The Picador Book of Cricket

by Ramachandra Guha

  Sherlock Holmes, in any case, is not unconnected with Wisden. In the Births and Deaths section of earlier editions will be found the names of Shacklock, F. (Derbyshire, Notts and Otago), and Mycroft, Thomas (Derbyshire), who inspired Conan Doyle to use the names Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes for his detective stories. Perhaps Sir Arthur played against them: certainly the line ‘Doyle, Sir A. C. (MCC) b. May 22, 1859’ appeared for many years in Wisden’s. A shame that space could not be found for the famous though fictitious Raffles in the Births and Deaths. He would enjoy being on the same page as Ranjitsinhji.

  For each, too, his favourite editions of Wisden. If I were permitted to take eight editions of the Almanack with me to some remote island, I would find the task of selection an extremely difficult one. To choose the first half-dozen, recording the most absorbing of the England v. Australia Test-match series, would be a tricky enough problem in all conscience.

  What of the final pair? The first of all the Wisden’s? – the current issue? – the copies recounting Warwickshire’s championship triumphs of 1911 and 1951? – the 1915 edition, in which batsmen were laconically recorded as ‘absent’ during the fateful first week in August? – how does one choose two from these?

  But if on my desert island I could have one Wisden and one only, then there would be not the faintest tremor of hesitation: I would plump for the issue of 1903, recording that superb vintage year (1902) when the Australians came over with Darling, Trumper, Noble, Clem Hill and Warwick Armstrong, and when, during the course of the series, the English selectors could actually leave out G. L. Jessop, C. B. Fry and Ranjitsinhji.

  This, the fortieth edition, informs us of marquees to be bought for £10, tents for £5, lawn-tennis nets for five shillings, Lord Harris eulogizes Bartlett’s ‘repercussive’ cricket bats, on sale at prices varying from nine and six to a guinea. Cricket balls on sale for tenpence, leg guards for three and six. Peru House Private Hotel, Russell Square (for convenience, quietude, comfort and economy) offers Bedroom and Meat Breakfast for four and six.

  The real feast, of course, is provided in the Test-match accounts. Of the first Test match, played at Edgbaston, on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, 29, 30 and 31 May, the Wisden’s chronicler writes most evocatively, and many authorities have since considered that the England team in this game was the greatest ever to represent the Mother Country – A. C. MacLaren, C. B. Fry, K. S. Ranjitsinhji, F. S. Jackson, J. T. Tyldesley, A. A. Lilley, G. H. Hirst, G. L. Jessop, L. C. Braund, W. H. Lockwood, W. Rhodes. Wisden’s reports that

  A beautiful wicket had been prepared, and when MacLaren beat Darling in the toss for innings, it was almost taken for granted that England would make a big score. In the end expectation was realized, but success came only after a deplorable start, and after the Australians had discounted their chances by two or three palpable blunders in the field. Fry was caught by the wicketkeeper standing back in the third over; a misunderstanding, for which Ranjitsinhji considered himself somewhat unjustly blamed, led to MacLaren being run out, and then Ranjitsinhji himself, quite upset by what had happened, was clean bowled, three of the best English wickets being thus down for 35 runs.

  England recovered and finished the day with 351 for 9, Tyldesley scoring 138 and Jackson 53. Owing to rain the game did not commence until three o’clock on the second day:

  Some people expected that MacLaren would at once declare the English innings closed, but acting, it was understood, on Lilley’s advice, he decided to let his own side go on batting for a time, so that his bowlers might not have to start work on a slippery foothold. He declared when the score had been raised to 376 and then followed one of the chief sensations of the cricket season of 1902, the Australians being got rid of in less than an hour and a half for 36, Trumper, who played fine cricket for seventy minutes, alone making a stand.

  Trumper made 18. Wilfred Rhodes returned the extraordinary figures:

  In 1961, when Australia were batting against England once again at Edgbaston, I had the privilege of meeting Wilfred Rhodes, sole survivor of the twenty-two players in that struggle of 1902, and observed that we sorely needed his 7 for 17.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Rhodes reflectively, ‘you know how we got them out, don’t you? We changed over!’ Len Braund, who made an immortal slip catch to dismiss Clem Hill, had bowled one over to allow Hirst (3 for 15) and Rhodes to change ends. Following on, the Australians had scored 8 for no wicket at close of play.

  Writing in Wisden’s, 1936 (‘Trials of a County Secretary’), my father has this to say about the third day:

  Torrents of rain fell overnight, and at 9 a.m. the ground was a complete lake. Not a square yard of turf was visible and play was, of course, out of the question that day. The head groundsman agreed; I paid off half my gatemen and dispensed with the services of half the police. It proved to be a ‘penny wise pound foolish’ action. The umpires arrived; the players arrived – the captains were there. I have never known any men more patient, more hopeful than those umpires and captains. They just sat still and said nothing most effectively. At two o’clock the sun came out and a great crowd assembled outside the ground. What I hadn’t thought of was that two umpires and two captains would sit and wait so long without making a decision. The crowd broke in, and to save our skins we started play at 5.20 on a swamp. The game ended as a draw with Australia 46 for 2.

  The second Test match, says Wisden’s, was ‘utterly ruined by rain’, the third ‘a severe disaster for England’, who lost by 143 runs. Of the last agonizing over in the fourth Test, when England had nine wickets down and needed 8 to win, Wisden’s relates: ‘Tate got a four on the leg side from the first ball he received from Saunders, but the fourth, which came a little with the bowler’s arm and kept low, hit the wicket and the match was over.’

  For the fifth Test match Ranjitsinhji was left out. England, set 263 to win, were saved by G. L. Jessop with possibly the best innings of his life. ‘He scored,’ says Wisden’s, ‘in just over an hour and a quarter, 104 runs out of 139, his hits being a five in the slips, 17 fours, 2 threes, 4 twos and 17 singles.’ Hirst and Rhodes, the last pair, scored the necessary 15 runs to win. It was of this occasion that the apocryphal story ‘We’ll get them in singles, Wilfred!’ is told. Wisden’s, preferring accuracy to romance, records: ‘Rhodes sent a ball from Trumble between the bowler and mid-on, and England won the match by one wicket.’

  Yorkshire’s victory over the Australians, who were dismissed for 23 in their second innings, is described as ‘a big performance’; an Australian victory over Gloucestershire is chronicled in a burst of Edwardian prose – ‘the Colonials had no great difficulty in beating the western county in a single innings’; and of a match against Surrey we are told ‘Trumper and Duff hit up 142 in an hour and a quarter’ – this against Richardson and Lockwood. The historian is chatty and informative about the match with Cambridge University. ‘So greatly were the Australians weakened by illness that they had to complete their side by playing Dr R. J. Pope, a cricketer, who it will be remembered, appeared several times for H. J. H. Scott’s eleven in 1886. Dr Pope came over from Australia for a holiday mainly to see the cricket, and was a sort of general medical adviser to the eleven.’ Anyway, he made 2 not out.

  The 1923 edition contains the saga of the Warwickshire v. Hampshire match at Edgbaston; surely the most extraordinary game of county cricket ever played. Warwickshire, batting first, were out for a mediocre 223 on a good wicket. They then proceeded to dismiss their opponents in 53 balls for 15. The analyses of Howell and Calthorpe speak for themselves:

  Hampshire followed on, and lost 6 wickets for 186. However, as Wisden’s observes, ‘Brown batted splendidly for four hours and three-quarters and Livsey made his first hundred without a mistake.’ Brown made 172, and Livsey 110 not out; Hampshire made 521, bowled Warwickshire out for 158 and won by 155 runs. ‘The victory, taken as a whole,’ says Wisden’s, ‘must surely be without precedent in first-class cricket.’ And has there been anything like it since?r />
  Not long ago I had the good fortune to discuss the match with the late George Brown in his house at Winchester where, appropriately enough, a framed scorecard of the conflict hung in the hall. He contended that Hampshire should have been out for 7 in their first innings, explaining that ‘Tiger’ Smith, while unsighted, had let a ball go for four byes, and that Lionel Tennyson was missed at mid-on, the ball then travelling to the boundary.

  The chief joy of reading Wisden is also the chief snare – once you have picked up a copy you cannot put it down. How many wives have become grass-widowed on account of the limp-covered, yellow-backed magician it is impossible to say. If a teasing problem crops up – when was W. G.’s birthday? Who captained the Australians in 1909? Who won the championship in 1961? – then ‘I won’t be a minute,’ says the cricket enthusiast, ‘I’ll just look it up in Wisden’, and he disappears in search of his treasures. And, of course, he isn’t a minute: he may be away for an hour or for the rest of the day. He may even never return.

  There is one thing that you can be quite certain of in ‘looking it up in Wisden’ and that is that you will pick up a whole miscellany of information before you find the thing you have been looking for.

  Suppose, for instance, that you want to look up the match between Kent and Derbyshire at Folkestone in 1963. You pick up your Wisden for 1964, open it at random, believing firmly that the problem will be solved in a matter of seconds, and you find yourself confronted with a Lancashire–Yorkshire match at Old Trafford.

  The result is a draw. Forgetting now altogether about Kent and Derbyshire at Folkestone, you next turn up the Table of Main Contents to see if you can find out how Yorkshire and Lancashire have fared over the years in their Roses battles. On skimming down the Table of Contents, however, you come across a heading about Test Cricketers (1877–1963). This immediately starts you off on a new track, and you turn to the appropriate section to find how many cricketers have played for their country. The names Clay, Close, Coldwell, Compton, Cook, Copson leap up at you from the printed page: memories of past Test matches dance in bright kaleidoscopic colours before you. Wisden, you feel, is as exciting as a Buchan thriller. The word ‘Buchan’ leads logically enough to Midwinter.

  Midwinter – of course! – now, didn’t he play for England v. Australia, and also for Australia v. England? Research confirms that such was indeed the case. You look him up in Births and Deaths; but this entails searching an earlier edition. At random you select the issue for 1910; and sailing purposefully past an offer on page 3 of a free sample of Oatine (for Men after Shaving) you find that Midwinter, W. E., was also a regular player for Gloucestershire and for Victoria. Meanwhile, you have hit upon another Test-match series.

  In the first of this series of Tests England were trying out a twenty-six-year-old opening batsman named Hobbs (Cambridgeshire and Surrey). He made a duck in his first innings, but did better in the second. ‘England wanted 105 to win, and as it happened, Hobbs and Fry hit off the runs in an hour and a half without being separated.’

  There are now two tracks that lie ahead. You can follow the Australians on their tour, to find that they won the Ashes but came close to defeat against Sussex and Somerset, and also played some unusual sides – Western Union (Scotland), South Wales, two rain-ridden draws against combined Yorkshire and Lancashire elevens, and, towards the end of the tour, Mr Bamford’s eleven at Uttoxeter. The other track, of course, is the golden trail of the Master’s 197 centuries.

  Wisden’s attractions are endless. A county cricketer of former days recently told me how much he enjoyed browsing over the Public School averages ‘so that I can see how my friends’ sons are getting on’.

  Even the briefer obituaries are always interesting to read and, when occasion demands, amusing – as surely obituaries should be. To return again to the 1903 edition, we read of the Reverend Walter Fellows, described in Scores and Biographies as ‘a tremendous fast round-armed bowler’. For Westminster against Rugby (1852) he took a wicket in the first innings and 6 in the second. However, in the course of so doing he bowled 30 wides, ‘thereby giving away as many runs as Westminster made in their two innings combined’. In 1856 he hit a ball 175 yards ‘from hit to pitch . . . In 1863 he emigrated to Australia, and joined the Melbourne Club the following year. He was interested in the game to the last. Height 5 ft 11 in, and playing weight as much as 16 st 4 lb.’

  And again, in the 1961 edition there is the superb obituary of Alec Skelding. Of the many selected tales Wisden recounts of him, perhaps this is the loveliest: ‘In a game in 1948 he turned down a strong appeal by the Australian touring team. A little later a dog ran on to the field, and one of the Australians captured it, carried it to Skelding and said: ‘‘Here you are. All you want now is a white stick.’’’

  Wisden is indeed better than rubies. Wisden is an inexhaustible goldmine in which lies embedded the golden glory of a century of cricketing summers. In the 1964 edition (page 1024) we read the brief statement ‘Wisden for cricket.’ I think that sums it up.

  Epilogue: An Addict’s Archive

  A dream I have every so often begins in an unfamiliar station where I have to change trains. I arrive in the morning, and the connection is in the early afternoon. After leaving my bags in the waiting room I set off in search of a second-hand bookstore. With the aid of an auto-rickshaw driver I find one. The shop is dimly lit, and with closely packed shelves. The owner is there, somewhere, but no words are exchanged. I must search this place thoroughly before I return to my train. Eyes racing, I espy a faded spine with ‘Cardus’ written on it. The book is taken out and I turn the pages, to find that this is the first (1949) edition of the Autobiography. I turn to ask its price – and am woken up.

  As a little boy, Neville Cardus’ autobiography was for me indeed a forbidden fruit. I first encountered the work in my aunt’s house in Delhi. The books in the house were all in one room, occupied by my Oxford-educated cousin. He was to me what Robert was to William in the Richmal Crompton stories – a lofty elder sibling who forbade me from coming near his cigarettes, his books or his girlfriends. His mother, who worshipped him, had also warned me off his room. My cousin went to work but my aunt stayed at home, and in any case I was a timid child. I entered the room only rarely and fleetingly: altogether, I must have fingered the Autobiography for a mere five or ten minutes.

  I had never before seen a book by Neville Cardus. But I knew already that he was the Don Bradman of cricket writers. I must have read of him in one of the first books I owned, Keith Miller’s Cricket Crossfire (the two were friends, for the fast bowler, like the scribe, had an abiding passion for classical music). He also peeped in and out of the works of A. A. Thomson, two of whose books my father had found for me in a bookstore in Delhi’s Connaught Circus. Thomson was an accomplished writer himself, at his best in remembering the Yorkshire cricketers of his boyhood. From him I learned that a lover of cricket must find a club or county before he finds a country.

  For a middle-class cricket-mad boy in the India of the 1960s, building a library was much like assembling an innings on a bowler’s wicket – a run from here and a run from there, and no easy pickings. Some books from England found their way to the local stores, but they were always extravagantly priced. In the time it took to save money to buy them, the pound had grown twice as strong against the rupee. Easier to obtain were the ghosted autobiographies which Indian publishers were willing to commission or reprint. That is how I got the Keith Miller, and that is how I came to read – and reread – Denis Compton’s End of an Innings and Syed Mushtaq Ali’s Cricket Delightful. Even so, I could tell literature apart from propaganda, the first-hand evocations of A. A. Thomson from the carelessly remembered achievements of the star as retold by his ghost.

  I grew up, to discover the second-hand bookstores. These included the pavement sellers in Delhi, a town I went to study in, and the charming Select Bookshop in Bangalore, a town I visited every summer to see my grandparents. My collection got a ferocious
fillip in my second year at university, when Delhi hosted its first World Book Fair. The fair was held at the new Pragati Maidan (loosely translated, ‘The Grounds of Progress’). My pocket money had increased – my father had recently been awarded a promotion – while an adoring (and cricket-playing) uncle unilaterally offered an additional fifty rupees a month. It was the capital at its most glorious: winter, the sun out, a clear view of the Purana Qila, and the music of the great shehnai player Bismillah Khan. Walking through the fair, I came upon a shop with rows upon rows of cricket books. (This was Prabhu Book Service of Gurgaon, known to all foreign historians of India.) The books had once belonged to a couple named Indumathi and Piyush Diwan. They were many and various, and had the owners’ names stamped on the first page. I bought several autobiographies of older cricketers (Lord Harris and S. M. J. Woods, among others), Pelham Warner’s history of Lord’s Cricket Ground, and more of the sentimental studies of A. A. Thomson. Unhappily, I did not have the money at hand to buy C. B. Fry’s classic book on batsmanship. To my surprise, there weren’t any books by Neville Cardus. It seems that the Diwan heir who sold away the family jewellery knew the worth of that particular design.

  It was also at the 1976 World Book Fair, but at an open stall outside the main hall, that I picked up a reprint of C. L. R. James’s Beyond a Boundary. It cost me four rupees. I had already read the book (a copy lay in my college library), and have read it almost every year since. It must surely be the greatest work written on any sport. It has spawned an extensive and mostly tedious critical literature, which I have no wish to add to. Suffice it to say that years later, when my first child was born, and I returned from the hospital to an empty home where the enormity of the event hit me, I read, as consolation and stimulation, my favourite chapter from Beyond a Boundary.