Hugh Massingberd swapped the church for The Oval and still found The Lord
The Lord has been my saviour but not quite in the sense that EW Swanton, my boss at Barclays World of Cricket, had in mind. In lowish water in the late 1970s I took refuge in Kennington, where Swanny urged me to seek salvation at St John the Divine. Unfortunately the church was so close to The Oval that I never made it to matins at St John’s.
The ground had been a favourite of our family since my mother’s first husband, Roger Winlaw, a Cambridge Blue later killed in the war, had been capped by Surrey in the 1930s. Fifty years on The Oval was not a particularly cheerful place, though the Caribbean spirit of Monte Lynch lit up the surly atmosphere, and from Surrey’s youth system there was already talk of a tousle-headed youngster called Alistair Brown, an explosive batsman and off-break bowler who, as a 16-year-old schoolboy for Caterham, had won the 1986 Wetherall Award for the leading allrounder in English schools cricket.
In 1990 Ally Brown joined the Surrey staff at The Oval, where he was soon nicknamed ‘The Lord’, or ‘Lordy’, as he supposedly batted like one. For me, steeped in romantic fantasies about the Golden Age when aristocratic amateurs flayed the crimson rambler to all parts, this was an irresistible recommendation.
The Lord certainly lived up to his name when he made his first-class debut in 1992. He rattled off three centuries in 79, 71 and 78 balls respectively, as well as the first of his 18 one-day hundreds. What has always thrilled me about him is his fine contempt for the so-called fear of failure; and the amazing thing is he still seems to bat in the same ultra-aggressive, supremely entertaining way in his mid-30s as he did in his early 20s.
From the moment he comes in he appears set on all-out attack. He is constantly looking for ways to score runs, ever searching for gaps and unexpected angles. His hand-eye co-ordination is astonishing, his bat-speed phenomenal. For a figure of such slight physique – he looks shorter than his 5ft 10in – he hits the ball incredibly hard and far. I still dream of his mighty blow at Lord’s into the St John’s Wood Road last summer.
The early part of a Brown innings can be an anxious time for nervous fans. In my usual vantage point near the Surrey changing room in the Bedser Stand I must resemble a contortionist as I writhe in my seat crossing fingers, thumbs and legs as I pray that my hero will survive another ball. This is the price, I tell myself, that we must pay for genius. And, by God, it’s worth it. For when The Lord gets in you can sit back and bask in his glory – the imperious off drives, the towering pulls and hooks, the straight sixes and crunching cuts.
Brown’s conversion rate of half-centuries into hundreds is exceptional (in his first-class career he has scored 44 hundreds and 57 fifties). As a rule I am opposed to citing statistics to make a case but, paradoxically, they can be a useful weapon in fighting the prejudice of the bores who like to believe ‘flashy dashers’ are too inconsistent.
Brown’s stats confound the canard that he is “unreliable”. In first-class cricket he has scored 14,428 runs at an average of 44 (yet, disgracefully, he has never been selected for a Test); in one-day cricket it is 10,287 runs, averaging almost 32. He played 16 one-day internationals for England without being given a decent run in the side, despite scoring 118 against India and the fastest-ever fifty in the Texaco Trophy. His strike-rate in the Twenty20 is 162.
Over the last 15 years I have tried to plan my visits to The Oval around The Lord’s manifestations at the wicket. Once, though only eight minutes from the ground, I found myself so transfixed by his lightning scoring rate on Ceefax that I failed to leave my chambers. Unfortunately I missed his 203 in a Sunday League game at Guildford (still the only double-century in the competition) and his 295 not out against Leicestershire (the highest ever score in Rutland) but I am eternally grateful that I was at The Oval on Wednesday June 19, 2002 – the best day of my life.
What Brown achieved that day has received nothing like the attention it deserves. With his 268 (160 balls, 12 sixes, 30 fours) against Glamorgan in a C&G match he did not just break but smashed to smithereens the world-record one-day score, Graeme Pollock’s 222 not out in 1974–75 off 60 overs. And Brown’s was off 50, the previous best for that being Sajid Ali’s 197 not out in 1996–97.
As Trevor Jones, the Surrey librarian (whose book 268 is a splendid chronicle of that magical match), put it to me, it was like a sprinter knocking a second off the 100 metres record. No one has got within 61 runs of it since. During Brown’s innings I was transported to nirvana. More prosaically the next day I sent him a cheque for £268 for his benefit fund and received a courteous acknowledgement.
I have never met my idol, though I think I got a touch at a slightly embarrassing glad-handing ceremony at The Oval to celebrate one of the three Surrey Championships in which Brown played such a vital role. For my part, since being diagnosed with advanced cancer, I have relied more than ever on this marvellous modern Master to cheer me up – and he has not let me down. I am now just living in hope of one more season of The Lord.
HUGH MASSINGBERD was the acclaimed obituaries editor of the Daily Telegraph from 1986 to 1994. He died in 2007