Society/MCC Book of the Year Award.
OCCASIONALLY IT IS necessary to convey a message directly to the middle. The captain may have to whistle or clap his hands to attract the attention of the batsmen, especially when they are aware that a change in policy unwelcome to their personal interests is to be expected. At other times the batsmen themselves look up to the dressing-room for instructions. ‘Are we still going for the target?’ they may need to know. Or the umpires are debating about the light: ‘Should we come off if they offer us the option, or stay on?’ When umpires are debating about the light, the captain must always take responsibility for at least part of the decision. He must make it absolutely clear to the batsmen whether as a matter of policy he requires them to stay on or come off, or whether the decision rests with them and their personal confidence or lack of it. Clear signals are essential in all these cases.
Sometimes the captain can even convey a subtle message. In the Headingley Test in 1981 the pitch favoured the bowlers. Having allowed Australia to score 403-9, we lost wickets cheaply. Botham went in to bat, and started to play shots. He tried to force Lillee off the back foot and missed. He looked up to the players’ balcony and saw me. I grinned broadly, and gestured that he should have tried to hit it even harder, thereby conveying, I hoped, my pleasure at his uninhibited approach and an unqualified approval of his continuing in an extravagant vein. Or a captain may wish to suggest to one batsman that he restrain or indeed unleash the other. It is worth having a signal that means that one batsman should talk to the other at once, for either purpose; the one I favoured was a rapid movement of thumb to and from fingers, like a glove-puppet.
All these broad gestures are necessarily public. If the plan calls for secrecy the time-honoured means of delivering it is with a batting-glove taken on to the field by the twelfth man. However, this ruse takes nobody in, especially when the batsman himself has to be informed by the fielders that the glove is on the way; and though they will not know the content of the note (unless he tells them) they know that it is a note, and will soon infer its import.
Not all such semaphore and note-carrying is about tactics, incidentally. Jack Simmons of Lancashire is more likely to be concerned that the twelfth man gets him a double portion of fish and chips for lunch. And notes may convey assignations, exam results, even the birth of a baby.
During the Adelaide Test of 1955, Hutton was alarmed to see Cowdrey play one or two reckless shots not long before lunch. So he sent out the twelfth man, Vic Wilson, with a message. In Hutton’s words: ‘To the surprise of all, Wilson in flannels and blazer walked calmly to the middle and, under the curious gaze of fielders and umpires, produced and offered two bananas to Colin. “What the hell are these for?” he demanded. Wilson replied: “Well, after seeing a couple of wild shots from you just now, the skipper thought you might be hungry. It rather suggests he is keen for you to stay out here batting and get your head down.”’
In South Africa in 1965 I was acting as twelfth man while England batted in a Test at Johannesburg. Bob Barber and I happened to be in the middle of a chess game. When he called me on to the field during his innings, ostensibly for some dry gloves, his purpose was to inform me that his next move was Queen’s pawn to QB4.
Frank Chester was a Test umpire from 1924 to 1955, standing in what was then a record number of forty-eight Tests. From How’s That! (1956).
ALL UMPIRES HAD one difficulty in common in the first years after the last war – particularly 1946 – in finding somewhere reasonable to stay on our travels around the country.
Clubs should have realized that umpires are every bit as important to a game as players and that they have to be accommodated like anyone else, but we had to take pot luck in finding somewhere to sleep. It was a nightmare getting fixed up. After a tiring day in the field it was no joke tramping around a strange town searching for a bed. I know of one umpire who solved the problem by resorting to an air-raid shelter and found that he had as a sleeping partner an amateur taking part in the match. In the middle of the night they were joined by a third person – a Fleet Street sports writer who had been sent to cover the match.
I shall not forget Whitsun of 1946 in a hurry. With Harry Lee I was at Derby for the Warwickshire match. No hotel was available after tramping around until midnight. I was making for the railway station waiting-room when I met a police officer, who said he knew a boarding-house which had a vacant bed. My heart slumped when I found the room; it was a musty attic, yet the charges were no different from an hotel; there was nowhere to sit except on the rickety bed.
The next day being Whit-Sunday, I caught the first ’bus to Nottingham, where I succeeded in getting a meal and a drink. When I returned to Derby, I tried to get to sleep by compiling my list of players for the following winter’s Australian tour. I could only get as far as eight.
On the Monday evening I went in search of a quiet drink but found queues outside the pubs; when one customer came out another was allowed in.
Without being too harsh on the town of Derby in that year of more grimness than grace, I must confess I was never more pleased to begin my homeward journey. Harry Lee had been wise enough to make a prior arrangement to stay at Nottingham.
Graeme Fowler (Lancashire and England) played in twenty-one Tests.
His diary Fox on the Run appeared in 1989. It is December 1984 and England are on a tour of India.
ONE TROUBLE WITH not playing is it means perpetual nets. We have to be seen to be doing the right thing. I’m lucky in that I am a great ‘net’ person anyway. I always have a net whenever possible, because I feel they do me good. Not everyone is the same. Some people positively hate them.
The other trouble is that it gives you more time to be introspective. Very often sportsmen become blasé about their life-style, their surroundings and the places they visit. But that can be a necessary response. If you reflect too hard on where you are and what you are doing, the pain might strike the back of your eyes as you realize you’d rather be elsewhere with someone else.
When I married Stephanie, our prospects were of a Lancashire first-team player and a biology teacher. Within twelve months I was waving goodbye wearing my England touring blazer. Now after over three years of marriage I am on my third consecutive tour, and she is a college lecturer. Our lives have changed utterly. This year I have spent over seven months in hotel rooms; she has had over seven months on her own. In the remaining five months, I have probably spent two months seeing her night and day, and the rest of the time at home consisted of leaving one another at 8.15 a.m. and not meeting again until 8.30 or 9 p.m. Not exactly what we envisaged when we got married, expecting a fairly normal existence and the constant companionship of someone we loved. Is it any wonder that sports marriages are always under pressure?
I do miss her. I try to keep my feelings repressed, which is the way to cope through tours anyway. I never allow myself to look forward to anything, because that means you can never be disappointed. Taking everything at face value means relative safety, and so does just doing the everyday things. Eat, sleep, drink, watch and play, and no more. It is a strange existence, strange to have to catch your emotions, bottle them and throw away the bottle, but it helps you to cope. For me it is essential. But at the back of the mind there is always the nagging knowledge that I am missing her and my home life.
And little things catch you off guard. Out here the day’s fielding can be brightened for me by a passing butterfly. There are some beautiful species flying around, the type you see adorning lounge and hallway halls in England. But every time I see one I think of Stephanie, because she adores flora and fauna. She is annoyingly well informed on the subject, but her love of nature instantly comes to me when I spy anything. She would love to see the butterflies, and I would love her to see them and share her excitement. But these little subliminal reminders catch you off guard and leave you with a lump in your throat or a smile trying to hide over-full eyes.
When I was a kid I would never have thought that an England cricketer could cry for any reason. This one can when the stream builds up and gets too powerful. Some day I might know if I am soft, or whether I have taken matters in my stride and coped. Out here I am Foxy the England star, not Graeme the husband. The latter is stored away, because letting him out of the bottle is too painful. But this England cricketer is not superhuman. He is an Accrington lad who has achieved the top level in cricket. I am still just an Accrington lad, though. Thank God!
C. B. Fry played many sports at the highest level, representing England at cricket and football, as well as holding the world long jump record.
This excerpt from Life Worth Living (1939) centres on the England/Australia/South Africa Triangular tournament of 1912.
OUR FINAL MATCH with Australia at the Oval was a proper final. It was a straight knock-out fight, the other two matches having been drawn. The preliminary atmosphere was tense. The Press was on one of its pessimistic and critical wavelengths. A rival evening paper explained my incompetence in two columns. The weather enhanced the situation. So much rain fell that, although the first day was fine, the field was quite unfit for play. A crowd of 30,000 was sitting expectantly in the sun looking at a wicket which they did not know was a quagmire. The junior groundlings had been slowly proceeding to and fro with the pent-houses.
Early in the afternoon Syd Gregory, the Australian captain, came to me and proposed that for the sake of the crowd we should make a start. The officials at the Oval were becoming anxious at the crowd’s disappointment. Now this was a good gamble on the part of little Syd. The wicket was bound to be wet even if we played, not on the prepared pitch, but on another. Syd knew that his side was done against our bowling unless he had the luck to win the toss with a chance for his batsmen on the wicket while it was in its easier state, and a chance for his bowlers if they got us on a drying sticky wicket. I knew that with equal conditions of a mud wicket my team was bound to win. So with the rubber depending on the one match I refused to start until the turf was genuinely fit.
We did not start until late in the afternoon, and then I won the toss. Thanks to Jack Hobbs, Rhodes, and Frank Woolley, who made 177 runs between them, we registered the fine total in the conditions of 245. When I walked out to the wicket I was unanimously booed by our 30,000 supporters. The news had got around that I was the captain who would not start earlier. Sidney [sic] Barnes and Frank Woolley easily accounted for our opponents for a total of III. No Australian batsman except Kelleway made double figures. Our two heroes took 5 wickets each for 6 runs apiece. Frank Woolley made the ball break away with his left-hand finger-flip, and Barnes was quite unplayable. Had the Australians been able to play him they would have made fewer runs. In our second innings we lost Rhodes and Spooner quickly. Then Jack Hobbs and I attacked the bowling as in 1909 at Edgbaston. After making 32 by sheer hitting Jack Hobbs punched a long-hop into the stomach of point. Having again been booed properly on my way to the wicket, I was very much on the job, and with the help of Johnny Douglas the other end I may say that I performed in quite the right sort of way on the bowling. I think I should have got a century instead of 70 odd if I had not divoted the turf in attempting a full drive. No one else made runs and our total was 175.
I started the Australian second innings with Sidney Barnes, but I saw in a couple of overs that he was not the Barnes of the first innings. Great bowler as he was, he was liable at that stage of his career to be stiff and angular at the start of his second attempt. He had a slight rheumatic tendency, especially in damp weather. So I said to him, ‘Barnes, what about trying the other end?’ This brought on Frank Woolley, and he and Dean of Lancashire bowled the side out for 65 runs. Glorious victory. Immense applause. And in ten minutes down came the rain.
Just when we were finishing them off, Jennings, I think it was, one of the good Australian batsmen, in trying desperate measures, hit too soon and projected the ball vertically above himself to the height of a steeple. I shouted ‘Wicket-keeper!’ and Tiger Smith stood arms akimbo. Rhodes was at silly mid-on. I shouted ‘Wilfred!’ and the immobile Wilfred looked benignly at the sky. I shouted ‘George!’ to Hirst, who stood star-gazing at silly short-leg, like the Royal Observatory. The ball was well on its way down, so from silly point square I projected myself and arrived just in time to pouch it about a foot from the ground with a dive. I regard the catch as almost a fluke, but it looked all right as I casually tossed the ball into Wilfred’s disobedient tummy.
This added the last straw to the growing burden of my popularity. But when the crowd gathered round the pavilion and shouted for me I would not go on to the balcony, because I felt that the time for them to cheer was when I was walking out to bat as captain of my side to try to win the match on a foul wicket. Ranji was in our dressing-room and he said to me, ‘Now, Charles, be your noble self.’ But I said, ‘This is not one of my noble days.’ All the same it was a great match, and I never saw the Australians again till 1921.
Fred Root (Derbyshire, Worcestershire and England) was a fast bowler who played first-class cricket from 1910 to 1932. A Cricket Pro’s Lot was published in 1937.
TO GIVE AN opponent a ‘toffee-ball’ to enable him to score the important single run when his score is 49 or 99 is practised by many bowlers.
I had my initiation into this ‘freemasonry’ of cricketers in my very earliest days. It proved one of my many early disappointments, a disappointment which I could not reconcile myself to, or thoroughly understand for many years, but which was considerably alleviated by an experience I had later on. One of my first matches for Derbyshire was against Surrey at the Oval, when Tom Hayward was in his glory. As a raw country boy and a worshipper of cricketers, Tom was my hero. Incidentally his presence at the crease, with myself at first slip, filled me with awe. All the Derbyshire shock bowlers, including Cadman, Warren, Tom Forester, and Morton, had bowled for what seemed to me to be hours at Hayward, and a Lancashire League bowler – Noah Buxton – had been warned (at the instigation of Tom Hayward) that he ‘cobbed them’. For the sake of his league career he had been taken off after his second over, never playing county cricket again, although being allowed to get hundreds of wickets in the league.
At lunch time Hayward had scored 94. After the interval I was put on to bowl and Hayward said to me, ‘Have you ever got a wicket in first-class cricket?’ Truthfully I answered, ‘No, sir!’ Tom immediately gave me hope. ‘All right, sonny,’ he replied, ‘as soon as I have got my century you can have mine.’ Thinking I might not be trusted to bowl many overs, and absolutely longing to be credited with the dismissal of so great a batsman, I promptly and purposely bowled him two full-tosses, which he just as promptly dispatched to the boundary. His hundred obtained, I gasped when this hero of mine continued to mete out drastic punishment to my bowling. I lost my faith in human nature when he approached his second century.
Poor Tom dropped 100 per cent in my estimation and I spent many sleepless nights wondering how such a great cricketer could so flagrantly have let me down. To make matters worse, Tom had caused me to chase many a mile from first slip to fine leg after his leg-glides. When after one of the balls he had tickled towards the gasometer I turned round to see the batsmen running their fifth run, so kicked the ball over the boundary thinking to save a run. Instead, the umpire signalled an additional boundary, and the scorer added nine to Hayward’s total. However, as I have already remarked, I was young and inexperienced then-a-days, and later – years later – I realized what had happened and that I had been blaming the idol of Surrey crowds unfairly. It was this way. Playing for Worcestershire against Hampshire at Southampton we found Jack Newman on a real ‘glue-pot’ of a wicket. He was making the ball turn square. The only possible way to stop a typical Worcestershire rot seemed to me to be to play Jack’s bowling with my pads. This I proceeded to do, stylishly shouldering arms with my bat. Imagine my chagrin when a particularly vicious off-spinner hit the flap of my leg-guards, flew up over my shoulder, ran along the whole length of my bat and finished up in the safe hands of Phil Mead at first slip. Parry – who was umpiring – called ‘over’ in a tone which, by intuition, told me he had not seen the incident. On the spur of the moment I walked down the pitch and did some ‘gardening’, then returned to my crease. Walter Livesey – the Hants wicket-keeper – informed me I was out and Phil Mead – ever an old soldier – sat down. A nasty moment was relieved when Newman appealed to Parry with the usual ‘How’s that?’ to which the surprised rejoinder was, ‘Not out; he never even played at the ball.’ Naturally, the Hampshire players did not relish my apparent lack of sportsmanship in not walking out, and I became rather ashamed of my action. To placate Newman – who was always a really good sport – I broke the icy silence by telling him how sorry I was, and that I would get out as soon as possible, but in a manner which would not be apparent to either the crowd or to my own captain, who would probably have been averse to my action in throwing my wicket away. From that moment I simply slashed carelessly at every ball I received. Much to my astonishment I ‘connected’ magnificently, scoring 86 in a very short time, thereby placing my team in a very strong position. I was honestly trying to get out every ball. In quieter moments of guilty shamefacedness I remembered Tom Hayward at the Oval some sixteen years previously. He was vindicated in my thoughts.
A. W. Carr captained Nottinghamshire and England during the 1920s and 1930s.
Cricket with the Lid Off was published in 1935.
ONE OF THE strangest things that has happened in my cricket career took place in 1929 when Notts played Hampshire at Southampton. At the end of the second day’s play Hants wanted just one run to win the match. They wanted to go on and finish it off that evening, but I would not agree. If it had happened to rain hard during the night and next day, play might have had to be abandoned and we should have saved the game instead of losing it. My argument is that in a case of this sort each side ought to abide strictly to the rules.
However, it did not rain during the night, and next morning there was the extraordinary sight of two Hampshire batsmen, Alec Kennedy and Crease, coming out to make one run. There were one or two spectators on the ground and they saw me start the bowling in, to quote a local paper, ‘a well-tailored dark suit’ and the rest of the Notts team wearing their ordinary clothes and hats and two of the team, Barratt and Voce, fielding in overcoats.