Playing so late, he preferred to score behind point and behind square leg. His famous stroke was the leg glance. It is a modern fetish that long leg makes this stroke only decorative and I was glad to see Burke’s leg glance in 1956 repeatedly beat long leg standing on the boundary. For wizardry Ranjitsinhji’s leg glance, when he crossed the left foot over towards point and flicked the ball to fine leg, comes first. St Hill’s leg glance was of the same unnatural stamp. To a ball a little over the good length on the middle or middle and leg he advanced the left leg a short distance straight at the ball, so that if he missed he was lbw for sure. With the leg almost straight and his body bending slightly over it from the waist, he took the ball as it rose from the matting and wristed it where he chose towards the leg boundary. From accounts and photographs it can be seen that Ranjitsinhji had to make a sharp twist of the body as well as the wrist. St Hill bent forward slightly from the waist and flicked his wrist – that was all. He never followed round with the right foot. He put the ball where he pleased and John, being the finest bowler, was, of course, the chief sufferer. Describing his play in 1928, Wisden of 1929 says in one place that he showed fine strokes on the off side and in another that he was strong on the leg side. When Wilton was ‘on the go’ that depended entirely on the bowler. My negative memory may be at fault here, but I do not remember ever seeing a batsman standing straight, waiting for the shortish rising ball and as it passed flicking it between the slips. He didn’t cut these down. He merely touched them and then pulled the bat away. That seemed sufficient to send them flying to the boundary.
The short fast ball of ordinary height he could get back to for a slash behind point, but he preferred to cut late. The finest of all his cuts was the late cut off the slow bowler, to beat first slip and yet give third man no chance. To save that four on a fast ground third man would have had to stand on the boundary behind second slip, which would have been both ridiculous and useless. All that it would have meant was his running like crazy back to the usual position. One afternoon at the Queen’s Park Oval in 1926 Percy Holmes, fielding at deep third man and on the boundary behind the bowler, gave a great exhibition. St Hill had him running now thirty yards for the on drive and then the other way for the off drive. But it was the late cuts to third man that gave Holmes the most trouble. He couldn’t anticipate the stroke. We had a wonderful time with Holmes, asking him if he had ever seen in his life strokes like those. The little Yorkshireman never relaxed for an instant and chased each ball like a hare, but he had time and strength to talk to us and admire this superlative batting. Each time St Hill made a stroke we could see Holmes smile as he ducked his head to chase the ball.
I never had enough of talking to St Hill about this late cut. In so far as it was explicable, his secret was that he never timed the ball from the pitch, as I have seen great batsmen do and get out. He did not lie back and lash across, as George Cox used to do. He didn’t hammer the bat into the ground as Frank Worrell does (one of the great strokes of our time). He took up position early, watched the ball well on its way and then launched his wrists into the stroke.
This modern theory that the leg glance does not pay is a fetish, first because you can place the ball, and secondly if you can hook then the life of long leg is one long frustration. St Hill did not hook by preference to long leg. (None of us used the modern theory of getting outside the ball first. We faced the ball square so that if you missed it hit you.) He seemed merely to step inwards and swish the blade across the flight so that when it hit the ball it was pointing at the bowler. The ball went past the square-leg umpire like a bullet. If the square-leg boundary was blocked he might move over and, leaning towards point, flick over his shoulder. But there was no catch to long leg. The ball dropped twenty or thirty yards from his bat. He was completely master of the on side. He played the back glance as well as his own special. To bowlers experimenting around his leg stump he sometimes upset all calculations by waiting until the ball was almost on him and making a late on drive, almost all right wrist with practically no follow-through. The ball went between mid-on and the bowler to the boundary, making monkeys of all the fieldsmen on the leg side.
So far he was all grace, all elegance, always there long in advance. But there was a primitive hidden in him. If a fast bowler blocked his leg glance – it was no use putting short legs for he kept the ball down, always – or sometimes for no visible reason, all this suavity disappeared. He stretched his left foot down the wicket and, with a sweep that seemed to begin from first slip and encompassed the whole horizon, smashed the ball hard and low to square leg. Sweep is not the correct word. It was a swing, begun when the ball was almost within reach, and carried out with a violence that seemed aimed at the ball personally, to hit it out of sight or break it into bits.
One afternoon I bowled the first ball of a match which swung from his leg stump past the off. He played forward at it and missed. Full of eagerness and anticipation, I let loose the next as fast as I could, aiming outside the leg stump to swing into him. Out came his left foot, right down the pitch. He seemed to be waiting for hours for the ball to reach, and then he smashed it to the square-leg boundary. Root could get the ball to swing in British Guiana, and in 1926 he was at the height of his form. St Hill made 75 for the All West Indies XI and when the players came back they told us that when St Hill was batting, Root’s short legs were an apprehensive crew. They were concerned with him, not he with them. I have seen a bunch of short legs cower when a batsman shaped at a loose one, but kept my eye on Tony Lock and saw him bend at the waist a little and face it. Time enough to dodge when he had seen the stroke. You couldn’t do that with St Hill’s stroke because no fieldsman could sight the ball off that ferocious swish.
His off drive to a fast bowler was of the same ferocity. He used to tell me that on the fast Barbados turf wicket all you had to do was to push forward and the ball went for four. He would outline the stroke and even though we might be standing in the street under a street light, his left elbow, and even the left shoulder, would automatically swing over and the right wrist jerk suddenly and check. His body would be curiously straight, but the head would be bent over the imaginary ball and his eyes would shine. On the matting, with its uncertain rise, he put the left foot well over, the toe usually pointing to cover, not to mid-off. He took the bat so far back, at the end of the back lift it was parallel to the ground with the blade facing the sky. From there he swung with all he had and smashed the fast ball through the covers. A minute later he would be standing almost as if back on his heels (with his head, however, slightly forward) playing the ball back along the ground to the bowler, often as if he were not looking at it. In moments of impishness he would move his feet out of the way, drop the bat sideways on the leg-stump yorker and disdain even to look at the ball racing to the boundary. But this I have seen him do only in friendly games, though I have been told that in earlier days he would do it even in competition matches, and Constantine, who played with him in the Shannon side for years, writes of it as a habit of his. One of his regular phrases in talking about a batsman was ‘on the go’. He would say, ‘When Challenor is on the go . . .’ or ‘When Hammond is on the go . . .’ For him batting began only when a batsman was ‘on the go’. All the rest was preliminary or fringe. I have seen no player whose style could give any idea of St Hill’s. The closest I have read of is the Australian boy, Jackson, and perhaps Kippax.
His play has come to mean much in my estimate of the future of cricket. One afternoon, some time in the 1920s, Griffith, the Barbados fast bowler, was bowling to St Hill from the pavilion end at the Queen’s Park Oval in an inter-colonial match. Griff was bowling fast, and this afternoon he was almost as fast as John. The ball hit on the matting, and then, s-h-h-h, it plumped into the hands of the wicketkeeper standing well back. All of us noted the unusual speed. Griff was as canny then as he was in England in 1928, and in fact there could never have been a fast bowler who so disliked being hit and took so much pains to avoid it. Gr
iff would not bowl short to St Hill on the matting wicket: he knew he would be mercilessly hooked. He kept the ball well up, swinging in late from outside the off stump to middle and off or thereabouts. The field was well placed, mid-off fairly straight, short extra cover to pick up the single, deep extra cover, deep point for accidents, the leg side well covered. Griffith had his field set and he bowled to it. That was his way. He was as strong as a horse, he always bowled well within himself, and he would wait on the batsman to give him an opening. He didn’t know his St Hill.
St Hill watched him for an over or two while we shivered with excitement tinged with fear. We had never seen Wilton up against bowling like this before and he was surely going to do something. (One thing we knew he would not do, and that was in any way hit across the flight of a pitched-up ball.) Soon he countered. With his left shoulder well up, almost scooping up the ball, his body following through almost towards point, St Hill lifted Griff high over mid-off’s head for four. Griff moved away a bit and then came back again to be sent hurtling over mid-off’s head once more. He dropped mid-off back. St Hill cleared mid-off’s head again. I am pretty sure he had never had to make that stroke before in his life. But he was ‘on the go’ and if to remain on the go required the invention of a stroke on the spot, invented it would be . . .
The West Indies selectors left St Hill out of the 1923 team. It did not come as a sudden blow. There were two or three trial matches. He failed in them and they left him out. If they had decided to ignore the trial failures not a soul would have said anything. But they left him out and it was as if a destined Prime Minister had lost his seat in the elections. He maintained his usual silence and it was not the sort of thing I would have raised with him. The blow shook him badly, he was a man of exceeding pride, and it is my belief that he never fully recovered from it. I expect that is one of the differences in temperament that make for success or for failure. As for us, his friends and admirers, that wound was never to heal.
This is what we believed. The great West Indian batsman of the day, before the 1923 tour, was Percy Tarilton, not George Challenor. Challenor was his superior in style, and the Barbados masses worshipped him. But Tarilton stood first in reliability and solidity. Next to these two was D. W. Ince, a white left-hander, also from Barbados. British Guiana had another white batsman, M. P. Fernandes. This was the traditional order, a line of white batsmen and a line of black bowlers. Joe Small had made for himself a place as a batsman which could not be denied. Joe was enough. They didn’t want any more. Further, Joe was an inoffensive person. St Hill was not in any way offensive. Far from it. But he was not friendly.
As we pursued our notes and observations after the dreadful event, some of us went further. We became convinced in our own minds that St Hill was the greatest of all West Indian batsmen and on English wickets this coloured man would infallibly put all white rivals in the shade. And they too were afraid of precisely the same thing, and therefore were glad to keep him out. We were not helped by the fact that in our heart of hearts we didn’t know exactly how good he was. We hadn’t seen an English team since 1912, and it was only after Challenor’s unqualified success in England in 1923 that we had reliable standards to go by. We terribly wanted to say not only to West Indians but to all England, ‘That’s our boy.’ And now we couldn’t. On performance Small rivalled St Hill. But Joe never aroused the excitement that Wilton did.
We were neither mean nor vicious. If Challenor had failed to score in every innings of the trial matches we would have protested loudly against any idea of his exclusion. If through loss of form Challenor or Tarilton could have been included only by dropping St Hill we would have made faces but we would have swallowed the dose. Furthermore, the case was not at all simple. Jamaica had to have so many, British Guiana had to have its share. We would have been hard put to it to say whom to leave out. We burned our fingers badly in that very tour. Griffith had made his reputation as a fast bowler in 1921. Griffith had had a secondary education, called nobody mister except the captain, H. B. G. Austin, and had the reputation of being ready to call anybody anything which seemed to him to apply. When the team was selected Griff was out, and an unknown, a bowler at the Austin nets, had been chosen instead. To us it seemed that here was another flagrant piece of class discrimination. But the unknown bowler was soon to make himself known and never to be forgotten. In his first match against Sussex he took 10 for 83, in his second against Hampshire, 7 for 85, in the third against Middlesex, 9 for 120. This silenced us and when the English newspapers came the chorus of praise showed that in preferring Francis to Griffith, Austin had made a judgement which should have its place in history, for in 1923 Griffith was very, very good, as good if not better than he ever was after.
Finally the man whom we chiefly blamed, H. B. G. Austin, could point to West Indies cricket and say with far more justification than Jack: ‘This is the house that I built. I know what I am about. I chose young Constantine when on the record most of you would have left him out.’ That was true. Few would have been surprised if Constantine had not been selected in 1923. But we were sensitized, on the alert for discrimination. In fact I was so upset and for so long that my friends pointed out to me that in my copies of the Cricketer I was underlining everything said against the West Indies team.
We had to shut up on Griffith. But St Hill’s omission remained in our minds. He recovered and in 1926, when the Englishmen came, he was, as we have seen, second to none in the West Indies. He scored heavily in the 1928 trials and came to England. The rest should be silence. He was a horrible, a disastrous, an incredible, failure, the greatest failure who ever came out of the West Indies. I have heard authoritatively that he would not change his style and he has been blamed for it. I don’t think he could even if he had wanted to. He was not the type, and after 1923 something had hardened in him. In 1930, when the MCC came again, the eagle had clipped his own wings at last. He stood up for four hours and made a patient century. An English commentator said he was very experienced and showed defence. Of course he had defence, he had always had it. But when he was ‘on the go’ it was the bowler who needed defence, not he. He died in 1957, and I was sorry I had not yet written this notice of him as I had always planned to do. I think he would have liked to read it. Who knows? He might even have said something about it.
One question will remain with every cricketer who never saw him: How good was he exactly? Doesn’t your memory enshrine a striking figure with an enhancing haze? Perhaps. But I don’t think so. Around about 1910 St Hill was a boy of about eighteen. In those days Stingo was the club of bowlers, with George John and six other bowlers, all internationals or intercolonials, men with reputation and with records. Against them St Hill played an innings of which nearly fifty years later Constantine writes as follows:
He was smoking as he walked out; he took his stance, still smoking, glanced idly round the field, then threw away his cigarette. George John – also now gone to the ‘great divide’ – one of the most formidable fast bowlers who ever handled a ball, thundered up at the other end and sent down a red lightning flash, atomic if you wish – but the slender boy flicked his wrists and the ball flew to the boundary faster than sound. The next ball went the same way. The boy batted from his wrists, he never seemed to use any force. I don’t believe he had the strength even if he so desired. His was just perfect timing. Wilton St Hill became famous later, but I never saw him or anyone else play a more heart-lifting innings than he did that day.
Of an innings played in Barbados eighteen years after Constantine writes in a similar strain. Constantine played and bowled with Francis from 1923 to 1933, all over the West Indies, in England and in Australia. Never, he says, did he see any batsman hit Francis as St Hill hit him, and this was in a trial match on which depended his selection for the English tour. We have heard Lord Harris. I can multiply these testimonies. I shall give only one more. Before their first-class season began the 1928 West Indies team played a two-day game. This is what The Times cor
respondent was moved to say:
. . . W. H. St Hill, who can be relied upon to provide the entertainment of the side. He is very supple, has a beautifully erect stance and, having lifted his bat, performs amazing apparently double-jointed tricks with his wrists and arms. Some of those contortions are graceful and remunerative, such as his gliding to leg, but some are unsound and dangerous, such as an exaggerated turn of the wrist in cutting. He will certainly play some big and attractive innings, but some others may be easily curtailed by his exotic fancy in dealing with balls on the off side.
How I treasure that notice: The critic had caught St Hill’s quality even in that brief innings. He stood beautifully erect and still and flicked the ball away like a conjuror. His apparently exotic fancies were exotic only when he mistimed them, as he did so often in 1928. Between 1910 and 1926 they were in perfect control by those amazing double-jointed wrists and arms and never more so than on big occasions. For the general, I can sum it up this way. No one batting at the other end could ever have overshadowed him. Of that I am quite certain, and of very few can that be said. It was against the finest bowlers, John, Francis, C. R. Browne, Root, that he was at his best.
For myself, I stick to the technical. He saw the ball as early as anyone. He played it as late as anyone. His spirit was untameable, perhaps too much so. There we must leave it.
The Picador Book of Cricket Page 32