MATTHEW ENGEL
A Great Fat Man (1983)
I ought to remember where I was when the news came, as with Kennedy’s assassination or the outbreak of war. But to be honest I have no recollection. It was 23 May 1969, and I must have been doing my A Levels. The details of those have been successfully blotted out of my mind since then. The accident in which Colin Milburn lost his left eye and his career must have been thrown out with them.
I do remember that the sinking-in process took longer than usual. Most of us were fooled a little: by inapt comparisons with Pataudi, who played on with his right eye gone; by the wave of hopeful press coverage from the hospitals; by Colin’s own quite outstanding bravery. I also remember feeling that if so freakish an injury (why couldn’t he just have broken a leg like normal people, for heaven’s sake?) could end his career, then it was the saddest possible news for English cricket. Fifteen years on, that thought gnaws at me all the more. Colin Milburn might not have been the greatest cricketer of his generation, but he was, beyond question, the cricketer we could least afford to lose. And we lost him.
I was not and am still not an unbiased observer. Insofar as I ever grew up, I grew up, between bouts of boarding school, in Northampton in the 1960s. This was a bizarre period in English history for many reasons, and one of its minor oddities was that, very briefly, Northampton became the most successful sporting town in the kingdom. In 1965 Northampton Town FC were promoted for their first and only season in the First Division; the rugby club had the best record in England; and the county, after sixty generally disastrous years of first-class cricket, missed the championship by four miserable points. The cricket team was not only good – we had the best and most exciting young batsman in England.
What’s more, he was a friend of mine. Well, more like a friend of a friend actually. But he would recognize me and pass the time of day and take an interest. I had never spoken to a real cricketer before, unless he was donating or withholding his autograph, except for the time Lindsay Hassett burnt my hand with a dog-end (and he had retired long since so no one was very impressed about that). It even fell to Colin to coach me at the Easter nets, which he did without losing his temper. On the basis of this flimsy acquaintance I gave up autograph-hunting as infra dig for a friend of the famous. I realized later that Colin was friends with pretty well everyone in Northampton. That turned out to be one of his problems.
Like so many Northamptonshire cricketers, he belonged to the place only by the curious historical fluke that this insignificant and apathetic town (with little else to offer except a reasonably quick train to London) had first-class cricket while County Durham, which unlike Northamptonshire was somewhere non-cricket people had heard of, did not. Colin had arrived via Burnopfield Junior School, Annfield Plain Secondary Modern, Stanley Grammar and Chester-le-Street in the Durham Senior League (all faraway places with strange-sounding names but places with which Northamptonshire kept in touch), because Ken Turner, the secretary, had offered him ten shillings a week more than Warwickshire. This transaction achieved slightly more notice than the acquisition of most young batsmen: Colin had achieved a sort of public notice as a seventeen-year-old schoolboy when he made 101 for Durham against the 1959 Indians. He even got a special mention in the Editor’s Notes in the 1960 Wisden, amid sections headed ‘Yorkshire’s Professional Captain’ and ‘Welcome South Africa’! There was also the fact that he was, as Wisden put it, ‘a well-built lad’ or, to put it another way, fat.
The fat was the first of his trademarks, and the most unconventional. He had always been a tubby boy. In the cold winter of 1963, just as he was becoming established as a county player, he fought against it furiously and went down from eighteen stones to nearer sixteen. Thereafter, though his weight was a regular talking point every April and continued to bother selectors – official and armchair ones – of a certain cast of mind, I think it bothered him less. I often wonder how he might have batted had he slimmed down to fit the popular perception of what a cricketer should look like. His batting style was the second and most important of his trademarks, and it must have derived from the first, since so often all his tonnage went into the shot. Yet I don’t think there was anything essentially unconventional about his batting. Memory plays odd tricks. I remember the crashing hook, of course; I remember the booming drive, hit most often past a helpless cover point; yet in the mind’s eye I can most easily recall that great bulk leaning forward, ever so correctly, to prod away a ball he did not fancy.
The difference between him and everyone else is that he would hit a 50–50 ball, that anyone else would leave or block, and hit it with immense force. Not every time. There is another potent memory: his return to the old and grubby Northampton pavilion, red-faced and as near as he ever got to angry, after a daft nick to first slip or something when in single figures. For us kids, the day moved on to a lower plane. But the good days were electric and if he got past 20, he rarely stopped before 70.
Years later, after the accident, I umpired a village benefit match in which he thumped harmless bowling all over the place for about an hour and I was able to watch at close quarters the visible signs of how he made up his mind what to hit. It occurred to me then that his secret had not been his bulk, nor his technique, nor even the quickness of his poor, damned eyes but the speed of his reflexes. How else could an eighteen-stone near non-runner come to break the Northamptonshire catching record, which he did, in 1964, with forty-three catches, almost all at pre-helmet short leg?
Those reflexes were never infallible. Nor was his judgement, and sometimes the good days were well spaced out. In 1965, five years after he joined Northamptonshire, he went into the final match still short of his 1,000. Gloucestershire were at the County Ground and Northamptonshire needed to win to be champions. It rained on the first and last days and the fact that Milburn made 152 not out in three and a half hours to get his 1,000 made no difference whatsoever, except to soothe the pain.
That was the beginning of the end of Northampton, Sparta of English sport. The Cobblers had just started their First Division season, though it would be almost another three months before they would win a match. The rugby team went through years of mediocrity. And the county still have not been champions. But the blazing three-year summer of Colin Milburn’s life was just about to start. The following year was the one in which many championship matches had their first innings restricted to 65 overs. It was one of those early, faltering attempts to enliven the three-day game in response to the success of the Gillette Cup. Colin did not need livening up, but the system suited him very nicely. He began 1966 with two centuries in his first three innings, scored 64 for MCC against West Indies, then made 171 at Leicester with Alec Bedser watching. On the Sunday he was in the Test team. Basil D’Oliveira was also in the twelve for the first time (though on that occasion he did not play) and I remember being hurt and puzzled by the ‘Hello Dolly’ headlines. Milburn did play and soon was being overshadowed by no one.
Nine Test matches – that’s all he had time for. He changed four beyond recognition, though it is true that England did not win any of them: a lively but chancy 94 as England went down to that very strong West Indian team, with Sobers, Hall and all, at Old Trafford on his debut; the 126 not out in the next Test at Lord’s to save the game (only Colin would save a game by scoring an even-time century); the amazing, fighting 83 at Lord’s against the 1968 Australians on a bad wicket; and the final 139 at Karachi the following year, of which more anon.
There would have been time for more but the selectors kept dropping him. Barely a month after the 126 he was gone. He failed in the third Test at Trent Bridge then made 71 for once out at Headingley. I suppose that must have been the game when he was booed for his fielding. I remember it happening somewhere, and only a Headingley crowd could be that crass. At any rate, he was gone the next week along with Cowdrey, the captain, and half his team to make way for the Brian Close era. In that wonderfully vengeful mood that brings out the best in some
cricketers, Milburn went to play for Northamptonshire at Clacton and scored 203 not out – a century before lunch, another before tea and a new county first-wicket record with Prideaux, who made an occasional contribution (both got 0 in the second innings). That year, he was the first to 1,000, scored the fastest century, hit the most sixes and only missed 2,000 because of a broken finger. There was no tour for him to be left out of, so he spent his first happy winter playing for Western Australia.
He had a more moderate year in 1967. He played in two Tests but his best score was 40 at Edgbaston the morning Kunderan had to be given the new ball for India, having taken three wickets in his life. Nonetheless he scored the fastest century of the summer (78 minutes this time, four minutes quicker than the previous year) and was picked to go to the West Indies. When he got there, he started slowly, lost out to Edrich for the first Test and became a spare part.
It was quite clear that a good many influential people did not regard Milburn as a business cricketer. After his Lord’s 83 the next year ended in a catch on the deep midwicket boundary, one of the selectors commented sourly ‘What a way to get out.’ He was injured after that and did not return until the Oval-D’Oliveira-Underwood-mopping-up Test, after which he was left out of the South African tour party. Since someone else was also left out, Milburn again found himself overshadowed by D’Oliveira and there are plenty of people around who still believe Milburn’s omission was the dafter.
But the curious thing was that Milburn had plenty of detractors in Northampton as well. He had loads of friends. In some cases the same people were in both categories. The County Ground crowds, such as they are, on both the football and cricket sides have long had a fairly well-deserved reputation for sourness. I think the town was much happier when 1965 was over and its teams stopped all this winning nonsense; we could all go back to being happily miserable again. And much of the moaning was at Milburn. There was something not right about all that boozy joviality. Why couldn’t he settle down and live and play boringly like you are supposed to do? And poor old Ollie did not seem able to shut them all up by going out and playing one of his really great innings. They always seemed to come somewhere else, somewhere exotic like Lord’s or Clacton. Northampton had to be content with some very, very good ones.
Perhaps the greatest of all came that November, even further away. As soon as England left him out of the squad for their non-existent tour to South Africa, Western Australia rang to invite him back. On a fearsomely humid day at the Gabba in Brisbane Milburn went out to open the batting. At lunch he was 61 not out and, rather out of character, complaining; there was so much sweat seeping through his gloves that he could hardly grip the bat. After lunch, the weather cooled a fraction; Milburn went berserk. In the two-hour afternoon session he scored 181. Even Bradman never approached that. He was out the over after tea for 243 and apologized to his teammates. It may not have registered with everyone in Northampton, but for some of us just hearing about it was something.
He was on a Perth beach with (so the story goes and it is almost certainly true) a couple of birds and a good many beers when, three months later, he got the message that England needed him to reinforce the party for the substitute tour of Pakistan. It is generally held among cricketers that Perth is a better place to be than Dacca and the feeling among the England party at that stage of the tour was, by all accounts, that they should fly out to join Milburn rather than the other way round. But he flew in via one of the most convoluted routes in the history of aviation, and the team summoned up enough energy to give him a guard of honour at the airport and con him into believing that there was no room at the Intercontinental with the other lads and so he would have to stay in a dosshouse next to a swamp.
His very presence had brightened the tour. When they moved to Karachi for the final Test, Milburn was picked and played his last, biggest and probably greatest Test innings, 139 on a dead-slow mud pitch at Karachi. As at Northampton, as with the England selectors, he was not wholly appreciated – the crowd were too busy rioting to take much interest. But, as the game was abandoned after the gates were smashed by the crowd, it was generally agreed that whatever else had gone wrong for English cricket that winter – and pretty well everything had – at least Milburn had now emerged as a genuine Test batsman, and not just a slogger.
The summer of 1969 marked the start of the Sunday League which, genuine Test batsman or not, might have been designed for Milburn’s personal use. He began the season with 158 against Leicestershire and played his part in a Northamptonshire win over the West Indies. His selection for the first Test was now not even a matter for discussion. And then it happened.
I was a schoolboy still and cannot be certain that all the smiling pictures were not just a front for the camera. But the sister-in-charge said his manner never changed in his eleven days in hospital, the hospital management committee singled him out in their annual report (‘his infectious good humour and indomitable spirit raised morale throughout the hospital’) and in the years since I have still not glimpsed whatever sadness lurks behind the mask.
Four years later, when he made his brief and abortive comeback, I was just starting to make my way as a cricket writer in Northampton and was close enough to pick up the jealousy among some of the Northamptonshire players who thought he should not be playing. The comeback did not fail by much – with his little bit of medium-pace bowling, he was almost good enough to play county cricket – but the glory had departed and he knew it.
There is a curious historical parallel. After the last match of the 1936 season the two Northamptonshire openers, A. H. Bakewell and R. P. Northway, were returning by car from Chesterfield. Bakewell had scored 241 not out and had almost taken Northamptonshire, the bottom county, to victory over Derbyshire, the top county. Bakewell had played six Tests, three fewer than Milburn. The car crashed, Northway was killed, and Bakewell, who hovered near death for several days, never played again. Thereafter he lived a shadowed and apparently sad life. Colin Milburn spent a good deal of the time (too much, said all Northampton) after his accident in his old corner spot at the bar of the Abingdon Park Hotel, always with a happy group, in shadow, but obviously not in sadness. Then, quietly and suddenly, he left Northampton and returned to County Durham. There are still booze and birds but no marriage and, for a man past forty, no obvious purpose. He has been doing this and that. He still comes to the odd London do. He still smiles. We still chat.
He might yet find his métier on the radio. His occasional commentaries have been shrewd and funny and generous, because he does not believe no one else can play. Please may he find his way. His indomitable spirit did not only raise morale at the hospital; it lit up my youth.
Postscript
Colin never did find his way again. On 28 February 1990, seven years after the above piece was published, Colin Milburn collapsed and died in the car park of a county Durham pub. He was forty-eight, a shade younger than I am now. Ian Botham was one of the pallbearers at his funeral. Someone once suggested to me that had he lived until 1992, when Durham became a first-class county, he might have got the job and purpose he craved most desperately. Maybe. He lives on in the memory of everyone who ever met him or watched him hit a boundary.
Matthew Engel
DALE SLATER
Abed and Apartheid (1993)
Suleiman ‘Dik’ Abed was born in Cape Town in 1943, the last of four brothers in a famous sporting family. The National Party was yet four years from power, and apartheid – racism elevated to an organizing principle – no more than a nasty twinkle in the Broederbond’s eye. Still, racist iniquities abounded in South Africa. Among disadvantaged communities, such as the Cape Coloureds, improvisation was the key to life. Thus Dik learned his rugby on gravel, and his cricket on matting and worse.
In a way, though, Dik was lucky, for trails were being blazed ahead of him. In 1950, the separate Coloured, Indian and Black cricket boards amalgamated to form the South African Cricket Board of Control (SACBOC). Thirty yea
rs of segregated cricket were thus thrust aside, among non-whites at least, for though there was no impediment, legal or otherwise, to their joining the process, whites chose to ignore these moves toward integration. Thus in 1951 the first Dadabhai Trophy tournament drew together representative teams from all but the white community. The tournament was seen as a stepping stone to the selection of a team representing all sections of non-white South African cricket. Ongoing negotiations to find a suitable opponent were taking place. By 1953, when the Board announced the imminence of a touring team from Kenya, Dik’s two eldest brothers, Salie (‘Lobo’) and Gesant (‘Tiney’), were reckoned certainties for the South African side.
In the event, the tour by the Kenya Asians did not take place until 1956. In the intervening period, SACBOC had applied for full membership of the ICC, a move which was blocked by the South African Cricket Association. The historic first-ever Test, played on matting at Hartleyvale, a Cape Town football ground (Newlands had been refused them), saw Salie Abed in the side as keeper. Dik, then twelve years old, was there to see South Africa, under the captaincy of Basil D’Oliveira, cruise to a six-wicket victory.
Gesant had to wait until the second Test to win his colours. But in that match he proved his all-round worth scoring 54 in the middle order as South Africa piled up 377 first innings runs, then taking three vital wickets as the Kenyans, chasing 286 to win the match, fell in the end only 39 runs short. With the rain-ruined Durban Test drawn, the series was won 2–0. South Africa’s non-white cricketers had served notice of their talents against a side which included, in Shokoor Ahmed, formerly of Pakistan, at least one international.
In 1958 history was made again when the SACBOC side went on a return tour of East Africa. Again, D’Oliveira was skipper. Again, both Salie and Gesant were included in the party but Dik’s third brother, Ghulam, by now a stalwart of the Western Province and South African Malay sides, just missed selection despite a Dadabhai Trophy hundred. According to D’Oliveira, this was the proudest touring team ever to leave South Africa.
The Picador Book of Cricket Page 33