A Beautiful Game

by Mark Nicholas

  PETER SAINSBURY, 1934–2014

  (I could not attend the thanksgiving service for Peter but wrote a few thoughts that were read out by Shaun Udal.) Well, Sains, it is time to say goodbye. What a man you have been, what a husband, father, grandfather, cricket player, cricket coach, counsellor and friend. Without hesitation, and with immense admiration, we can say—and I suspect most in the room today would say—that we loved you and will miss you more than you could ever have known.

  You brought warmth to our lives. You brought perspective to our thinking. You brought enthusiasm to our chores. You never grumbled, you never spoke ill of other folk. You were kind and generous of spirit. You brought dignity to our souls.

  I have pictures of you painted before my eyes. There is one of you batting—cap tilted, strong grip, keen eye, thou shalt not pass and though shall come over to my side! There is one of you fielding—quick little steps, low centre of gravity, safe hands. There is one of you bowling—‘Thank you, umpire’ as the cap is handed over, easy approach, pure action, nagging and accurate pitch of the ball, fools playing for the turn. There is one of you in the morning—bright and cheery for the day to be done. One of you at lunch, furious after a sloppy morning from those in your care. One of you at the close, gently cajoling, buying beer, listening, learning, passing on to others. And my favourite picture is of that wonderful face, screwed up in determination and concentration, the truest grit I ever saw.

  We regret not listening to you more. Your way was not to force but to encourage. You knew more than you knew and offered more than you know. You were our pastoral care and our shining light, come fair wind or foul. You were our friend.

  How we loved it when you sneaked away from parties without saying goodnight; how you screamed blue murder at Robin Smith for smacking those practice balls into the flats; how cross you were when we fielded badly; how happy you were when we beat the odds; how you manipulated the fines system to even up the lucky and the not so lucky of the week just gone; how you showed us optimism and joy in the simple things we often miss ourselves; how you dressed smart and played smart. How we loved how your modesty prevailed.

  And you were gifted. Very gifted, though you would have none of it. After all, Sains, you did something none of us Hampshire cricketers have done—you won two championships and believe me, without you, the winning might not have been the winning. You were special, unique. You were hard, you were soft, you were fair. You could laugh, you could cry . . . and you did both in the Lord’s dressing room on that magnificent day in 1988 when your beloved county finally made it to a Cup Final and went on to win in style. Your joy at that achievement was our joy too.

  You were our friend and no finer friend has there been. To Joycie goes our love, our sympathy and our thoughts. And also to Sara and to Paul, who share this dreadful loss with their mum.

  Sains, rest well. You gave this life all of yourself. You left nothing out there . . . but golden memories.

  COLIN INGLEBY-MACKENZIE (1933–2006)

  First published in the Daily Telegraph, London, 3 July 2006 On Thursday last week, the world bade a final farewell to Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie. Seventeen hundred people, maybe more, filled St Paul’s Cathedral to appreciate and applaud a life less ordinary. Ingleby-Mackenzie, Hampshire captain in the late 1950s and early 1960s, MCC president in the late 1990s and bon viveur through a lifetime, died on 9 March of a brain tumour. Poor Colin, there was so much life left in him. He was a remarkable man, whose rare ability to fill a room with laughter and hope characterised his life. Indeed, Colin was the climate of optimism.

  He was an amateur in the true and best sense. His light touch and extraordinary enthusiasm made him a force for good without compare. When he first played for Hampshire, it was a dour club still fighting to reassert itself after the Second World War. The captain and secretary at the time, Desmond Eagar, identified him as the man to inspire a mixed bag of cricketers beyond their promise. Eagar got it spot on. ‘I decided to abandon the evils of gambling, knuckle down and lead a successful team,’ wrote Ingles in his book Many a Slip. At least the third bit caught on. In his first team talk he set the tone: ‘Let’s enjoy the game and above all let’s entertain or perish,’ he said, and then would frequently begin a three-day county match by urging the boys to win in two and if not, then lose in two, so ‘either way we’ll have a day off!’

  From there, the only way was up for Hampshire cricket, as the players, supporters and all those who came into contact with the club flew in the wind beneath Ingleby’s well-spread wings. Hard-bitten pros were suddenly sipping brandy and Bollinger in the company of lords and ladies, knights and nawabs. Strings of gorgeous girls and high-society folk lifted morale in the dressing room. Gatemen and ground staff were treated as equals, and all of them, from each corner of his rich tapestry, were seduced.

  There was good reason. Cricket matches had become an adventure, a gambler’s alternative to anything that had gone before, as daredevil declarations illustrated his ambition and belief. Bowlers such as Derek Shackleton, Butch White and Peter Sainsbury bought into them and played above themselves. Even opposing captains started to declare with the intent of providing a spectacle, and the Hampshire lads cashed in. As Leo Harrison, his stumper and friend, pointed out: ‘He could charm anyone, even the enemy.’

  But it was his own men he had changed the most. There was nothing feudal about his leadership, no side to his character, and no meanness in his mistakes. The players fell head over heels for him and his capacity for fun. Even when he lost the plot, when the Ingleby went one way and the Mackenzie another, they were happy to be captained by the hyphen.

  Hampshire’s first championship was won on 1 September 1961, amid delirious scenes at Bournemouth. From it came the legend of ‘Happy Hants’. Given the strength of Surrey and Yorkshire at the time, it was a phenomenal achievement.

  After Eton he went into the navy as a submariner, and though he began business life with Slazenger very soon after national service, he received instant immortality at the start of a new career in insurance. Due in to the office at nine in the morning on 1 February 1959, he arrived at midday on 18 March after a holiday in the Caribbean he simply could not leave. This jaunt had been preceded by a tour with E.W. Swanton’s XI, which he captained. Concerned about the team’s erratic form, Swanton suggested a curfew. ‘I’d like everyone in bed by 11, Colin,’ Jim said. ‘Oh, I don’t know that’s such a good idea, Jim,’ replied Ingleby. ‘We start play at 11.30!’

  By the mid-1990s he had committed himself to country-house cricket at Sir Paul Getty’s private ground, recruiting and managing high-quality teams in festival matches. These occasions allowed us the last views of him with his soulmates, Denis Compton and Keith Miller—all three of them lovers of the turf, the turps and the totty, and all howling with laughter together.

  If Ingleby was the right man at exactly the right time to lead Hampshire, it was the same story 40 years later when he was elevated to the presidency of the MCC. The sensitive issue of female membership had bubbled beneath the surface for some time, and Ingleby’s charm, diplomacy and steel rode the storm of losing the initial vote on a technicality and returning to the polls, so to speak, six months later to win the day. The world would never be the same again. Neither will it be without Ingleby.

  CONSTANTIA UITSIG, 1991–2012

  David McCay lay flat on his hospital bed at the Newlands Clinic in Cape Town. Diagnosed with lung cancer that had spread to the spine, he had major surgery to stabilise the spine and prevent paralysis. Recent years have not served him well. The empire he built fell to dust. Painful material losses include a game lodge, a farm in the Karoo, the family home and Constantia Uitsig (uitsig is Afrikaans for ‘view’)—the magnificent wine farm, hotel and collection of three restaurants that attracted devoted fans from far and wide.

  His beautiful family has regrouped. His eldest daughter, Kate Louise, was married in Kirstenbosch National Botanic Garden as dawn broke on the 20 February 2016. T
he party drifted into dusk and beyond. David, somehow, was there. He wore a grey beard and long silver hair: he might have been Richard Harris at the start of Gladiator if you took no more than a glance. The wheelchair supported his immense frame comfortably and the cravat that nestled beneath his beard was distinguished. It was his first venture into the sunlight for seven weeks.

  At his best in the late 1960s, McCay bowled medium-fast swing and seam at a standard good enough to play games for Western Province. His deep love of bat and ball inspired the final piece of the Uitsig jigsaw: an absolutely beautiful cricket ground that he cared for with his own hands. He ran a team that played casual—and not so casual—club cricket against anyone who wanted a game. Few could resist the effortlessly magnificent setting in the Constantia valley, the humbling presence of Table Mountain and the crystal-blue skies that make summer days in the Cape among the most wonderful experiences on earth.

  I met David right there, as he was holding court on his patch. His team hammered the Heartaches, Tim Rice’s team, with whom I toured in the late February of 1993. On a 38-degree day, Tim put McCay’s lot in to bat—Tim has a theory that his best chance of a draw is batting second, dear Tim—and they gave us a ‘klap’, as the Afrikaaners in their number might say. The declaration came at 350 and our mob collapsed into the swimming pool, where drinks were served.

  Batting at number four in the run chase, I was supposed to make a hundred and give us a shout. I never even took guard. A ten-year-old boy ran me out at the non-striker’s end after Tim Graveney’s suicide call. I lost the plot right there. By the time I reached the dressing room, no one was safe. Bats, gloves, pads, you name it, bounced around the walls while expletives echoed across the valley. You’d have thought I’d been run out by a rival for a place in the Test team.

  I didn’t take to McCay, thinking his declaration absurdly late and his ribald laughter at my dismissal more than patronising. It transpired that he didn’t think much of me either, carrying on as I did. I was the captain of Hampshire and behaved like a spoilt kid. The boy who ran me out was his son, who came on to field when McCay briefly left to fire up the coals for the hog-roast. McCay thought that very funny.

  Anyway, at the barbecue by the pavilion in the evening he came over with a cold beer and said he was sorry not have seen me bat. Not many people have said that. And then he invited me back to play anytime. Indeed, he said, if I was ever in town I should call and we could play golf or have lunch. The upshot of the inauspicious start was that from 1993 to 2008 I never stayed anywhere else in Cape Town. Uitsig became a home away from home, and the McCay family my family. I love them all and sure loved that cricket ground.

  The standard of cricket at Uitsig was good. David had plenty of mates who could play and plenty of visitors who tell tales to this day of the ringers he often recruited. During the World Cup in 2003, I spent a lot of time commentating and travelling with Jeff Thomson. David said to invite him. I said, ‘You’re kidding—he’s got buggered knees, a dodgy shoulder and hasn’t played in years.’ David searched for a less telling weakness. I suggested alcohol and oysters. He said offer him the freedom of the winery and the food of the ocean. So I told Thommo he could sit in the restaurant (which was alongside the ground), eat ten dozen oysters and drink all the wine he could stomach if he appeared on the team sheet and bowled five with the new nut. Bingo.

  We sat down for lunch soon after midday. At half past one, David won the toss and chose to bowl. Thommo cleaned up a couple of dozen of Namibia’s best oysters, nailed a few Castle lagers, met the other blokes in the team, pulled the cork on a bottle of chenin blanc, and changed into whites at 1.50 before bowling the first ball at two o’clock.

  It was something to behold. The fastest bowler in history on this gorgeous little cricket ground, shuffling to the crease with those small steps before contorting his seemingly elastic physique into a sideways-on, catapult action that, for a few unforgettable years in the mid-1970s, delivered the ball at a 100 miles per hour. On this day at Uitsig in 2003, I can vouch that he was fast enough, too. An innocent left-handed opening batsman edged to me at second slip and I caught the damn thing at shoulder height away to my left. Christ, I caught one off Thommo! It is in the memory bank for ever and a day. The batsman might just as well have shouted, ‘Catch it!’ for he too will not forget the moment he was forged into history as another victim of Jeffrey Robert Thomson. The fellow had the scorecard framed and it hangs in his pub.

  Thommo picked up another wicket, bowled a couple of shit balls and said so, loudly, before retiring to the stoop at the restaurant and continuing the business he had started soon after midday. Now that might have been the end of the story had we not made a Horlicks of the run chase. Just as that extraordinarily golden evening light began to wrap its arms around Constantia, Thommo had to pad-up. This was tricky, given his six hours on the stoop. Choice language accompanied the exercise, thought quite not so choice as the echo of ‘You fucking ripper’ when our number ten edged one past the keeper for the winning runs. This delight, coupled with obvious relief, motivated Thommo to call McCay a ‘beaut of a bloke’ and suggest that the two of them now really got stuck in.

  Memories are made of men like Thommo.

  Malcolm Marshall and Desmond Haynes played at Uitsig, Graham Gooch too, as did Mike Procter, Adrian Kuiper, two Kirstens—Peter and Gary—Garth Le Roux, Jacques Kallis and many, many more. But none, not even Thommo, caused quite such a commotion as perhaps the greatest batsman South Africa ever produced. I was involved in this one, too.

  Graeme Pollock was hired by talkSPORT radio to work with us on England’s tour of South Africa back in 2000. Pollock was the nation’s favourite son, more so even than Procter or Barry Richards. He had mystique and legend. Everybody in the land of the Springbok was in awe of Graeme Pollock.

  The commentary team remained in Cape Town after a match and Pollock was reluctant to give up the suite in town he had been allocated for a whole week by a splendidly sycophantic hotel manager. McCay’s team had a game on the Saturday but I was ruled out because of a flight that afternoon to Kimberley for a one-day international the next day. Then I had a thought. David had long coveted Pollock on his Elysian field. We all had. What if David flew us both in and out of Kimberley on the Sunday of the game. That way I got to play and Pollock got to stay in the hotel with his beloved Jeanie. There was a trade-off though. In return for the flight on David’s King Air plane, Pollock would have to turn out for Uitsig too.

  This took some persuading. Geeps, as he is widely known, had been long retired, and his knees made Thommo’s look like a new pair. But persuade him we did, with the offer of lunch and a few beers.

  Anyway, the moment came. I was at the wicket when he came in at number four, the position in which he had batted all his life. He was 56 years old, with a body going on 70, the ravages of a life on and off the field having taken their toll. He took guard, looked around the field and crouched into that most familiar stance—feet set wide apart, bat resting on the ground between them. The first ball was a tad wide and left alone. The next, much the same but cut with jaw-dropping authority to the boundary behind point. He couldn’t run, so he blocked or hit boundaries. He scored 50-odd, mainly through point and cover off the front foot. He leant upon that right foot of his as if it were a crutch for his left.

  His commanding presence was matched by only the very best—Viv Richards and Garry Sobers first among them. Age cannot wither the outline and the little manifestations of character. Signs of the old magic were still there. Like the leopards of the African bush, the spots on these fellows never seem to change. It is the way they carry themselves—an intimidation of sorts, simply through presence.

  It was the most terrible disappointment when he was out. I don’t remember how, just that everyone sighed the deepest sigh. It was the last time he batted and we were there to see it. Better still, I was at the other end. He stayed for a few drinks and the South Africans gathered around him, feasting on his every
word. Graeme was, after all, voted the country’s cricketer of the century and, at a time when South Africa was starved of international sport, his mighty deeds sustained the nation.

  The next day David’s plane flew us in and out of Kimberley. We felt very important, and one of us was. The cricket in the match between Zimbabwe and England was pretty poor. Deep down the great man must have thought he would eat these fellows for breakfast. Boycott was working with us and said exactly that. He added that he, Boycott, would gobble up anything Graeme left on the plate.

  On Monday morning, back at Uitsig, I wandered over to the cricket field. David was watering the square. We hit golf balls from the beautiful turf at the edge of the outfield—starting with wedges, moving through the irons, until we finished by smashing drivers far into the valley. We had lunch and then went nearby for nine holes. These were the hazy, lazy days of summer—an incomparable time.

  Sitting alongside him at the clinic, I thought back to Thomson and Pollock and to all the genial club cricketers who had enjoyed David’s wonderful hospitality. I pictured the backdrop of the Constantia Valley and the vibrant colours of the fauna, mountains and sky. I remembered the clean sounds of bat and ball, the bellowed appeals, the kind applause and the endless laughter among cricket folk whose simple pleasure was a day in the sun.

  And I remembered the last time the sun began to drop over the mountain and how our stories were told in shadows.

  Postscript

  These pages have become more autobiographical than planned. I hope that has not made them too dull to read. Though they drift in and out of my life in cricket, the main aim has been to concentrate on the people I have admired and the events that have surrounded me. To adapt the first line from Simon Hughes’ award-winning book, A Lot of Hard Yakka, I may not have been the greatest cricketer going around but I have sure rubbed shoulders with a few who were.