The Picador Book of Cricket

by Ramachandra Guha

  Father Cleary’s playing days gave over soon after I left school, but he remained on the scene as umpire and selector for a few more years. For a few more he continued to coach St Xavier’s boys, but the increasing complications of an intestinal ailment finally forced him out of any sustained physical effort. I did not watch this decline and thus can easily remember him better on the field than off it.

  The brightest such memory is of the day in 1944 when St Xavier’s nearly won the Sifton Cup. That a school team should have been competing at all in this tournament had made enough history. This was Patna’s only ‘open’ cricket tournament – that is, open to all teams, not merely to colleges or only to club sides – run on knockout lines, and it generally fetched an outstation team or two. No school had ever before participated in this tournament, much less reached the final – which we did at only our second attempt. We ventured to participate partly because we could draw upon Father Cleary, also upon another cricket-playing cleric (Father Mackessack), and a lay teacher (Mr Kennedy) more feared in the boxing ring and on the football field. But also, there was no other tournament then in which we could participate, and I don’t think we were at all aware of any presumptuousness in challenging college teams or adult club sides. Our opponent in the final that year was Science College and the match was played on their ground – which to us in those days was the nearest thing to a Test ground. We batted first and were out for a little over 100, but they did no better and lost about eight wickets for somewhat less. Father Cleary must already have taken five or six wickets when one of the tail-enders – Kiran Mitter, to be exact, who was in the team (I later came to know) more for his enthusiasm than for his ability – made a desperate heave at him and away the ball soared over wide mid-on. The nearest fieldsman – again I remember the name, Sourin Ghosh, whose football was better than his cricket – set off in chase, overshot the mark, turned around and just managed to catch the ball near one of the flag sticks marking the boundary and ran across the line. In any class of cricket it was a great effort and we began yelling in joy, but a much greater hubbub arose from college supporters sitting under a tree nearest to the spot. They claimed that the catch had been made outside the boundary line. Now the college captain came out and demanded justice of the umpires. The one at the bowler’s end, who had nearly joined our applause for the catch, solemnly walked to the spot, came back to consult his colleague, then broke our hearts by declaring the hit to be a six. We did not know how to protest, and, even had we known how, with Father Cleary present we could not have protested. But all fight was knocked out of us, not by the batsman but by that umpire. A few more swipes and the match was irretrievably lost.

  Some of my teammates wept that evening, others uttered foul swear words out of our teachers’ hearing, a few planned to murder the umpire. As I cycled back from the ground in a bunch with Father Cleary, he was already talking about the next season. That day, I think, I grew up a little more, and not only in the cricket sense.

  Two years later, when the last ‘All-India’ cricket team to visit England was announced, some of us thought Father Cleary should have been selected instead of C. S. Nayudu or S. G. Shinde or C. T. Sarwate or all three – such was our faith. With India’s political independence approaching, we even thought of conferring Indian citizenship upon him by giving away one of ours – such was our innocence. For all we knew, he had always been a citizen of India.

  NEVILLE CARDUS

  A Shastbury Character (1956)

  Richmond was master of mathematics at Shastbury, and he played cricket passionately and statistically. He kept a record of every one of his innings, written down in ledgers of leather binding, carrying the inscription: ‘H. Richmond. Cricket. 1893.’ And so on. The first volume began much further back. He was grizzled grey in 1912, a little man squarely built with a ragged moustache and keen, kind eyes. When he was not in form, that is to say when he was not making runs, he would walk through the Shastbury streets absent-mindedly and sometimes he was obviously worried. He was, of course, a bachelor.

  His stance at the wicket dated him as decisively as an early Victorian shilling. He stood legs astride, with the upper part of his body bent at an acute angle, and even then he appeared to be placed at quite a distance from the line of the bat, wicket to wicket. His left arm suggested an inverted letter V; his bat was scrupulously straight and held upright defending the middle stump so exactly that the bowler might well believe that he could see the off and leg stumps. He played off a stationary right foot, the left one going up in a sort of prance. If the ball came in from the off, he played back this way. One day in the nets I advised him to put his right foot and pad over the wicket and try to get behind the ball to play over it with the break. No; he wouldn’t ‘stick’ his legs in front. ‘That Nottinghamshire fellow – Shrewsbury – began it all. This leg-before pest. What’s a bat for?’ He made this statement in May 1913.

  When he was in the field and the other side batting, he could tell you the score in detail at any minute, each batsman’s contribution and the analysis of each bowler. He remembered everything. Seldom did he need to refer to his ledgers if any performance of his own was in question; he made an error on one occasion only, as far as I can remember. In a conversation after net practice he confessed that he had made a pair of spectacles once only in his life and that his second o was given to him by a ‘shooter’ from Woof while playing in a game against Gloucestershire Club and Ground. Next day he corrected himself, having consulted the ledger for the appropriate year: ‘No, it wasn’t Woof; it was Paish.’ But he’d given us the right date.

  On a good pitch he was, for all the ‘openness’ of his stance, hard to get out. He watched the ball all the way, played extremely late, seldom lifted the bat from the ground and was content to get runs by taps through the slips. After he had scored 10, he would remove the pad on his right foot and give it to the umpire; after he had scored 20 he would remove the pad on his left foot and give it to the umpire; after he had scored 30 he would take off the glove of his left hand and give it to the umpire; and arriving at last at the total of 40 he would take off the glove of his right hand and give it also to the umpire. He wore cricket shirts with sleeves the lower half of which could be detached; after the completion of his 50 he would detach both and give the removed parts to the umpire. One afternoon ‘Ted’ Wainwright, the senior cricket professional, was umpiring and he had not seen Richmond before; it was Ted’s first season at Shastbury. As he called for a boy to come from the pavilion to take away his share of Richmond’s discarded accoutrements he was overhead to ask: ‘What does this little feller look like when he’s med an ’undred?’

  On a Saturday night in 1912, strangely hot in a season of rain, I was sitting up late in my lodgings at Cross Hill. All afternoon we had umpired, Ted and myself, in a game between the First XI and the Masters. Ted had gone to bed, tolerably drunk. Towards eleven o’clock our landlady came into the sitting room to say a gentleman had called to see Mr Wainwright. I went to the door and there was Richmond. I told him that Wainwright was asleep. ‘I’m terribly sorry to disturb you at this time of the night,’ he said; ‘in fact, I’ve been to bed myself but I couldn’t sleep. You see, Cardus, I’m bothered about Wainwright’s decision today – he gave me out lbw to a left-arm bowler from round the wicket. Now, I’m not of course doubting Wainwright’s judgement but as you know I never stick my legs in front of the wicket; and the main point I’d like Wainwright to explain is how can a left-arm bowler get a man out lbw from round the wicket on a plumb pitch?’ He asked me if I could possibly go and see Wainwright, wake him up and get his point of view. There was nothing else for it; obviously Richmond was in danger of a sleepless night. So I took courage and, after some trouble, brought Wainwright temporarily back to consciousness. I jogged his memory about the afternoon’s doings in general and his Richmond judgement in particular. ‘Silly old b—;’ he said, turning his pillow over: ‘tell ’im ball coom back inches and would a’ knocked off stump to
’ell.’ Then he went to sleep again. But Richmond was satisfied. ‘I didn’t see the ball turn, but no doubt that was my fault.’

  It was the custom at Shastbury for the First XI to go into the nets every Monday, Wednesday and Friday from a quarter to one until a quarter to two – that is, until mid-June set in and the House matches began. The practice was strenuous, especially for the professionals, who were supposed to keep the attack challenging all the time. After a particularly gruelling session on a sweltering Monday, Ted and I were resting at the open windows of the professionals’ dressing room at Shastbury, still in our flannels and enjoying our pipes (Edgeworth was one shilling an ounce then, and a Dunhill pipe seven shillings and sixpence), while we looked over the shimmering cricket field, stretching away to the distant Wrekin. Suddenly Richmond knocked at our door and came forward. He had been dreadfully out of form for a month and on the previous Saturday had been clean bowled first ball while opening the innings for the Shropshire Gentlemen. ‘Would you please give me a net for half an hour or so?’ he asked. Wainwright consented, and Richmond went away to change into flannels. I was furious. ‘He knows he has no right to ask for a net after School practice,’ I protested. ‘Doan’t argue,’ said Ted. ‘Coom on and get it over. There’ll be half a crown for thi, anyhow.’ I told him I didn’t want a half a crown. ‘It’s the principle,’ I argued. ‘Well,’ said Ted. ‘If tha doesn’t want to bowl at ’im, tha knows what thi can do?’ ‘No – what?’ ‘’It ’im in cobbles.’ ‘Oh, don’t be a fool, Ted – come on then, let’s go and have it done with.’ Besides, I was too young to know what he meant by ‘cobbles’. As luck would happen, the nets had by this time of a dry summer become worn and dusty. Richmond duly appeared in the brown canvas shoes he invariably wore for the purpose of practice. His bat was very yellow and bound in two places with twine. Wainwright’s first ball pitched outside the off and just missed the leg stump. ‘Coom forward – it were well up enoo’, sir.’ Then Richmond studiously went through the correct movements to an invisible ball of the same kind; once or twice he went through them, lost in contemplation. He was beginning to play with some certainty of touch when one of my off breaks pitched on a very bare spot, came back like a knife, and sped upwards at an acute angle smack on to Richmond’s bladder. And he never wore a protector or ‘box’. He bent double with a stifled groan; but before we could get down the wicket to render first aid he drew himself erect and waved us away. But he decided he had better not continue practice today. He tipped us and apologized for putting us to inconvenience. ‘But’, he said, in reasonable extenuation, ‘it was a beast of a ball, wasn’t it?’ Then he added, ‘And it would have missed the bails by inches.’

  After he had departed and we were alone again in the professionals’ dressing room, Wainwright chuckled richly. ‘By gum,’ he said. ‘Tha’s a seight better bowler than Ah thowt. Anybody as can ’it batter in cobbles when he likes is a bit of all reight . . .’ In vain I protested that I had hit Richmond’s bladder by accident. ‘Tha’s tellin’ me,’ replied Wainwright; and this was probably the first really relevant use of the term.

  ⋆ ⋆ ⋆

  We turn now to some gentle debunking, to sketches written in mischief but not malice. Alan Gibson writes of how he grew up on tales of Ranji and Duleep, and then encountered an Indian prince – the skipper of a touring team, no less – who could not play cricket for toffee. N. S. Ramaswami writes of the mystery spinner Jack Iverson, who destroyed the England batting in the Ashes series of 1950–1. Two years later he toured India with a Commonwealth side. Ramaswami chooses however to remember not Iverson the bowler but Iverson the batsman and fielder.

  ALAN GIBSON

  The Unmasking of a Dashing Oriental Star (1982)

  19 May 1982. Fifty years ago I saw the Indians play at Leyton. I can tell you the date: it was 28 May, my ninth birthday – no, I tell a lie, because there was no play on the Saturday, but I had a chance of watching them on the Monday and Tuesday.

  Our house overlooked the Leyton ground and on the Saturday, as a birthday treat, I had been allowed to go in, paying sixpence, to watch from closer quarters. It was a disappointment that there was no play, after numerous consultations, but I can remember several things about the rest of the match, though by then I was only surveying it from the balcony at home.

  I had bought a scorecard (twopence, a stiff price we thought) and conned it eagerly. No. 1 in the Indian side was described as H. H. Porbandar, with an asterisk to show he was captain. When India went in, after bowling Essex out for 169, their No. 1 played some handsome strokes.

  We had some romantic ideas about Indian cricket at that time, because of Duleepsinhji, and the Nawab of Pataudi, and vague folk memories of Duleep’s uncle, Ranji. So, although neither Duleep nor the Nawab were available for the Indian party, we expected magic. When the Indian No. 1 was so dashing, I thought that this Porbandar was going to be another oriental star.

  ‘Cor, old Porbs looked good,’ I said to my friends. I wondered what the H. H. stood for. ’Arry? my friends suggested, or ’Erbert? I cannot swear to this, but I do believe I suggested ’Orace, because I knew he was something foreign.

  Alas! I discovered later that though Porbandar had played in that match, he had not batted, and that the No. 1 who had played the strokes was Naoomal Jeeoomal – or words to that effect (even Wisden was uncertain in its transliteration of Indian names in those days). Naoomal played three times against England and averaged 27, so he cannot have been too bad. He made 1,300 runs in that 1932 season, 1,500 in all matches. So I had seen a pretty good innings; but it was a disappointment that he had not been Porbandar.

  H. H., I also discovered, stood for ‘His Highness’, and the full title was ‘The Maharajah of Porbandar’. Wisden of 1933 described his appointment as captain of the Indian side (there had been touring sides from India before, but this was the first to be granted a Test match) in these terms:

  Some little difficulty was experienced with regard to the captaincy, and after one or two disappointments the choice fell upon the Maharajah of Porbandar . . . For reasons apart from cricket, the necessity existed of having a person of distinction and importance in India at the head of affairs, and it was almost entirely because of this that Porbandar led the team.

  (Did anyone murmur anything about sport and politics?)

  Wisden continues: ‘No injustice is being done to him, therefore, by saying that admirably fitted as he was in many respects for the task, his abilities as a cricketer were not commensurate with the position he occupied.’

  I checked Porbandar’s figures for the tour:

  At Pelsham, v. Mr T. Gilbert Scott’s XI (not first-class): b R. S. G. Scott 0; b Owen Smith 2.

  At Hove, v. Sussex: b Tate 0.

  At Maidenhead, v. Mr H. M. Martineau’s XI (not first-class): b Lowndes 2.

  At Cardiff, v. Glamorgan: b Jones 2.

  At Cambridge, v. the University: c Titley, b Rought-Rought 0.

  He did not play again after the Cambridge match in the second week of June: at least, I can find no trace of it in Wisden, which nevertheless attributes 8 runs to him in all matches (average 1.14). Where are the missing runs? I can agree with their verdict on first-class matches (2 runs, average 0.66), but there is a problem here which I feel the Society of Cricket Statisticians should immediately investigate. There is no record of his bowling or taking a catch.

  That is not all there is to say about the Maharajah. The tour was difficult, experimental, and it passed off happily. India (‘All-India’ as the team was then called) did well and, though they lost the only Test match, it was not before they had given England a shock or two. E. W. Swanton wrote that Porbandar ‘made a creditable success of keeping his men a happy and united party’. It was also graceful, if inevitable, for him to step out of the side.

  That it was not so easy to captain an Indian side in England was shown on the next tour, in 1936, when the amiable Vizianagram (‘call me Vizzy’, he used to say in the commentary box) struc
k trouble, and Amarnath, the best all-rounder, was sent home. In a later book Swanton refers, rather unkindly, to Porbandar’s ‘fleet of white Rolls-Royces’, but also states that he had made only two runs on the tour – ‘from a leg glance at Cardiff, I seem to recall’.

  Fifty years later, with cricket between England and India still going on, I think we owe a salute to him. Porbandar – the state – produces limestone, which, according to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, ‘is used for buildings in Porbandar without mortar, and is said to coalesce into a solid block under the influence of moisture’. Well, the limestone still holds, and he applied his touches of moisture in those early days.