The Picador Book of Cricket

by Ramachandra Guha

  Would it not be wonderful if, by the stretching of a finger, by the mere turning of a vulcanite knob, you could be transported from the murk and the mud of the city streets to a land of cloudless turquoise skies, emerald-green velvet turf and clear air dancing and shimmering in the heat haze? Wonderful, perhaps, but not impossible. Turn on the radio and listen. If you listen at the right time, you will discover that cricket will be going on in one of many sunny climes and a welcome voice will be telling you about it. You may not always like what he tells you. The facts may be grim for England. But the facts of life are grim anyhow. That is not the point.

  The voice could conceivably come from Brisbane, Bombay, Barbados, or from any one of a score of blessed plots in Australia, South Africa, India, New Zealand or the West Indies. (Whatever evil tidings may have come from Sabina Park, Kingston, Jamaica, it will still be an enchanted ground under the shade of green palm and blue mountain.) These places lie in the happier southern hemisphere; all, that is, except India and the West Indies, which are near enough to the equator for hemispheres not to matter. Blue sky, golden sun, green turf; all this and cricketers’ heaven, too, except that in some places the ground is not green but brown and the pitch is a tightly stretched matting. As if that made any difference, except to the naughtier bowlers . . .

  Long before the birth of radio and, solemn thought, of its attendant Arlotts and Alstons, cricket under a less wintry sun lived and had its being and men went out from England to do battle under fairer skies than those that hang over Lord’s in winter or Old Trafford in summer. All good things must have a beginning, and the first Test match, the very first Test that ever was, took place at Melbourne in 1877. To be fair the month was March and the English winter should have been nearly over, but the records tell us that it was a bad year and gentlemen in England then abed must have snuggled down tightly under the blankets while they thought that somebody or something was warm, 12,000 miles away.

  The Australian side on that day in 1877 contained a few names that you will naturally remember. Charles Bannerman, elder brother of the other Bannerman (Alec) who stonewalled his way through five tours in this country; Midwinter, who afterwards came to England and played for Gloucester; D. W. Gregory, first of a whole gaggle of Gregorys; and the stumper J. M. Blackham, owner of cricket’s fiercest beard (always excepting W. G.’s), the toughest appendage since that of Blackbeard the Buccaneer. The English team contained names which are still freshly remembered, at least in the north country; five of them were Yorkshiremen: Happy Jack Ulyett and Tom Emmett, the two most famous of the old Yorkshire players; Allan Hill and Andrew Greenwood, who came, you will remember, from Lascelles Hall; and Tom Armitage, the stout fellow who, in the New Zealand floods, had carried the lady across the river on his back. The captain was James Lillywhite, Junior, the Sussex pro, which shows that Len Hutton was not his country’s first professional captain. Besides Lillywhite and his five Yorkshiremen there was Harry Jupp, the Surrey batsman who had to keep wicket because Ted Pooley had been left behind in New Zealand, and Alfred Shaw, the renowned Notts slow bowler. Somebody had to bowl the first ball in any Test, and this honour fell to Alfred himself, for whom it was claimed that he never bowled a wide or a no-ball all his life. Bannerman hit the first run; he also hit 164 more. Somebody is said to have missed him before he scored, but why should I tell you who it was? Historians are now giving even Richard III the benefit of the doubt. The bowlers could not get Bannerman out, though his partners fell regularly by the wayside, until a nasty break-back ball from Ulyett suddenly rose and hit him on the hand. Into retirement he had to go . . .

  Bannerman’s score amounted to two-thirds of the whole and the crowd collected 165 sovereigns, one for each run. When England went in, they never quite caught up. Jupp scored the first half-century ever made for England, but nobody else produced any fireworks until Allan Hill, the handsome fellow from Lascelles Hall, carried his bat for a truculently hammered 35.

  In the second innings the English bowlers were too much for the Australians and nobody could make anything of Alfred Shaw and Ulyett. Bannerman, his hand in bandages, scored only one run. When England went in to get 154, which did not seem too difficult, they fared just as badly. Kendall took 7 for 55, and a swashbuckling 38 from Ulyett was the best contribution to an inadequate English total of 108. So Australia won the first Test match and that is how it all started.

  The first Test in South Africa was played in our winter of 1888–9, also a winter of rough weather. Playing on the charming ground at Port Elizabeth, the English team was hardly formidable as an international side, but it was nevertheless too strong for an infant South Africa, and who do you think was the English captain? A tall, slim undergraduate named C. A. (‘Round the Corner’) Smith, who was named partly after his bowling action and partly after a character in Surtees. C. A. Smith lived another sixty years, achieved a well-deserved knighthood, and (solemn thought) taught Hollywood cricket and court etiquette, in that order. He took 5 wickets for 19 in the South Africans’ first innings, and they simply did not know which corner he was bowling round. England won by 8 wickets, although nobody but Bobby Abel made a respectable score. A fortnight later there was another Test, also on a very pleasant ground, at Cape Town. Abel made his usual century, but England’s innings victory was due not so much to this as to the slightly fantastic bowling of Johnny Briggs, who in the two innings took 15 wickets for 28 runs. Repeat: 15 for 28. And 14 of them were clean bowled. There can never have been such hitting of the stumps before or since, even by Schofield Haigh.

  What of those other English winters? It was in the same period – 1929–30 – that the first away Tests were played not only against the West Indies, but also against New Zealand. On 11 January to 16 January 1930, an English eleven under the Hon. F. S. G. Calthorpe played the West Indies on the lovely Barbados ground at Kensington Oval – I said Kensington. There was some tall scoring by Sandham for England and, for the West Indies, by Roach and George Headley of the panther-like spring, who made the first of his many centuries. (At the age of forty-four he was brought back to the West Indies by public subscription to take part in the 1953–4 Tests against England.) This was Constantine’s first Test at home, though he had, of course, visited England the previous summer and achieved ‘the double’. In the West Indies his batting and bowling for once fell short of the spectacular, but he made four of those incredible catches by which the quickness of his hands perennially deceived the eye.

  In New Zealand, at Lancaster Park, Christchurch, an English eleven which included Woolley and Duleepsinhji, got seven New Zealand wickets down for 21 runs, mainly through some sensational bowling by M. J. C. Allom, who laid the foundations of a fairly easy victory for his side by taking four wickets in five balls.

  The first Test played in India began at Bombay four years later and saw centuries by B. H. Valentine on one side and L. Amarnath on the other. There was also some fine attacking bowling by Maurice Nichols and Mohamed Nissar. In the end England won without great difficulty by 9 wickets, but it was the beginning of a shining period which gave English cricket lovers the pleasures that came from playing against or watching Merchant, Mankad, Hazare and Umrigar.

  If I were asked to think of a match which, beyond many others, truly made winter glorious, I would recall Bobby Peel’s match at Sydney in December 1894. I did not see it, because it took place round about the time I was born, but there are times when I have felt that match, just as I have seen the 1893 Yorkshire v. Lancashire match through the eager eyes of Uncle Walter. At Sydney England faced the mountainous task of following on against an Australian total of 586, and it is to their credit that they fought back with tenacity. The first hero was Albert Ward, the man whom Uncle Walter saw catch Ulyett off the last ball of that Lancashire v. Yorkshire game. Ward made 100 and there were several forties; even so, Australia were set only 177 to win, and they started off with cheerful confidence. On the evening of the fifth day they were 113 with only two wickets down. It was in th
e bag. There was a clattering thunderstorm during the night, and when Bobby Peel and Johnny Briggs went down to Sydney Oval in the morning to look at the wicket the sun was shining fiercely. Bobby dug his toe into the turf and exclaimed with gleeful wickedness: ‘That’s for me!’ The third wicket fell at 130 and the whole of the rest of the Australian team put on only 36 more. Five of the last six wickets fell to Peel, and England, after following on 261 behind, had won by 10 runs.

  Now is the winter of our discontent

  Made glorious summer by this sun of York . . .

  At any rate, I think the sons of Yorkshire have done their share.

  ⋆ ⋆ ⋆

  In our last selection from his work, Neville Cardus writes of the suggestiveness in the names of individual players. All of us develop likes and dislikes based purely on the sound of a cricketer’s name – this before we have a proper understanding of the game itself. One of the first cricketers I admired was J. Van Geloven, the exoticism of whose name concealed his modest record for Leicestershire. I came across him in the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack for 1965, a book given to me when I was seven. Wisden is, of course, a comprehensive book of names – and of much else besides. What the fat yellow book contains, and where it might lead you, are the subject of our final essay, by a man who followed cricket and read Wisden for more than sixty years.

  NEVILLE CARDUS

  What’s in a Name? (1948)

  Mr E. V. Lucas has somewhere written a charming essay on cricketers’ names, and such is my annoyance at not having thought of the theme first that (without Mr Lucas’s permission) I now borrow it and use it myself. Why should I not? In music, composers have never had scruples against stealing subjects from one another for their variations. Besides, many years ago, long before Mr Lucas’s writings on cricket came pleasantly into my life, I pondered frequently the question of the poetic justness of the names of cricketers. I used to choose my ‘favourite’ batsmen on the strength of an agreeable name, much as ladies pick a winner at Ascot. I was, even while a schoolboy, as convinced as Mr Shandy would have been that a cricketer’s surname possessed an enormous influence one way or another upon his skill, nay upon his very destiny. When Hobbs first played for Surrey I would have none of him. ‘No man ever has or ever will do good with a name like that,’ I said, adding, ‘Hobbes, maybe, but not Hobbs.’ My Shandean theory was, of course, rather shocked by the quick movement of Hobbs to fame; I consoled myself with the reflection that there must be exceptions to every rule.

  One afternoon I remember running out of school to get the latest news of the Lancashire match. In those years Lancashire cricket meant more to me, perhaps, than anything else on earth. One afternoon I escaped from school eager about Lancashire, who were meeting Worcestershire – a rare side that year, with the Fosters, Ted Arnold, Burrows and Wilson. I bought a newspaper and turned to the scores on the middle page inside. I never could as a boy – and sometimes cannot yet – muster up courage enough to plunge headlong to the ‘stop-press’; news had to come to my apprehensive young mind gradually. Inside the paper, which I opened cautiously, I learned that Worcestershire were 67 for 6 and all the Fosters out. These tidings of joy sent me confidently to the ‘stop-press’. And there, what did my incredulous eyes read? ‘Worcestershire 152 for 6, Gaukrodger not out 82.’ I decided on the spot that (a) this was outrageous and absurd, that (b) Gaukrodger was an impossible name for a cricketer, and that (c) with such a name he ought never in this world to have been permitted to score 19, let alone 91. From that afternoon, until Gaukrodger passed into honourable retirement, I regarded him (or rather his name – which amounted to the same thing) with open derision. ‘Gaukrodger!’ I would murmur. And to this present time I have remained unshaken in the view that ‘Gaukrodger’ was a heathenish name for a cricketer; I am glad he never played for England.

  There is, I am aware, a sophistical argument which tries to persuade us that only by force of mechanical association do we begin to regard a great man’s name as part and parcel of all that we feel about his personality and genius. I admit this notion can gather support from the way the ridiculous monosyllable ‘Hobbs’ has, with the passing of time, come to sound in many ears like a very trumpet of greatness. But my strong opinion is this: Hobbs has conquered in spite of his name. It would have crippled many a smaller man. ‘What about Trumper?’ asks the scoffer. ‘How can you fit in a name like that with the destiny of a glorious cricketer?’ And again do I freely confess that at first glance ‘Trumper’ seems a name not at all likely to guide anybody towards sweetness and light. But Trumper’s Christian name was Victor; the poetry in ‘Victor’ neutralized the (let us say) prose in ‘Trumper’; had Trumper been named Obadiah he could scarcely have scored a century for Australia against England before lunch – as Trumper rapturously did at Old Trafford in 1902.

  The crowd in the shilling seats will bear me out that there’s much power for good or for evil in a cricketer’s name. Consider how the crowd instinctively felt, when Hendren began his county cricket, that the man’s Christian name of Elias was all wrong – not only that, but a positive danger to his future. The crowd looked at Hendren’s face, his gigantic smile; also at his admirable batting. Then they pronounced to themselves ‘Elias’. And they looked at Hendren once more and, to a man, they agreed that that ‘Elias’ was not true . . . They called him ‘Patsy’ – even as they called Augustus Lilley ‘Dick’.

  Mr Warner has invented a sort of rainy-day pastime for cricketers; you have to pick a ‘World XI’ to play a side from Mars. I always select my ‘World XI’ on the principle that a handsome name is a harbinger of handsome achievement. And herewith I publish my ‘World XI’ – every man chosen with no reference at all to form, but simply because he carries a name which, if not actually poetic, has suggestions which are far from those of unlovely prose:

  Grace

  Shrewsbury

  Darling

  Noble

  Warwick Armstrong Knight (A. E. or D. J.)

  Lilley

  Rhodes

  Flowers

  Mead (W., of Essex)

  Blythe.

  Perhaps I ought to go a little into my choice of ‘Rhodes’. It is not exactly musical in sound, or, as a word, poetic or picturesque. But it is redolent of the ancient Aegean, the Dorian Hexapolis, and the Colossus of Chares. Besides, I am prepared to go to any extreme of subterfuge and sophistry to get Wilfred into my ‘World XI’. ‘Tennyson’ is a name of handsomer aspect at first glance than ‘Rhodes’ – which really is a hideous word, if only we could look at it with fresh eyes. But as a cricketer Tennyson

  . . . altogether lacks the abilities

  That Rhodes is dress’d in.

  Against my XI of delectable names I would like to see opposed the following team, which might be called ‘The Onomatopoeics’:

  Hobbs

  Fry

  Studd (C. T.)

  Gunn (W.)

  Brown (J. T.)

  Hirst

  Trumble

  Boyle

  Briggs

  Sugg

  and (of course)

  Gaukrodger.

  My XI’s inevitable victory would demonstrate once and for all that there is plenty of virtue in a name – among cricketers, at any rate. Could Grace conceivably have been Grace, known as W. G. Blenkinsop?

  ROWLAND RYDER

  The Pleasures of Reading Wisden (1995)

  As my father was secretary of the Warwickshire County Cricket Club from 1895 to 1944, it is not altogether surprising that the game was a frequent topic of conversation at the family meal table: cricket was our bread and butter.

  Reaching double figures in the early 1920s, I naturally heard a good deal about the achievements of Hobbs and Sutcliffe and, in the cricketless winters, learned from my father, and from the yellow-backed pages of Wisden’s, about Grace and Spofforth; ‘Ranji’ and Fry and Jessop; Blackham and Lilley; and, of course, ‘My Hornby and my Barlow long ago’. I knew about the cricketing giants of the
past before I had learned about Gladstone and Disraeli; looking back on those days of enchantment, and with all respect to those eminent statesmen, I have no regrets.

  We had in our living room a formidable Victorian bookcase, its shelves protected by glass shutters. In one of these shelves, overspilling into a second, were editions of Wisden’s, in strict chronological order – and woe betide anyone who took out a copy and put it back in the wrong place: a bad school report might on some rare occasion be forgiven, but to cause havoc in the thin yellow line – that was another matter.

  It was always a red-letter day for me when our stock was increased by a new volume, Father announcing ‘I’ve got the new Wisden’s!’ with the same quiet pride that Disraeli – whom I eventually did get to hear about – would have announced that he had secured shares in the Suez Canal. My excited request to peruse the magic pages was always countered by my father with dark allusions to homework; but the reply deceived neither of us, for we both knew that he wanted to read Wisden’s first.

  We all have our foibles about the Almanack. For each, of course, his own county. We study our own side’s home matches times without number, paying scant attention to the achievements of the other counties. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who played for the MCC and for Sussex, who had ‘WG’, as one of his victims, and who wrote ‘The Missing Three-Quarter’, might well have written a cricket detective story, entitled, say, ‘The Missing Mid-On’:

  ‘Did you not observe, my dear Watson, that in the library were thirty-seven editions of Wisden’s?’

  This makes Watson forget the Afghan campaign. ‘By heavens, Holmes, then the man was possibly interested in cricket?’

  ‘More than that, my dear Watson. I noticed that in all these editions the home matches of Loamshire were heavily thumbed. This put me on the scent of the miscreant . . .’