Mr A. J. Webbe tells me that he remembers at his mother’s house in Eaton Square, W. G. marching round the drawing room after dinner, bearing the coal scuttle on his head as a helmet, with the poker carried as a sword. It is an agreeable picture, and we may feel sure that W. G. was ready to go on marching just a little longer than anyone else, for his energy was as inexhaustible as his humour was childlike; he must be playing at something – billiards or cards, dancing or coal scuttles, anything but sitting down. The simplicity of his humour often took, naturally enough, a practical direction; in one corner of his mind there probably lurked all his life amiable thoughts of booby traps and apple-pie beds, and he was even known in an exuberant moment on a golfing expedition to hurl rocks at a boat like another Polyphemus.
He carried his practical joking into the realms of cricket, as when, according to a well-known story, he caused the batsman to look up at the sky to see some imaginary birds, with the result that the poor innocent was blinded by the sun and promptly bowled. With this we come to one of the most difficult questions about W. G.: did he at all, and, if so, how far, overstep the line which, in a game, divides fair play from sharp practice? There is one preliminary thing to say, namely that there is no absolute standard in these matters, and that standards differ with times and societies. The sportsmen of the early nineteenth century did, naturally and unblushingly, things that would be considered very unsportsmanlike nowadays. In those days everything was a ‘match’: each party must look after himself; it was play or pay, and the devil take the hindermost. Anybody who reads the autobiography of the Squire, George Osbaldeston, will get an insight into the sporting morals of that day. ‘A noble fellow, always straight,’ said Mr Budd of the Squire: but he deliberately pulled a horse in order to get the better of those who in his estimation had overreached him, and, generally speaking, it was one of his guiding principles in all sports not to let the cat out of the bag. He never did what he thought a dishonourable thing, but he had a different standard of honour from our own. I believe that in W. G. was found something of a survival of this older tradition. He had his own notions of what was right and permissible, and I am convinced that he would never willingly have done anything contrary to them; the difficulty arose when other people did not think something permissible and he did. He would never have dreamed of purposely getting in the way of a fieldsman who might otherwise have caught him, but to shout cheerfully to that fieldsman, ‘Miss it,’ was – at any rate in a certain class of cricket – not merely within the law, but rather a good joke.
The law was the law, though in his intense keenness he could not wholly rid himself of the idea that it was sometimes unjustly enforced against him; what the law allowed was allowable. It was always worth appealing; if the umpire thought a man was out lbw, it did not matter what the bowler thought. ‘You weren’t out, you know,’ he was sometimes heard to say to a retiring batsman against whom he had appealed, and thought no shame to do so: everything was open and above board; if the umpire decided you were out – and he sometimes decided wrong – that was all about it. He wanted desperately to get the other side out, and any fair way of doing so was justifiable; he never stooped to what he thought was a mean way. No man knew the law better, and it could seldom be said against him that he was wrong, but rather that he was too desperately right. Sometimes the fact that he had the reputation of wanting his pound of flesh caused him to be unjustly criticized when his claim was an entirely proper one. There was a certain match between Gloucestershire and Sussex, in which, at the end of the second innings of Sussex, the Sussex total for two innings was exactly equal to that of Gloucestershire’s one innings, and there were left some eleven or eleven and a half minutes of time. Ten minutes’ interval left a minute or so in which to get the one run for a 10-wicket victory. W. G. properly declared that Gloucestershire should go in. Sussex to some extent seem to have demurred on the ground that there was not time for an over. However, they went out to field. Ranji had changed into ordinary clothes, and W. G. went out to field as substitute for him. Tate bowled the one over to Jessop, and nothing could be done with three balls. The fourth was pushed gently towards W. G. at point, and the run gained almost before he had had time to stoop. It is a subject for irreverent speculation what would have happened if the batsmen had been caught in two minds in the middle of the pitch. Would that ball have gone straight to the wicketkeeper or is it possible that there would have been an overthrow? . . .
It is idle to deny, I suppose, that he led umpires rather a hard life; some of them may have been frightened of giving him out, but if he ever intimidated them it was certainly not of malice aforethought; it was rather that irrepressibly keen boy in him that had never quite grown up, and would break out now and then on the impulse of the moment. A boy naturally and properly thinks the umpire a beast who gives him out, and if there was a Peter Pan in the world it was Dr W. G. Grace. On the whole it was fortunate for him that umpires are not a revengeful race; indeed they probably stood so much in awe of him as to give him sometimes the benefit of the doubt. I am afraid of retelling old stories, but here is one new at any rate to me. Gloucestershire were playing Essex, and, when he had made three or four, W. G. was, in the general estimation of both sides, caught and bowled by Mead. He stoutly declared it was a bump ball, and, after some palaver, he went on batting. In due course, Kortright knocked his middle and leg stumps down, and, as the Old Man made ready to depart, exclaimed, ‘What, are you going? There’s still one standing.’ W. G. said he had never been so insulted in his life, ‘but’, as the Gloucestershire narrator added, ‘he’d made enough runs to win the match’ . . .
In writing a personal sketch of a famous man, it is usual to say something of his appearance. In the case of W. G. as a cricketer, this must be unnecessary. We all know the vast bulk, the black beard in later years streaked with grey, the red and yellow cap. There is, however, another aspect of him that is not familiar – W. G. as a private person in mufti, and not a flannelled general on the battlefield. One proud and lucky man possesses a photograph, which will remain unique, since the plate is broken. It shows W. G. in his everyday clothes just before he is going into the pavilion to change. It is the first morning of the deciding Test match at the Oval in 1896; he has been looking at the wicket, and discussing with F. S. Jackson what is to be done if he wins the toss. On his head is one of those square felt hats which we generally associate with farmers. He wears a black tailcoat and waistcoat, built on easy-going lines with an expanse of watch chain, dark trousers, a little baggy at the knee, and boots made for muddy lanes. In one hand is a solid blackthorn stick with a silver band round it. Future generations who see that photograph will protest that this cannot be a mighty athlete about to lead the chosen of England to victory. It must be, they will say, a jovial middle-aged doctor discussing the price of oats with a patient or neighbour that he has met in the marketplace. The man in that picture is W. G., but it is the one we do not know, the country doctor who had followed his father’s business, and could never quite understand why not one of his three sons wanted to be a country doctor too.
The W. G. that we know best is not merely a celebrity but the central figure in a cricketing mythology. The stories about him are endless, and this can hardly be explained by the fact that he was the best of all cricketers, that he looked the part of a Colossus, and had an amusing way of saying characteristic things. There have been many other mighty players if admittedly below him; yet the sum of the stories about them all is, by comparison, negligible. Many of them, though very famous in their day, live for us now only as minor personages in the W. G. legend; they are remembered because they come incidentally into stories about him. In point of his personality, as it will be handed on by tradition for years to come, he towers as high above them as he towered above them in stature when he was alive. If this is not greatness, it is something for which it is hard to find another name. May we not say that, with all his limitations, his one-sidedness, his simplicity, W. G. possessed in
an obscure and unconscious way some of the qualities of a great man?
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Wicketkeepers are truly the game’s underclass: seldom honoured, seldom written about, noticed only when they make a mistake. Yet to keep wickets is indisputably the most difficult job in cricket. The demands of the job greatly exceed those of batting, bowling or fielding. There is the additional weight one carries, the pads and gloves not required by your teammates. There is the low posture, sometimes made more uncomfortable by smelly and unwashed batsmen. A wicketkeeper must be vigilant and he must be fearless, prepared to go up or sideways, willing to be hit on heart or head. The job, in sum, requires the concentration of a heart surgeon, the reflexes of a fighter pilot and the guts of a boxer.
Here Ray Robinson pays tribute to a man known with reason as ‘the Prince of Wicketkeepers’.
RAY ROBINSON
The Second Most Famous Beard in Cricket (1951)
Wicketkeepers are like office boys in at least one way – few people take notice of them until something gets in a mess, a folder or a chance is lost, an inkpot or a catch spilt, a mail or a stumping missed.
For hours on end wicketkeepers may do their duty well and truly, but mostly they are out of focus, so to say. The onlookers’ gaze is held between wicket and wicket by the principals in the encounter, bowler and batsman; the keeper might as well be a second with towel and sponge, close at hand but on the non-combatant side of the ropes. Some even think of him as neutral; when the Deputy Speaker, James Joseph Clark, left the chair of the House of Representatives to speak on the bill to nationalize banks in Australia he said he had been the wicketkeeper for the greater part of the debate.
Yet the wicketkeeper is the most important of them all, the cricket field’s VIP. If you think that is going too far, reflect on what is the most grievous loss a side can suffer. A team can survive loss of a batsman, even the greatest of them all; when Bradman (twisted ankle) did not bat against South Africa in the Melbourne Test in February 1932, other Australians did well enough to win by an innings. Loss of a bowler is usually more serious – there are fewer to spare – but is not always fatal. Though Voce broke down in the 1947 New Year Test at Melbourne and Edrich was out of action for most of a day, England still dismissed Australia for 365 and the match ended in a draw. But when the wicketkeeper falls out confusion usually sets in. Dropped catches and missed stumpings blunt the bowling and boost the score, overthrows make the fielding increasingly ragged, and extras find form entitling them to a higher place in the batting order. When Frank Woolley, in his last Test, deputized for Ames (lumbago) at the Oval in 1934, 37 byes got past the tall veteran’s hands, hidden in unaccustomed gloves. Replacing Oldfield (head injury) in England’s second innings in the Adelaide Test, 1932, Victor Richardson kept byes down to 17 but missed five chances. As stand-in for Sismey through the Australian Services’ second unofficial Test against India, 1945, opening batsman Keith Carmody was eluded by 41 byes and took only one of ten stumping and catching opportunities on the Calcutta wicket. Carmody’s candid comment: ‘If I had accepted all the chances I’d have broken Don Tallon’s record.’ None of their fellow players blamed these three attractive batsmen for such costly inefficiency. For a non-keeper to be put behind the stumps is as bad as being called up from the stalls to replace a ballet dancer who cannot appear because of an awful headache. If the Americans ever take to cricket I guess that the first change they would make in the laws of the game would be to give a team the right to call a relief keeper into the job the moment anything went amiss with the first-priority timber-tickler.
Yet it is true that a retired cricketer, choosing a Test team in a newspaper, named eleven without a keeper. Next day an acquaintance accosted him: ‘What about that team you picked, George?’
George: ‘Pretty good side – isn’t it?’
The acquaintance: ‘No keeper.’
George (quickly remembering the opposing batting strength): ‘They won’t need one.’
As with William the Conqueror, the first of the line of great Test keepers, John McCarthy Blackham, has since been talked about more than most of those who have succeeded him in the monarchy that rules behind the stumps. Blackham was reputed to have been the first to take fast bowling without a longstop behind him to have a second go at the balls wicketkeepers found too hot to handle.1 He said to one captain: ‘What’s that man doing behind me? Put him where he’ll be of some use.’ Blackham wore the gloves in the first seventeen Test matches on end. In all, he kept in 33 Tests, catching 36 Englishmen and stumping 24 with such speed and style that he earned the title Prince of Wicketkeepers. I was too young to see him keep, but in junior cricket in the Melbourne suburb of Brighton in the 1920s I had the privilege of being stumped by his younger brother, Fred; a member of the royal family, as it were. When I asked Fred whether the Prince had given him any hints about keeping wickets, he replied: ‘Only one – to give it up and take on bowling.’
Jack Blackham was a brown-eyed bank clerk with a black beard pruned more to the shape of King Edward VII’s than the unrestrained ziff that screened W. G. Grace’s bronchial zone. He stood 5 ft 9½ in, weighed 11 st 3 lb, and walked to the wickets and between them with a quick step suggesting impetuosity. That appearance must have been deceptive, because no impulsive man can even begin to become a great wicketkeeper; snatching hands often rebuff the ball. Blackham played before keepers began to squat to await the bowling. He bent forward, rather like a man peeping through a keyhole. If prints of 1877 give a true picture, he spread his feet wider than most present-day keepers, the point of his beard was just outside the line of the off stump, and his hands were poised apart in front of his knees. A striped, narrow-peaked cap was set well back on his head, either to let a wave of dark forelock be seen or because the artist popped it on as an afterthought. More startling are two other things he is depicted wearing : a tie and the gloves. A modern keeper, who has 1¾ lb of gloves in his 6½ lb of equipment, would shy at the sight of Blackham’s hand coverings: they look more like the light gauntlets motorists use. Yet with only this flimsy protection, Blackham usually stood right up to the stumps to the fast bowlers of his time, catching batsmen off Spofforth the Demon and Turner the Terror as confidently as he stumped them off Giffen the flighty. No wonder his hands became so severely damaged that in two of his thirty-five Tests and one innings of another he had to be rested from his post of danger and was played as an ordinary fieldsman. In the end, a broken finger finished his Test career in 1894, when he was thirty-nine.
His brother told me that Blackham, as a boy, had been taken by their father, a member of the Press Cricket Club, to see a match against a country team. Young Jack was called in to fill a vacancy and was sent to field in the slips. Some lure of the stumps soon began to work. As if drawn by a magnet, the boy edged closer to the wicket until he was taking the team’s quickest bowlers with his bare hands, while behind him the Press backstop’s gloves waved and flapped abortively. Among teammates watching the youth at close quarters was John Conway, captain of South Melbourne, who became manager of the Australian XI. The sequel was that at the age of eighteen Blackham was keeping for Victoria, and at twenty-one for his country in the first of all Test matches. The Demon and he became such a famous combination and Blackham’s brilliance in taking fast balls at beard’s length from the stumps so stirred the crowds that years afterwards men said the game of cricket had produced no greater spectacle. They say that for the remainder of his life Blackham had a cavity in his chest where one of Spofforth’s fastest staved in his ribs.
Blackham’s manner of appealing to umpires was quiet. Sometimes he merely raised his hand questioningly to bring the matter up for decision. Playing in a Victorian country town, he brought off an unprecedented feat by stumping a batsman off a fastish leg ball of the kind that usually had longstop at full stretch near the boundary to save four byes. To Blackham’s tenor ‘How’s that?’ the square-leg umpire replied: ‘Wonderful.’
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J. H. FINGLETON
Never Another Like Victor (1958)
On 28, June 1915, Victor Trumper died at Sydney in his thirty-eighth year. His funeral caused the streets of the city to be blocked and he was carried to his grave by eleven Australian cricketers. In London, in the midst of World War I and all its momentous happenings, the event was featured on newspaper posters, as, for example, ‘Death of a Great Cricketer’.
The Picador Book of Cricket Page 4