As a manager Ken was prone to the occasional endearing Spoonerism. He told an intense gathering of cricket administrators in Sri Lanka: ‘I can promise you, gentlemen, you haven’t fallen down on any failings.’ He described Geoff Boycott’s batting as being ‘second to anyone’s in the world,’ and an innings of Tony Greig’s as being a ‘great performance in anyone’s cup of tea.’ On a more recent tour of Australia he reported that he had been to see a Yugoslav football team the previous evening called ‘Red Star Belgravia.’
There was another side to Ken’s humour. He enjoyed making people laugh, and on tours this could do wonders for morale. Coming down to breakfast one day at our comfortable hotel near King’s Cross in Sydney, he mentioned that he had tried one of the alka-seltzer tablets which the management thoughtfully left in each bathroom. ‘I tell you what, though,’ he said, ‘they don’t half make your mouth froth.’
Australian Tests in recent years have increasingly taken on the overtones of show-business. During the lunch interval some additional entertainment, ranging from athletics races to pop concerts, are provided for the crowd and for a time there was a fashion for a sky-diver to appear at the start of each Test, bringing with him the coin which the two captains were to toss for innings. John Woodcock suggested that Wisden would soon be recording not just the names of the teams and the umpires but the sky-divers as well!
The toss before a Test in India has its own drama. Both there and in the West Indies the crowd often seem to sense if the home captain has won the toss even before the coin has landed. One Indian captain in opposition to the great Sir Garfield Sobers is alleged to have said ‘We’ll bat’ after Sobers had correctly called ‘Heads.’ This captain had been a hero with the home crowd and dared not fail.
Certainly the sheer volume and passion of crowds in India is unmatched, although opinions among players vary over which is the most daunting audience to play before: that at Calcutta, where the ground once called Eden Gardens is now a vast concrete amphitheatre, or at Melbourne, where the emotive initials M.C.G. conjure up visions to all Australians of great sporting deeds before enormous crowds. Some 90,800 spectators attended the second day of the Fifth Test at the M.C.G.in 1960–61 during the famous ‘Worrell v. Benaud’ series. On these occasions some players are plainly terrified, others are inspired. Tony Greig was the classic example in recent years of someone who played better the bigger the crowd and the occasion: a natural showman, he yet conrived to be detached from the bedlam around him, able to keep cool and concentrate.
The ability to give of his best in a crisis, or in a hostile atmosphere, or when handicapped by illness, as Greig was during his match-winning hundred at Calcutta in 1976–77, is often what separates Test cricketers of equal ability. Sometimes, of course, illness wins. Ian Peebles left the most graphic example in his description of Alf Gover running in to bowl shortly after rising from his sickbed to play a match in India for Lionel Tennyson’s touring team:
‘During his third over only the most acute observer would have been alarmed at the tense expression on his face as he started on his long, hustling run. It was when he shot past the crouching umpire and thundered down the pitch with the undelivered ball in his hand that it became obvious that something was amiss. The batsman, fearing a personal assault, sprang smartly backward, but the flannelled giant sped past looking to neither right nor left. Past wicket-keeper, slips and fine-leg in a flash, he hurtled up to the pavilion steps in a cloud of dusty gravel and was gone.’
A sense of humour is the other great ally to a touring cricketer. That jovial Geordie heavyweight Colin Milburn, whose career was so tragically cut short when he lost the sight of his left eye in a car accident, had been playing with great success for Western Australia in the Sheffield Shield when he was summoned to join the M.C.C. side in Pakistan in 1969. Milburn’s cheerful presence immediately lifted the spirits of his colleagues. Indeed, to show their appreciation of his flying to join them in order to play in the final Test of the series, the whole team went along to the airport at Dacca and garlanded him with flowers, to the amazement of airport officials. He then solemnly shook hands with each player. The team was staying at by far the best hotel in Dacca, a modern and comfortable one, but in a prearranged hoax Milbum was taken by coach to the seediest old guest-house they had been able to locate. Colin Cowdrey took his new arrival in to sign the register and only burst out laughing when Milburn, with a look of horror on his face as he put down his heavy bags in the fly-ridden, pokey, old-fashioned corridor which served as the ‘foyer,’ said: ‘Bloody Hell! All the way from Australia to stay in a dump like this.’
The journey may have been worth it for, in what was to be his last Test innings, Milburn scored a brilliant hundred off 163 balls. It was his only innings in Pakistan and the match ended a day early because of a particularly violent riot.
It is well known that West Indian crowds have a tendency to get over-excited at times. During a riot in one Test the B.B.C. commentator Rex Alston is reputed to have said with great emphasis: ‘This is disgraceful; they are behaving like animals down there.’ He forgot, unfortunately, that even in a riot some spectators were sticking to the West Indian habit of keeping their transistor radios close to their ears throughout the match. Within seconds the commentators were ducking below the windows of the commentary-box as the bottles and stones came flying in a new direction.
Peter May delights in telling how, during the riot on his tour of the Caribbean in 1960, a very efficient squad of police quickly arrived on the scene, each with a long hose pipe. They fanned out to confront the offenders and waited for the commanding officer to drop his arm to signal the water to be released in a mighty jet. Alas, nothing happened. One of the crowd had nipped round behind the pavilion and cut off the water supply!
THE UMPIRES
It was the Australian player Sid Barnes who picked up a dog during a Test match, ran with it to the wicket and presented it to the umpire saying: ‘Here you are, all you need now is a white stick.’ All that umpires really need is good eyesight and hearing, a knowledge of the laws and impartiality. An alarming number of umpires, however, lack at least one of those virtues, if not all three.
I was once talking to a first-class umpire at a huge reception in the State Government buildings opposite the Windsor Hotel in Melbourne when he made an unfortunate slip of the tongue. ‘My ambition,’ he told me, ‘is to umpire for Australia.’
In fact, at the highest level it is very rare indeed to see umpiring which is obviously not strictly impartial, although a cynical English journalist used to say whenever he saw the umpires coming out to start a session of play in a certain part of the world: ‘Ah well, better sit down and get settled again; here comes the cheats.’ It is well known, of course, that all visiting cricket teams believe at some point of their tour that they have been the victim of home-town decisions, hence the recent calls, with prize-money now substantial, to have neutral umpires for Test series.
It is at club and village level, however, that umpires really can be an important member of the side. I shall never forget a match, in the days before twenty overs in the last hour became compulsory by law, when the visiting umpire shamelessly walked off five minutes early when the side I was playing for were within a few runs of victory. Our own umpire looked surprised when his colleague lifted off the bails and walked in, but said nothing: in these circumstances the stronger character wins and umpires who do the job regularly tend to act as a pair and defend each other against a hostile world.
The cry of ‘Owzat, Father?’ and the response, ‘Owt, Son’ is familiar in English folk-lore, but I know of at least one village club where both question and answer were frequently heard until the son became too old to bowl. His ancient father still dons the white coat from time to time.
CONTINUOUS SPECTACLES
Glamorgan fast bowler Peter Judge had the mortifying experience of being dismissed off successive balls by the same bowler (Sarwate of India) in the same match, played at Ca
rdiff in 1946. Judge was last man out in the Glamorgan first innings, and the county was then asked to follow on. There was little time left for play and so it was agreed that the teams would not leave the field. Judge took strike again, Sarwate ran in . . . and bowled him.
At another village club I know, not far away in the same county of Surrey, the regular umpire was a very loquacious little man who each weekend used to claim a record for the number of games in which he had stood. As you were backing up when batting he would whisper out of the side of his mouth: ‘It’s me four thousand, four hundred and forty-ninth game today, y’know.’ He finally had to give up after a particularly unfortunate match. First he forgot himself at a moment of tension by letting out a loud appeal for a catch behind the wicket when he was standing at square-leg. Then, later in the same game, he signalled four with his usual flourish when a ball had reached the boundary and an instant later called out, in a stentorian voice: ‘Scorer! One short!’
Such men need to be humoured. Understanding an umpire and getting him on your side, either as batsman or bowler, is as important an art as batting or bowling itself. After all, your success depends to a certain extent upon the decisions of the man in the white coat. You have to get to know the breed. All are impressionable, even if few are actually corruptible. The least you can be is polite. Most umpires like a bit of chat, either in the field or, especially, at the crease. You should start with the weather, or the state of the match, then graduate to more personal matters. A little flattery helps: ‘You must be very experienced at this game,’ or ‘That was a very good decision just then, if I may say so.’ Sometimes more direct methods are needed. ‘This chap will never get an l.b.w. unless he goes round the wicket, will he?’ or ‘I don’t blame you for not calling no-ball every time he lands his front foot over the crease because it’s not properly marked, is it?’ When it is your turn to bowl, you may just need to make a couple of speculative appeals before venting the utterly convincing one when an l.b.w. or a caught-behind really does seem out.
The art of the convincing appeal has never been more effectively demonstrated than it is in first-class cricket these days, and although gamesmanship may rightly be deplored there is nothing new about it. The stories of W.G.’s expertise in this field are well known and if even half of them are true he was clearly a man who in modern terminology would be called competitive. He once ran out a batsman who was doing some innocent ‘gardening’ in mid-pitch and is reputed to have been fond, when bowling, of pointing to a passing flock of birds in the path of the sun in order to dazzle the batsman! Sometimes the umpire got the better of him. ‘The wind’s deuced strong today, umpire,’ he once said after being bowled by a ball that just clipped his bails. As he bent to replace them and carry on batting he heard the reply: ‘Yes, Doctor. Hope it won’t blow your hat off on the way back to the pavilion.’ On another occasion he disliked the decision given against him so much that he squeaked: ‘Shan’t have it, can’t have it, won’t have it.’ To which the reply from Surrey’s Walter Read was: ‘But you’ll have to have it, Doctor.’
Obstinacy is a characteristic common to almost all umpires, who come in a variety of shapes, sizes and types, although the majority of regulars are elderly and tend to be small of stature. Umpires who sit on shooting-sticks, those who talk a great deal, and those who are either very young and officious or very old and casual are the most dangerous. All these types are frequently found in amateur cricket, although any umpire who enjoys his hobby and takes it fairly seriously is probably better than none at all because this means that members of the batting side perforce take on the job themselves and, as all umpires know, players never know the laws.
In English first-class cricket, of course, nearly all the umpires have played the game to a high standard. In Australia it is not always so; witness the Test umpire Peter Cronin who never played more than a few school games but devoted himself to learning the umpiring art. In county cricket, however, it is undoubtedly a help both to umpires and to players that the officials should have played the game and so thoroughly understand its pressures and problems. This gives them an authority that once they did not have. It is no longer thinkable, for example, that anyone should get away with what Harry Jupp, the Dorking favourite, did in about 1870 when he was castled by the first ball of the match. Like W.G. he replaced the bails at once, whereupon the somewhat timid umpire inquired: ‘Ain’t you going, Juppy?’ ‘No,’ was the stolid reply, ‘not at Dorking I ain’t.’ And he did not.
The modern first-class umpire is held in greater respect, though none of the present day has quite the same aura of authority that Frank Chester or Syd Buller possessed. Many Australian umpires have the same air of command – Col Egar, Mel McInnes and Tom Brooks were perhaps the best of recent times. Brooks was a determined guardian of batsmen, generally speaking, when he considered they were unable to protect themselves against too many bumpers, although those who played with Tom himself say that he hurled a good many short ones around batsmen’s ears in his time. Perhaps hypocrisy is another essential characteristic of all players-turned-umpires who, after all, are only poachers transformed into gamekeepers!
John Snow, England’s self-styled ‘rebel’ fast bowler, said during a famous court case that he once had nightmares about having nothing better to do than to become a first-class umpire when he retired from playing. Yet Snow had the stubborn streak which would have made him an excellent official in a white coat. He and the Brisbane policeman Lou Rowan used to clash like rutting stags in the Highlands in spring, with the watching public in the role of the female deer. Neither would be seen to allow his manhood to be undermined. It seemed at times in the 1970–71 series in Australia that the batsman was an irrelevance and that the real duel was between umpire and fast bowler! Snow was a very good man to have on any side, both gifted and determined, but he would be the first to admit that bowing to authority was not his strongest point. Once rather pompously told that he was a ‘very stupid young man,’ he replied to the distinguished cricketing personality who had delivered this cutting verdict: ‘Maybe. But you are a very stupid old man.’
Repartee of a slightly less sharp kind has been the stock-in-trade of some of the best-loved umpires. Alex Skelding’s catch-phrase at the end of the day as he took off the bails – ‘That concludes the entertainment for the day, gentlemen’ – was as famous as any comedian’s and Bill Reeves’s reply to R.W.V. Robins has become equally celebrated. Robins, having had an appeal or two turned down during an unlucky over with his leg-breaks, was asked by Reeves if he would like his Middlesex sweater, complete with its three dangerous-looking seaxes. Robins, always liable to be somewhat fiery, told the umpire where he could put the sweater. ‘What, Mr Robins,’ said Reeves in mock surprise, ‘swords and all?’
On another occasion Reeves gave out the young Denis Compton rather dubiously, when he had made only 14, to end the Middlesex innings. Gubby Allen, the non-striker, suggested politely that it had been a pretty rough decision. ‘True,’ said Bill, ‘but he’s good enough to get a hell of a lot of runs in the years ahead, and I’m dying for a pee.’
Unfortunately it isn’t nowadays so easy for umpires to be light of heart. They used to be, like Times correspondents, anonymous figures, seldom even mentioned on the scorecards in the newspapers. Now television has made Test umpires public figures and they are paid accordingly. But much calumny awaits them if their split-second decisions are considered wrong. They cannot heed the advice of James J. Boren, founder of the International Association of Professional Bureaucrats: ‘If in doubt mumble, if in trouble delegate, if in charge ponder.’ Umpires, poor chaps, can only ponder for so long and nothing will alter the time- honoured advice to all cricketers: if at first you don’t succeed, blame it on the umpire.
THE COMMENTATORS
It was a direct report from Leyton on the Essex versus New Zealanders match of 1927. The next was made by Canon F.H. Gillingham, the Essex batsman, from the Oval; when obliged to ‘fill in’ for a break
between the innings, he unfortunately offended B.B.C. principles by describing in some detail the various advertisements around the ground. In these commercially minded days one would be able to go through the whole of a lunch interval using that method, but mention of any product or firm other than the match sponsors is still, of course, taboo.
The first Test match to be covered in any depth by the B.B.C. was the Oval Test of 1930 when John Snagge acted as presenter and ‘stand-by’ to the South African Test player Aubrey Faulkner. Eight years later the Second Test at Lord’s became the first cricket match ever televised, and H.B.T. ‘Teddy’ Wakelam was the commentator. While Howard Marshall was doing the radio commentary, setting in his mellifluous voice the style which is still very much followed today, Wakelam was back on television later that summer (his audience, presumably, being far smaller than Marshall’s) recording the course of Len Hutton’s immortal 364 at The Oval. These were still very much pioneering days, of course, and at the end of the match at The Oval Wakelam interviewed several members of the crowd. The idea was to talk about the match but one old man with a beard looked straight at the camera and said that he was delighted to have the opportunity to tell a wide audience about his revolutionary new calendar. Apparently he was still expanding on his theme twenty minutes later, unaware that the camera had ceased functioning, and that his voice had stopped broadcasting nineteen minutes earlier.
Bedside Cricket Page 7