10 for 10

by Chris Waters

  The polar opposite of Mitchell was Arthur Wood, a wicket-keeper whose stocky build belied a penchant for taking the ball with a somersault thrown in. Known as “Rhubarb” or “Sawdust”, Wood, 33, had been first choice for four years and was regarded by Bowes as “one of the grandest little fat fellows you could ever wish to meet”. Bowes, 23, was the side’s youngest member and its most identifiable because he didn’t conform to the stereotype of a cricketer; blond and bespectacled, with studious mien, he looked as if he’d escaped from a science lecture and that his presence on the field was a scientific experiment. Yet Bowes achieved great control from a six-foot five-inch frame and 10-yard run-up, which gave way to a perfectly synchronised, cartwheel action, and he had the ability to swing the ball late. His new-ball partner, Arthur Rhodes, was 25 and had debuted in the same fixture as Sellers at Oxford; a “Steady Eddie” sort, with straight-backed manner, Rhodes – no relation to the famous Wilfred – had the air of a dutiful policeman. The bowling unit was completed by Verity’s spin partner George Macaulay, Yorkshire’s leading wicket-taker in their four titles from 1922 to 1925, and one of a select band to have taken a wicket with his first ball in Test cricket, against South Africa at Cape Town in 1923 (Macaulay hit the winning run for good measure). Friendly one minute, ferocious the next, Macaulay was the sort of man who might have picked a fight with his own shadow and then immediately offered to buy it a drink. Rough-and-ready, with wafer-thin lips made for wedging Woodbines, Macaulay, 34, glared and glowered at team-mates and opponents and thought nothing of deliberately bowling beamers.

  The Nottinghamshire side was similarly colourful – and none more vibrant than its charismatic captain. Arthur Carr was a loveable rogue, the sort who believed that life was a blast and who possessed the cash to pursue the philosophy. The son of a stockbroker and racehorse owner, Carr attended Sherborne, where the novelist Alec Waugh, elder brother of Evelyn, had an unrequited crush on him. Waugh made him the model for “the tremendous” Lovelace in The Loom of Youth, a controversial book about Waugh’s schooldays which openly mentioned homosexuality. Strong and sturdy, with receding fair hair and sea-blue eyes, Carr took his cricket as grimly as he took beer gladly. He drank like a fish and smoked three packets of cigarettes a day; it wasn’t unusual for him to turn up to a match still in his dinner jacket from the previous night. A combative character, who’d led England in six Tests between 1926 to 1929, Carr established a drinking culture at Trent Bridge every bit as successful as the cricketing one, and made it his job to see that Harold Larwood – his premier pace bowler – took to beer, thus enabling him to replace lost fuel. “When I have particularly wanted to get Larwood’s tail up in order to get a quick wicket or two for Notts, I have seen to it that he has not wanted for a drop of beer,” said Carr, who believed “you cannot be a good fast bowler on a bottle of ginger pop or a nice glass of cold water”.

  To judge by a return of 13 for 76 at Worcestershire two days before the 10 for 10 match, Larwood did not want for a drop or two in the New Road dressing room. His figures – which would remain the best of his career – inspired a crushing victory, Nottinghamshire’s third in four Championship games. After a steady start to the season, Carr’s side had climbed to third in the table, 18 points behind Yorkshire with two games in hand. But just as Yorkshire were a team on the rise, so Nottinghamshire’s star was starting to wane; 1932 would be something of a watershed, a season that concluded their second great period. Dominant in the 10 years prior to the Championship’s formation in 1890, when they were seven times the unofficial champions, Nottinghamshire won the title in 1907 but had to wait until 1929 to repeat the feat. It was the culmination of a successful decade under Carr, who’d also led them to runners-up places in 1922, 1923 and 1927. Now the team was ageing and in the throes of transition: from the regular side in 1929, Nottinghamshire had lost the formidable batting trio of George Gunn, Bill “Dodge” Whysall and Wilf Payton, along with pace bowler Fred Barratt, while several players – including 39-year-old Carr – were nudging 40.

  The loss of Gunn and Whysall was particularly felt. Throughout the 20s, they’d formed an opening partnership to rival Holmes and Sutcliffe, sharing 40 century stands. The double-act ended in tragic fashion; in November 1930, Whysall died, aged 43, after slipping on a dance floor, cutting his elbow and contracting blood poisoning from his suede jacket. The second match of 1932 effectively ended Gunn’s career; a full toss from Surrey’s Alf Gover struck him on the head and he managed only three more first-class games, the last of them against the Indian tourists a week before the 10 for 10 match. Whysall’s death was offset to some degree by the emergence of Walter Keeton, who’d stepped up after waiting five years for his chance. Lean and wiry, with a prominent forehead, the 27-year-old had opened with Gunn in 1931, scoring 1,233 runs at 30.07, but Gunn’s departure at the age of 53 had left him suddenly as senior opener and Nottinghamshire with a significant headache: who now to pair with Keeton? Going into the Headingley game, Keeton – who played football at inside-right for Sunderland and Nottingham Forest – had had five different partners in his 13 Championship matches since the start of the season. Frank Shipston had been paired with him in the three fixtures prior to the Worcestershire game, for which Shipston was dropped, while Gunn had accompanied him twice and Joe Hardstaff junior and George Vernon Gunn once each. Hardstaff, 21, was not selected for Leeds but George Vernon Gunn, the boyishly handsome 26-year-old son of George senior, was chosen – albeit at No. 7 in a batting order that constantly changed.

  Keeton’s most frequent partner had been Charlie Harris, a 24-year-old in his first full season. One week after the Yorkshire match, Harris would make the opener’s position his own and remain Keeton’s chief ally until 1949, the duo recording 45 century stands. As it was, Harris batted No. 6 at Headingley and was the only member of the Nottinghamshire side without a first-class hundred, emphasising its strength. The only other members of the top-eight who occupied anything like a settled position were Carr, who mostly batted No. 4, and Willis Walker and Arthur Staples, fixtures at No. 3 and No. 5 respectively.

  Tall and thin, with the hint of a head teacher, Walker, 39, lived in Keighley, the West Yorkshire town where he owned a sports shop. An elegant strokeplayer, who’d been a goalkeeper for Doncaster Rovers, Leeds City and Bradford Park Avenue, among others, he’d been a Nottinghamshire regular since the mid-1920s. Staples, 33, was another goalkeeper – for Mansfield Town and Bournemouth – and a sturdy batsman with a strong-armed drive. Round-faced and reliable, like a trusty old clock, he was a handy medium-pacer too, forming part of a four-strong attack that enabled Carr to play seven frontline batsmen plus wicketkeeper Ben Lilley. The latter, 38, was short, squat and stubby-fingered. One of the finest glove men in the land, Lilley was the unsung support to spearheads Larwood and Voce.

  Nottinghamshire in 1932. Back row (l–r): Charlie Harris, Sam Staples, Bill Voce, Joe Hardstaff junior, Arthur Staples, Harold Larwood, George Vernon Gunn. Front row (l–r): Willis Walker, Walter Keeton, Arthur Carr (captain), George Gunn senior, Ben Lilley. Inset: Frank Shipston. (Nottinghamshire CCC)

  Larwood, 27, was the fastest and most feared bowler on the planet. Physically, he looked better suited to Lilley’s trade than actually propelling the missiles himself. Just five foot seven and a half inches tall, Larwood weighed less than 11 stone but was strong from gruelling shifts as a miner in the days when it was said all Nottinghamshire had to do to find a fast bowler was whistle down the nearest pit. Larwood, who’d made his Test debut under Carr in 1926, had topped the first-class averages in three of the previous five seasons and would do so again in 1932 – and for a final time in 1936. Voce, another ex-miner, was the youngest player in the Headingley game at 22 but already in his sixth season; he’d headed Nottinghamshire’s 1929 Championship-winning averages and taken the most wickets (23) of anyone on the 1930–31 tour of South Africa. Chubby-cheeked and curly-haired, Voce was effectively Verity in reverse; he’d started out as a left-arm spinner befor
e converting to left-arm fast. Nottinghamshire’s line-up for Leeds was completed by 39-year-old Sam Staples, elder brother of Arthur and an amiable, dimple-cheeked off-spinner with a shuffling run-up. Skilled at sealing an end while Larwood and Voce rested, Staples made three Test appearances on the 1927–28 tour of South Africa.

  Sam Staples and Carr were the only survivors from Nottinghamshire’s previous visit to Headingley in 1923, when Staples’s match figures of 10 for 82 underpinned a thrilling three-run victory – Nottinghamshire’s solitary success in their seven trips to Leeds. Yorkshire had four survivors from that game – Holmes, Sutcliffe, Leyland and Macaulay – and although the sides were due to have met at Headingley in 1926, the match was washed out.

  Events surrounding the previous Championship meeting between the clubs in Yorkshire, at Bramall Lane in July 1931, were notable and felt by many to have cost Nottinghamshire the title that Yorkshire secured. As George Vernon Gunn set off to the game with several team-mates, he hit Larwood’s car side-on in a smash on Nottingham’s Loughborough Road, injuring himself, Larwood and Sam Staples, Larwood’s passenger, all of whom missed the match. Although Nottinghamshire emerged with a useful draw, they were thumped a week later in the return at Trent Bridge after the injured Voce joined the casualty list. Having gone into the game at Bramall Lane three points clear at the top with a match in hand, Nottinghamshire lost their way at a vital time and finished fifth. The 1932 Leeds fixture – the 99th meeting in first-class cricket between the clubs in a series Yorkshire led 35–16 with 47 draws – was billed as once more having a vital bearing on the title race. The Nottingham Evening Post, while praising Nottinghamshire’s win at Worcestershire, stressed: “It is this weekend a case of now or never for Notts in respect of the Championship race”, adding that Carr’s men could only take heart from their victory over the “Sauce County”.

  Setting the scene for a game that would go down in cricket history.

  4

  A Cautious Opening

  The Headingley ground was never picturesque but, today, even what little beauty it ever possessed was limited by the spectacle of workmen engaging in reconstructing the Leeds Rugby Football Club stand, which was destroyed by fire.

  So proclaimed the Nottingham Evening Post in its opening dispatch from the 10 for 10 game. It highlighted the game’s most incongruous aspect – it unfolded to the backdrop of a building site. The double-fronted stand, which faced the rugby field one way and the cricket pitch the other, was consumed by fire some three months earlier, and in a rare image taken of the historic match, a new structure is under fledgling construction, while the scene is one of chaotic disorder. A cement mixer is situated close to the boundary, like a rotund fielder stationed for a catch, and planks are scattered in random fashion, like cricket bats strewn on a dressing room floor. Hedley Verity’s feat deserved heavenly surroundings, but the reality could hardly have been more different.

  This grainy image from day one shows the unsightly backdrop to cricket’s most stunning bowling performance. Verity was bowling from this Rugby Stand end when he took 10 for 10 later in the match.

  The fire broke out 10 minutes into a rugby league game between Leeds and Halifax on Good Friday 1932. Spectators fled for the sanctuary of the pitch as the blaze developed with terrifying speed. Although the stand held over 2,000, only one minor injury was reported – a woman sprained her ankle in the sprint for safety. Otherwise, ambulance crews treated only a handful of women who’d fainted. “At first, spectators in the stand among the crowd of more than 17,000 did not realise the seriousness of the trouble,” said the Yorkshire Post. “Only when smoke began to rise up through the wooden planks in the floor did the gravity of the situation become clear to the masses.” The cricket pavilion almost burned down too. “The two bays nearest the pavilion (which is separated from the stand by a gangway of a couple of yards) were a mass of flames,” reported the Post. “There was a rush to remove the cricket equipment of the members of the Yorkshire team who, in recent weeks, had been practising at Headingley. The pavilion was saved, and about this time it appeared that the brigade would save the main part of the stand, but the roof of the cricket stand, which was built high over the football stand, caught, and in a matter of minutes the fire, driven by the wind, had run the length of it. This part of the blaze was spectacular.”

  It took two hours to control the flames. The stand, which held 2,600 on the rugby side and 1,000 on the cricket side, was destroyed apart from two bays. The cause of the fire was never established but police suspected a discarded cigarette. The damage was put at £20,000 – and the rebuilt structure still stands.

  It was against this bizarre background of building work and general commotion that Brian Sellers and Arthur Carr strode out for the toss on the morning of Saturday 9 July 1932. The day was cloudy and already warm, with just a light southwesterly breeze. Carr guessed correctly and, on what The Times called “a perfect pitch”, chose to bat. It was “a batsman’s wicket from the start”, insisted the Yorkshire Post. Yorkshire were unchanged following their win over Gloucestershire but Nottinghamshire showed one alteration to the side that beat Worcestershire. Frank Shipston replaced the out-of-sorts Joe Hardstaff junior, whose previous three innings had been 0, 1 and 2. In front of a 4,000 crowd, Shipston and Walter Keeton opened the innings to “the discordant noise of concrete mixers”. Bill Bowes took the new ball from the Kirkstall Lane end and immediately attacked with five slips – George Macaulay, Herbert Sutcliffe, Arthur Rhodes, Verity and Percy Holmes.

  Verity could not have begun his famous match in more fateful fashion: Shipston had yet to score when he edged an away-swinger from Bowes to fourth slip, where Verity spilled a low opportunity. Sutcliffe was also slumbering in the slips. Perhaps drained mentally after his 100th hundred, and his evening coaching the Yorkshire women, he dropped Keeton at second slip off Bowes when the batsman had four and the total was 10. It was tough luck on Bowes, whose bowling, according to The Times, had “the illusion rather than the reality of pace”. Instead, it was Bowes’s opening partner, Rhodes, who made the breakthrough – and in circumstances that caused curiosity. When Keeton had nine and the total was 15, Rhodes – bringing the ball back towards three short-legs – drew an inside-edge that saw the ball lightly graze the top of off stump. Although the three stumps remained intact, the impact caused the leg bail to pop out of its groove on the middle stump, even though it remained in its groove on the leg stump.

  A rare action shot from the match as Nottinghamshire’s Walter Keeton is bowled by Arthur Rhodes, even though the bails are still on the stumps.

  Wicketkeeper Arthur Wood alerted square-leg umpire Bill Reeves, a former Essex medium-pace bowler who “surveyed the scene with great enthusiasm”. Dry and droll, with angular features, Reeves, 57, was a character, once telling a batsman who protested that he wasn’t out to “look in the paper tomorrow morning” and a bowler who kept asking for lbw, “there’s only one man who appeals more than you – and that’s Doctor Barnardo”. Reeves consulted at length with fellow official Harry Baldwin, a 39-year-old ex-Surrey batsman standing in only his 13th Championship game, and a man who crouched so low at the stumps that he looked like a slipped disc waiting to happen. Acting under a new directive that said the bails no longer had to fall to ground for a batsman to be out, they pronounced Keeton bowled – a decision that confused many spectators unable to see from a distance what happened.

  Umpires Bill Reeves, left, and Harry Baldwin.

  The incident was in comical contrast to one that had taken place in Yorkshire’s match against Surrey at Sheffield the previous week, when there’d been no problem with the bails failing to come out of their grooves for the simple reason that Surrey wicketkeeper Edward Brooks kept knocking them off for no obvious reason. The Yorkshire cricket writer A. W. Pullin bemoaned: “Brooks’ antics caused amusement at first to onlookers, but this feeling subsequently changed to resentment, which was expressed with the emphasis which the ‘grinders’ on the Br
amall Lane are famous. On very many occasions, almost in every over, in fact, Brooks took the ball and swept off the bails practically in one action. As a rule, the striker had a foot well within his crease, and the fact that there was not a single case of stumping in the innings (I refer to Yorkshire’s first essay) is sufficient to show the futility of the stumper’s activities. The number of times the bails had to be replaced was altogether abnormal, and when it is added that one of the umpires has an artificial leg, the inconvenience, indeed, the annoyance, caused will be realised.”

  Keeton was replaced by Willis Walker, who’d hit 92 when the sides met at Sheffield the previous year and top-scored in both innings of the return match at Trent Bridge. His form in 1932 had been ordinary; Walker had managed two centuries in 24 innings and not much besides. Walker and Shipston took the total to 31 before Sellers made a double change after 55 minutes, bringing on Verity at the Rugby Stand end and Macaulay at the Kirkstall Lane side. It didn’t take long for Macaulay to strike; with the score on 35, Shipston played back and outside the line to the off-spinner’s quicker ball and lost his off stump.

  Loud cheers now greeted Carr’s arrival, reflecting his love for playing big shots. But the captain was having a desperately poor season; he’d managed only one half-century in 23 innings and looked every inch the lumbering veteran. Nor were his surroundings likely to inspire him; on his previous visit in 1926, when he’d led England against Australia, Carr dropped Charles Macartney in the first over after controversially putting the tourists into bat, Macartney racing to a century before lunch. Although England emerged with a draw – thanks, in no small part, to Macaulay, who top-scored from No. 10 with 76 in the first innings – Carr was made a scapegoat and relieved of the captaincy after the next Test at Old Trafford, where he fell ill with tonsillitis, which some suspected was actually a hangover.