by John Lazenby
Melville was content to pick up the occasional single and, aside from a confident appeal by Ames for a catch behind off Perks early in his innings, appeared his usual sedate self, batting stylishly but within himself. Van der Bijl, though, was intent only on survival and it would take him 45 agonising minutes to get off the mark, at which point Melville had moved his score to 19. ‘Mostly, Van der Bijl just stopped the ball with a bat so dead that it had hardly strength to trickle as far as the close-set fielders,’ Pollock wrote. Six runs were scored in the first 25 minutes and Edrich, one of the close fielders, claimed that the pair started so passively it was ‘as if they had eternity before them’.
It was left to Farnes to fire the opening salvo of the timeless Test. Pounding the ball in at just short of a length on leg stump, and using his height and brute strength to detonate lift and life from the wicket – no mean feat in itself – he repeatedly peppered Van der Bijl about the body. The sturdy Perks quickly followed his example and he was soon commanding as much respect as Farnes in terms of pace. During this period barely a ball went by without leather striking flesh or the batsman taking evasive action before the missile smacked with a satisfying thud into Ames’s gloves – the wicketkeeper and slips positioned almost equidistant to the stumps and the boundary. Melville did not escape the barrage, and was doubled up by a ball from Farnes that struck him in the chest after he missed with an attempted pull. But it was Van der Bijl who bore the brunt. ‘Once, he left the field to stuff more padding into his trousers,’ Duffus wrote, ‘and on his return was immediately hit on the same place.’ Pollock even wondered if it was not his own fault: ‘He takes guard on the leg stump, and as the ball comes up, moves across to the off stump, leaving the bowlers no stumps in view.’
It was a torrid passage of play and a vivid re-enactment of the 1932 Varsity match, when Farnes subjected Van der Bijl to a similar ordeal by fire. On that occasion, Swanton recalled, the Oxford boxing blue ‘was not nearly nimble enough on his feet to avoid a man of Farnes’s pace “digging them in”, and I can hear now the bull-like bellows that echoed round Lord’s as he took the ball on various portions of his anatomy’. Seven years later Van der Bijl appeared no more nimble on his feet but, acutely aware of his limitations, often allowed the ball to strike him on the body, thereby eliminating the risk of deflecting it to the close fielders or edging a catch behind. What he lacked in technique and dexterity he more than made up for in courage and concentration. Paynter commented later that Van der Bijl was hit several times just below the heart by Farnes. In the words of one South African player, he took his blows uncomplainingly, ‘risking personal injury rather than his wicket’; though as Duffus, who was unable to resist the boxing analogy, admitted, he was struck so frequently it made for painful watching:
He designed his innings as he might a heavyweight title fight. In the first round – early in the morning – he was forced into a corner and took untold punishment. He became the fast bowlers’ punching bag. As Farnes and Perks attempted to wrest kick from the wicket by dropping the ball short, he was smitten hip and thigh without flinching. He played with a blind, stubborn courage. Time and time again it seemed possible for him to avoid injury without endangering his wicket, but he took blow after blow on the body, and the bowlers played on his weakness.
For Hutton and Edrich, crouching in their short-leg positions, it might have revived memories of Farnes’s bowling in the Gentlemen’s versus Players match, on another docile wicket, at Lord’s eight months earlier. Both men recorded that it was the quickest they faced in their careers. Edrich was struck on the head via his glove by a ball that flew viciously from short of a length. ‘The ball jumped like lightning straight at my eyes. I tried to play back, a defensive stroke, while turning my head and lifting my hands.’ When he came to, it was to be told he had been caught in the gully. Farnes was smarting after being dropped by England following one of his notoriously erratic performances in the second Test against Australia at Lord’s and, according to Edrich, he had been ‘like a tiger at feeding time’. Hutton managed a half-century that day but believed they were runs as hard-earned as any he scored, before he too fell to Farnes: ‘I felt I was at the wrong end of a shooting gallery. He pitched just short of a length and had the pace and height to make the ball rear spitefully and alarmingly at head height. I find it impossible to think bodyline could have been more frightening and intimidating.’
That Farnes was England’s strongman was not in doubt – whether it was flogging life out of a dead pitch, or lifting a two hundredweight gold brick with one hand on a visit to the West Rand Consolidated mine in Johannesburg (to the astonishment of his team-mates). ‘I had heard a rumour that if you could pick up one of these bricks with one hand you would be considered entitled to have it,’ Farnes remembered. ‘I managed to do so, but waited in vain for the authorities to say, “Right! It’s yours!”’2 A fitness fanatic, Farnes obviously prided himself on his strength and physical appearance. According to his biographer, David Thurlow, he had taken a Mr Universe-style bodybuilding course earlier in his career and was not averse (usually after some gentle coaxing) to showing off his stomach muscles in the dressing-room. There had also been a brief fling with shot putting during his days at Cambridge, and he once threw an impressive personal best of just over 42 feet.
Somehow Van der Bijl and Melville survived the onslaught to take South Africa safely through to lunch, despite managing only 49 runs in 105 minutes. Even the Farnes storm temporarily blew itself out and, when Hammond summoned him back into the attack for a short burst just before the interval against the breeze, he was noticeably down on pace. Melville cut him for two and then drove him elegantly through the covers for three. It was the nearest the Springboks came to a boundary all morning.
Van der Bijl resumed his innings after the interval having padded his body with towels for protection, but his travails continued when a snorter of a ball from Perks cracked him on the elbow. Pollock reported that the blow ‘caused him to holler’; Duffus that ‘he held his arm out stiffly and sank to his knees’, staying there for several anxious moments before the pain subsided. Farnes, well rested after lunch, persisted in testing out the middle of the wicket and again the opener was pummelled about the body. The umpires, if they deemed it necessary, could have intervened at this point. The rules in 1939 stated that a bowler could be warned or removed from the attack for ‘the persistent and systematic use of fast short-pitched bowling’. Perhaps they didn’t feel Farnes had strayed beyond the bounds of legality, or perhaps they concluded that much of Van der Bijl’s troubles were self-inflicted.
Nourse, watching from his ringside seat on the players’ balcony, recounted that on at least one occasion he heard the batsman call to the bowler, ‘Cut it out, Ken’, but added, ‘Farnes would just grin at him and deliver another in the same spot.’ Described by Nourse as ‘a soul of patience and forbearance’, it was as close as Van der Bijl came to raising a protest during his innings, and even then he made it almost apologetically.
Despite this, runs came more freely and 24 were added in half an hour after lunch on the ‘slow-motion scoreboard’. Finally, Melville produced the first shot in anger – 135 minutes since the start of play – latching on to a no-ball from Perks and pulling it handsomely to the fine-leg fence. The long wait was over, and Melville followed it by completing his half-century in 152 minutes of fierce concentration; Van der Bijl was not even halfway to his. The captain celebrated with a flourish of boundaries off Wright, Verity and Hammond (who continued to under-bowl himself), before posting the century stand with an on-drive to the ropes off Verity, who was at his most parsimonious having earlier bowled a spell of nine overs for eight runs.
When England did get the sniff of a chance, after a midwicket mix-up between Melville and Van der Bijl, Paynter – normally the most reliable of fieldsman, with a slingshot throw – shied wildly at the stumps from the covers and the opportunity went begging. As if to rub it in Van der Bijl played his first telli
ng stroke in more than three hours at the wicket, straight-driving Verity for four, a shot that was greeted with a roar from the burgeoning crowd. Hammond instantly beckoned Farnes back into the attack, only for Van der Bijl to guide his nemesis to the rails with the most delicate of strokes.
Just when Hammond was starting to wonder where the first wicket might come from, Wright surprised Melville with a ball of extra pace. It was an unlucky end for the captain, though the bowler undoubtedly played his part in it. Wright operated off a springy 15-yard approach to the wicket, involving several hops, skips and jumps (he took a longer run than Farnes) and, with his high, windmilling action, was appreciably faster than other leg-spinners. The Australian journalist and author Ray Robinson memorably described his run-up as looking like ‘a cross between a barn dance and a delivery stride’; while Wisden noted that even his stock ball had a rare fizz to it. Melville was forced back onto his stumps by a delivery that nipped onto him quicker than he expected and, in attempting to pull it to the boundary, dislodged the bails with one of his pad straps. He was given out hit wicket, having made 78 out of 131 in 200 minutes with five fours.
Nonetheless, it was the start the Springboks had craved and their highest opening stand of the series. ‘There was no undue hurry about runs. There was all the time we wanted available and the longer we stayed there the sooner the wicket would begin to wear,’ Nourse explained. ‘These were the obvious tactics to employ and it would make England’s task all the more difficult.’
Melville’s dismissal brought Eric Rowan to the wicket, a chirpy, garrulous cricketer who liked to keep up a running conversation with the fielders. Jack Fingleton remembered him as a batsman who would talk to anyone within earshot ‘on the particular merits and demerits of the ball bowled, the stroke played, the good or bad fortunes of affairs, the health of the in-fieldsmen’s families and so on’. Duffus, while recognising that Rowan could be a remarkable batsman on his day, also described him as ‘sometimes exasperating’ and believed his success was founded on ‘70 per cent cocksureness and 30 per cent technique’. His presence appeared to have a liberating effect on Van der Bijl, however. For, no sooner had he arrived at the wicket, than the opener brought up his 50 in 210 minutes with a driven four off Wright. He then proceeded to slip spectacularly out of character by hitting five boundaries off the bowler’s next seven deliveries.
A little later he transformed again, this time depositing a ball from Wright on to the roof of the grandstand, with what Pollock described as ‘the power of a giant’. But he soon reverted to type, struggling through the 90s, when he might have been dismissed on any of three occasions, before finally reaching his century in four hours and 47 minutes with a deflection to leg off Farnes. Some of the spectators, Duffus wrote, threw their hats into the air in tribute and promptly lost them on the breeze. Van der Bijl had offered only one clear-cut chance, on 70, Wright failing to hold on to a stinging drive off his own bowling.
‘For the purposes of timeless Test cricket, it was a valuable innings,’ Pollock reported. ‘But except during two or three patches, when he seemed to think he had earned a little fun, it was burdensome.’ Duffus debated whether a South African Test century had ever been scored ‘with such a contrasting mixture of defiance and defence, or consummated in such physical discomfort’, and praised him for his staunch endurance. ‘It was an innings of painstaking defence enriched by vividly contrasting passages of attack.’
The second-wicket pair had contributed 88 in as many minutes when the unflagging Perks captured his first Test wicket, pinning Rowan in front of his stumps with a full-length ball for 33. The Transvaaler had played his part in wearing down the bowlers, and the sight of Mitchell walking out to join Van der Bijl would have done little to improve the confidence of the fielding side. But only a further ten runs were added before bad light ended play ten minutes early, with the score at 229 for two. Van der Bijl, battered and bruised after batting for almost five and a half hours, was on 105, and South Africa had reached base camp on the long climb to a mountain of runs.
South Africa: 229-2 (Van der Bijl 105no, Melville 78).
Day two: Saturday, 4 March
There was no change in the Springboks’ tactics the following morning on another hot, breezy day as they continued their ascent – except that the runs came at an even slower rate. In an unusual move by Hammond, Farnes opened proceedings by bowling to Van der Bijl with only one fielder, Hutton, in front of the batting crease. The ploy was for Farnes to bowl just wide of off stump in the hope that Van der Bijl would be tempted to drive him through the vacant spaces and, in so doing, edge a catch behind. But the opener refused to bite and took the obligatory battering in the process. England did not have to wait long for the first wicket of the day, though. Wright’s ability to conjure the shock delivery paid off for the second time in the match when he bowled Mitchell for 11 with a ball that flicked his pad. But even the new man in, the brawny, hard-hitting Nourse, was content to suppress his naturally attacking instincts for the cause, and for a while the runs dried up completely.
With little for the spectators to cheer, there was at least some amusement to be had in the running battle between Farnes and Van der Bijl. At one point, after taking a particularly painful blow on the body, Van der Bijl consulted with Hammond and briefly left the field. When he returned, Duffus reported, ‘he appeared much stouter, his waist having been thickened with extra padding’. As there was only a limited form of protection for a batsman at that time – his pads and gloves were often pitifully inadequate against a bowler of Farnes’s extreme pace – and certainly no chest or thigh guard, Van der Bijl had done the next best thing and improvised. But with his very next ball Farnes unerringly struck him on an unprotected part of his leg, causing yet another hold up. The crowd instantly saw the funny side, and the spectacle of the batsman limping and hobbling helplessly about the crease, rubbing his injured leg, was greeted with much mirth and a few choice comments from around the ground.
South Africa proceeded to crawl to lunch, adding only 42 runs to the total, seven fewer than they had managed in the opening session on day one. Pollock, as he so often did, had an expression for it: ‘Cricket with creeping paralysis.’ Increasingly exasperated, he would cable his newspaper later that evening: ‘The South Africans have got this timeless Test all wrong. Evidently they think that the big idea is to stay in as long as you can and score as slowly as you like. They have not thought enough about it. The thing is to get as many runs as possible, preferably as soon as possible. Runs count, not how long the team has batted.’
Things livened up briefly in the afternoon. Verity had been making the ball dip in the breeze but it was Perks, ‘bowling with plenty of fire’, who ended Van der Bijl’s marathon vigil with a delivery that swung in late to defeat the bat and clip the top of the stumps. ‘At long last,’ Pollock wrote. Van der Bijl had occupied the crease for all of seven hours and eight minutes for his 125, an innings that included a six and 11 fours. ‘In spite of his slow play the 11,000 crowd recognised the valuable role he had played and gave him prolonged applause as he returned to the pavilion,’ Duffus noted. After the addition of only four runs, Perks struck again, locating the edge of Ken Viljoen’s bat for Ames to complete a routine catch behind the stumps, reducing South Africa to 278 for five.
However, England’s attempts to make further inroads foundered on the broad blade of Nourse, first in partnership with Dalton – who scored a typically belligerent 57 before becoming Farnes’s only victim of the innings – and then Grieveson. In what was his first Test innings the flame-haired wicketkeeper showed himself to be a more than capable batsman, equally at home against pace or spin. For the second day running play was curtailed by bad light and South Africa went into the rest day on 423 for six, with Nourse 77 and Grieveson 26, their seventh-wicket stand already worth 55. Pollock calculated that the Springboks were some 200 runs behind where they should have been at this stage in the game, and singled out Nourse for his slow batting. ‘O
ne of South Africa’s best stroke players has been pottering and poking about for more than four hours for 77,’ he despaired.
South Africa: 423-6 (Van der Bijl 125, Melville 78, Nourse 77no).
If the Springboks were wearing the broader smiles on the first Sunday of the match, it was not only because of their commanding position in the game. Each man received £5 expenses (worth about £300 today) for each day of the Test, including rest days – an amount that the Daily Express described as ‘not a bad reward at all’. Although it was not anticipated at this stage that the match would extend much beyond Thursday or Friday, the South African amateurs could still expect to be some £40 richer by the end of next week. The weather appeared to be playing into their hands, too.
Day three: Monday, 6 March
It rained heavily on Sunday night, and the conditions were dull and overcast when play got under way again in a light drizzle. Miraculously the pitch was unblemished, as Pollock and Duffus discovered after making their daily inspection of the middle. ‘Overnight rain did no harm to the pitch at all. It ironed out kindly, and looked so good, with the bowlers’ footholds filled in, that it might never have been played upon,’ Pollock remarked. The key to this particular piece of alchemy had been the application of a special ruling that empowered groundsmen in South Africa, Australia and New Zealand to roll a pitch before the start of play any time after rain. The Kingsmead groundsman Vic Robins, by using the heavy roller at dawn, had erased any imperfections and effectively created a new wicket. ‘Good for at least another four days,’ Duffus concluded.
The threatening weather had an effect on the South African batsmen at least, particularly Nourse who was soon batting with greater purpose, pulling a short ball from Wright vigorously to the boundary to move into the 90s. There was not a scintilla of lift or turn to be had for the bowlers and, amidst the first signs that the mood of the game was changing, the impeccable Verity found himself operating to Nourse without a slip. The seventh-wicket pair raised the 100-partnership in 144 minutes and shortly after Nourse completed his second century of the series – the slowest by a South African – having batted for six hours and four minutes, and struck only six boundaries.