Edging Towards Darkness: The story of the last timeless Test

by John Lazenby

  However, as if to disperse any lingering doubts, Hammond completed a century on the final day, despite being dropped four times before he reached three figures, and admitted he had been ‘a mass of nerves’ throughout his innings. One writer called it ‘as laborious and painful a century as he ever made’. In the end, his elevation to the captaincy proved remarkably straightforward – for a man who spent the first 17 years of his playing career as a professional and had turned amateur only seven months earlier.

  The cricket writer and historian Gerald Howat wrote of the times that, ‘For a professional to captain a twentieth-century England side was unthinkable; for an ex-professional to do so was only barely tenable.’ Yet Hammond crossed the social chasm of the tradesman’s entrance to the front door, the work floor to the wood-panelled boardroom – he accepted a director’s salary of £2,000 (worth almost £130,000 today) at the London-based firm Marsham Tyres – without so much as a stumble. More significantly the transition paved the way to the England captaincy, while allowing him to continue the lifestyle he craved. He was clearly ambitious for the job, though no more ambitious perhaps than Pelham Warner was for him, and the red carpet was effectively rolled out. He was granted membership of MCC and, within a few weeks of being entrusted with the England position, captained the Gentlemen to victory over the Players, becoming the first and only man to lead both sides2. The Gloucestershire captaincy passed into his hands the following season.

  Outwardly, Hammond enjoyed all the trappings of an amateur. He liked expensive and fast cars, particularly Jaguars (he was the first cricketer, in 1929, to be given a sponsored car) and bought his suits from Savile Row; he liked to dress the part. Handsome and charming, when in the mood, he moved in glamorous circles, sought his friends outside of cricket and was not disinclined to brush up on his accent. He could also be socially uncomfortable and unsure of himself. He married the daughter of a wealthy Yorkshire wool textile merchant and attracted the kind of public adulation and celebrity more usually reserved for film stars of the day, acquiring a social status that went far beyond the aspirations of any professional cricketer. Indeed, some professionals were not above deferring to him as ‘Mr Hammond’ even before he turned amateur.

  Inevitably, there had been some criticism of his appointment – much of it fuelled by snobbery, some of it directed at what was perceived as a lack of tactical acumen on his part, despite having shown himself to be a more than able captain of the Players. As for the men who had once been his former professionals, however, there were few quibbles, at least not publicly. Almost 50 years later Len Hutton wrote that, ‘Hammond’s captaincy was not highly regarded in some quarters, and, to some of his fellow players, he was inclined to be an aloof and Olympian figure . . . [But] to me, there could be no serious argument against his position as captain for he was comfortably the most talented player, with a wide experience.’ When Hutton was offered the England captaincy in 1952, the class lines had converged to such an extent that, unlike Hammond, he could insist with all confidence on leading his country as a professional rather than an amateur. He remained, though, a fervent admirer of Hammond all his life: ‘On the matter of his changing status from professional to amateur in order to take on the job, I had more sympathy for Hammond than for the prevailing system. He was not to blame for the way things were done in those days.’

  The MCC side that toured South Africa under Hammond in 1938–39 also came to value his captaincy highly. He preferred to lead by example, with a bat in his hands, and rarely offered personal guidance or encouragement to his players; but he proved a popular leader, which was not always the case during his career. Hutton, Les Ames, Bill Edrich, Eddie Paynter, Norman Yardley and Ken Farnes were among those who spoke warmly and genuinely of his qualities, on and off the field in South Africa. Aside from the ever-present rumble of approaching war, it was a happy tour and one player above all others, Edrich, would owe his Test career to Hammond’s nerve and keen judgment – and almost succeed in squandering it, too.

  Hammond was only 17 days away from his 35th birthday when he accepted Pelham Warner’s invitation to lead England against Australia. At an age when an international cricketer of today might be contemplating his retirement, Hammond was at the peak of his powers. On the field he was ‘identifiable as a thoroughbred’, his pristine whites, well-groomed appearance and blue handkerchief peeping from the pocket of his flannels as instantly recognisable as his sumptuous cover-drives. For some it was worth the admission fee alone just to watch Hammond walk out to bat. A fast-medium bowler, with a classical side-on action, he was good enough on occasion to take the new ball for England, though as Don Bradman remarked, ‘He was too busy scoring runs to worry about bowling.’ At slip he made the hardest catches appear ridiculously easy and, in his younger days, it was said, ‘he threw like an Australian and fielded like an archangel’. A rare combination indeed. That Hammond was the obvious choice as captain, and head and shoulders above any other cricketer at the selectors’ disposal, was not in doubt. ‘A captain to the manner born,’ the News of the World trumpeted in 1937.

  When Hammond made his Test debut on the matting wickets of South Africa, aged 24, he was a devil-may-care batsman, willing, in the words of Wisden, ‘to tilt at all the bowlers of the world’. During Percy Chapman’s triumphant tour of Australia in 1928–29 he hit a record 905 runs in the series at an average of 113, quickly establishing himself as the most formidable player in the game and England’s natural heir to ‘The Master’, Jack Hobbs. Yet within two years he had been trumped by Don Bradman, his record eviscerated – bettered by 69 runs – and trampled into The Oval dust, in a timeless Test that lasted six excruciating days. It was only the third timeless Test played in England, and Hammond’s aversion to the format can perhaps be traced back to it. Although the young Australian lacked Hammond’s elegance and grace, his brutal efficiency at the crease and almost machine-like devotion to scoring runs left the English public, and its cricketers, awestruck. His ‘ugly determination’, as Ken Farnes called it, with the heavy heart of a bowler.

  From 1930 onwards Hammond engaged in a personal duel with Bradman, kindling ‘a gladiatorial rivalry’ between the two men that, despite being interrupted by war, would be maintained for nearly two decades. The England batsman Charlie Barnett, a former public schoolboy who played as a professional for Gloucestershire and didn’t always see eye to eye with Hammond, claimed later that his desire to lead his country was piqued by Australia awarding the captaincy to Bradman in 1936.

  As Hammond matured so his batting changed and, like Hobbs in 1919, he felt compelled to remodel his game. Gone were the more punitive strokes of his youth: he dispensed with the hook altogether and played more within himself, prepared to bide his time, to score as much off the back foot as he had once done off the front. It was a move attributable in part perhaps to his relentless and obsessive pursuit of Bradman. In the opinion of Neville Cardus he became a more calculating, thinking batsman, one who had ‘put romance behind him’, though not of course the grandeur. Above all things, Hammond remained the supreme stylist.

  It was to England’s finest, and now captain, that the public turned during those troubled summer days of 1938 to provide some welcome distraction from the deafening headlines and threat of another war in Europe. And, anyway, the Australians were touring.

  If the Test game of the 1930s was dominated by the battle for supremacy between its two pre-eminent batsmen, it was also a time of growth when the world of cricket spread its wings, extended its boundaries and broadened its horizons. West Indies, New Zealand and India, having joined England, Australia and South Africa in the magic circle of Test-playing nations, each toured Britain twice during the decade, influencing a shimmering new era of international cricket. To the names of Bradman and Hammond during the late thirties could be added those of Len Hutton, Denis Compton, George Headley, Learie Constantine, Stan McCabe, Bruce Mitchell, Dudley Nourse, Les Ames, ‘Tiger’ O’Reilly, ‘Chuck’ Fleetwood-Smith and Hed
ley Verity. Test matches in England were usually scheduled over three days (unless the Ashes were at stake, when four was the standard) and played infrequently enough to sustain their popularity and freshness in the face of growing competition from other sports. Even the game between MCC and the Australians at Lord’s, played in May of 1938, drew a crowd of 32,000 on the opening day, and the gates had to be closed by early afternoon.

  But it was not only cricket that flourished in England. In 1934 the professional golfer Henry Cotton (whose first love just happened to be cricket) ended almost ten years of American hegemony by winning The Open at Royal St George’s; he repeated the trick in 1937 and again in 1948. Fred Perry, meanwhile, claimed three consecutive Wimbledon singles titles between 1934–36, confirming his status as the No. 1 player in the world and reviving in the process the good name of British sport. Worcestershire’s Dorothy Round kept him company, winning the women’s title in 1934 and 1937. In football, Stoke City’s Stanley Matthews earned the sobriquets ‘The Magician’ and ‘The Wizard of Dribble’, and centre-forwards Tommy Lawton and Ted Drake, of Everton and Arsenal respectively, knocked in goals for fun – the latter frequently profiting from the trickery and unerring left foot of Denis Compton. The man who would become the most dazzling batsman of his generation was also fêted as the best outside-left in England, his sorcery often compared to that of Matthews.

  The thirties were not always so promising, however. Britain’s decade had started under the grim shadow of the Depression, or the Great Slump as it was known, when unemployment ran as high as 2.5 million by the summer of 1932. Cricket was not immune to the crisis, though most county professionals could count themselves profoundly fortunate that, unlike many of their fellow workers, they still drew a wage. Some counties, such as Worcestershire, felt the pinch more than others and had to resort to fund-raising appeals. But at a cost of a shilling (or sixpence after the tea interval) county cricket was cheap to watch and, in the words of Gerald Howat, remained ‘a pleasant way to while away the hours of enforced idleness’.

  The economic recovery was at least swift and, despite the fact that the industrial north of England and much of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland were still overwhelmed by a dire shortage of jobs and food, the Chancellor Neville Chamberlain felt sufficiently confident in 1934 to inform the Commons: ‘We have finished the story of Bleak House, and are sitting down this afternoon to the first chapter of Great Expectations.’ And so began the age of ‘the pictures’ and matinée idols, the aviation and the automobile industries – when Humbers, baby Austins and the ‘bullnose’ Morris took to the roads – of television, swing jazz, Art Deco wireless sets, the Lambeth Walk, washing machines, Littlewoods football pools, greyhound racing, Billy Butlin’s holiday camps, flannel ‘bags’, Bakelite sunglasses, and the long shadow of war.

  Don Bradman’s Australians docked at Southampton on 20 April for what turned out to be the last Ashes series for eight years. It was Bradman’s third tour of England and, in another bravura display of batsmanship, he not only passed 1,000 runs before the end of May, for the second time, but registered centuries in three of the Test matches in which he went to the wicket – at Trent Bridge, Lord’s and Leeds – to become the first man to average over a hundred in an English season. The third Test at Old Trafford was washed away without a ball being bowled, while an injury prevented him from batting in either innings at The Oval.

  At Trent Bridge in Hammond’s first match as captain, played on what many regarded as the most perfect batting wicket they had seen, records tumbled: England exceeded their highest total against Australia, reaching 658 for eight declared, and Lancashire’s Eddie Paynter struck an unbeaten 216, the best score by an Englishman against Australia in England – a record that would stand for barely two weeks. There were centuries, too, for Hutton and Compton on their Ashes debuts. When Australia batted Stan McCabe eclipsed them all with 232, an innings so exhilarating that Bradman ordered all his players onto the balcony to watch, insisting that they might never again see an exhibition of such power and presence. He was eventually dismissed by Hedley Verity, though Hammond’s reluctance to give his premier spinner no more than seven overs while McCabe had been in full flow drew some stinging criticism in the newspapers. England’s new captain enforced the follow-on, but the obligatory Bradman century – ‘the hardest of his career’, according to one reporter – saved the game. The second Test, at Lord’s, also made history when it became the first to be televised live.

  Television had flickered into life in 1936, and the BBC’s outside broadcast cameras had already been present at the Boat Race and at Wembley for the FA Cup Final of April 1938. The Cup Final was contested between Huddersfield Town and Preston North End, who included a young Scottish wing-half by the name of Bill Shankly, and watched by a crowd of 93,497. It was a game of northern grit and heft, and would be remembered primarily for commentator Thomas Woodrooffe’s infamous gaffe in the closing moments. The scores were deadlocked at 0–0 after 29 minutes of extra-time when an exasperated Woodrooffe informed the viewers in his brisk, clipped tones: ‘If there’s a goal scored now, I’ll eat my hat.’ Seconds later George Mutch was flattened in the box; Preston were awarded a penalty and the inside-forward climbed slowly to his feet to drill the ball in off the underside of the bar3.

  Initially, there had been concerns that television coverage at Lord’s might reduce the attendance figures but they proved unfounded. Only 5,000 people owned a television set in 1938, while millions more lived too far from the transmitter at Alexandra Palace in north London for it to matter, and the spectators streamed through the turnstiles in their thousands. Thousands more had to be locked out of the ground. ‘This was Lord’s in June, with London spread around us,’ Neville Cardus lovingly observed in the Manchester Guardian. ‘If Hitler could have looked upon the scene probably he would have said, “Still kicking the cricket ball about.”’ And there was something else to stir Cardus’s imagination: ‘Gaunt contraptions reared to the heavens, devices of television, broadcasting.’

  When Hammond walked to the wicket on the first morning with England 20 for two, soon to be followed by 31 for three, the huge crowd might have feared the worst. But by the close he was 210 not out, and any concerns that his scoring powers would be affected by the burden of captaincy had been conclusively erased. He added a further 30 runs in 32 minutes the following morning in front of a record Lord’s crowd of almost 34,000, before losing his leg stump to the fast bowler, Ernie McCormick. Hammond had spent six hours at the crease in all, and the crowd stood and cheered him all the way back to the pavilion. It was his crowning moment, ‘a throne-room innings’, as Cardus soliloquised, when ‘more handsome cricket could not be imagined’. For once even Bradman was upstaged but, frustratingly for England, the game ended in another draw.

  By the time the sides reached The Oval for the fifth Test in late August (where the television cameras were once again in place), Australia had retained the Ashes, triumphing by five wickets amidst the pinballing emotions and rolling thunderclouds of Headingley. Bradman remembered the fourth Test as ‘the greatest of modern times’, and for ‘the darkest [conditions] in which I have ever batted’. More extraordinarily, he recorded his sixth century in successive Tests, and was rivalled blow for blow, ball for ball by ‘Tiger’ O’Reilly, who spun his leg-breaks venomously and was the catalyst for a spectacular England collapse in which nine second-innings wickets fell for 63 runs, including that of Hammond. The cheers for the England captain’s arrival at the wicket had died almost instantaneously after he turned his first ball, a quick googly from O’Reilly, to short-leg and was caught low down and one-handed by Bill Brown; with his departure went the Ashes. The series, however, still remained alive and, as England had a chance to square the rubber in the final Test of the summer, the timeless option was brought into play at The Oval.

  It soon became known as ‘Hutton’s match’. Hammond won the toss for the fourth time in a row and the 22-year-old opening batsman occup
ied the crease for nearly 14 hours, compiling an astonishing 364, before his captain finally called a halt at 903 for seven on the third day. For the third time that summer the palm for the highest individual score by an Englishman against Australia in England changed hands. Hutton claimed later he received no specific instructions from Hammond on how to pace his innings, though he recalled that after driving O’Reilly over mid-on, having reached 140, the England captain appeared on the players’ balcony and ‘quickly made clear my role to me, signalling his orders to cool it. I wouldn’t be permitted any attacking luxuries’.

  Hammond declared only after injuries to Bradman – who fractured his shin bone while bowling his occasional leg-breaks – and Jack Fingleton, with a severely strained leg muscle, had reduced the tourists to nine batsmen. The naturally suspicious Hammond even sought medical advice to confirm that Bradman was unfit to bat. Otherwise he might have been tempted to exceed a thousand runs on a wicket that The Oval groundsman, ‘Bosser’ Martin, had boasted would ‘last until Christmas’. Some clever wag even attempted to calculate what effects snow might have had on the surface. In the end the match did not even scrape into a fifth day, despite Martin’s pluperfect pitch.

  Hutton, 160 not out at the close on Saturday, spent the rest day relaxing by playing beach cricket at Bognor Regis in the company of his Yorkshire soulmate and ‘faithful ally’, Hedley Verity. When play resumed he simply carried on where he had left off, calmly ticking off the records as he went: Hammond’s 240 at Lord’s, R. E. Foster’s 287 at Sydney in 1903, Bradman’s 304 at Leeds in 1934, Andy Sandham’s 325 against West Indies in Kingston, Bradman’s 334 in 1930, again at Leeds (an innings Hutton had watched spellbound as a 14-year-old schoolboy), and Hammond’s 336 against New Zealand at Auckland in 1932. All were surpassed.