by John Lazenby
Like Nourse, Mitchell experienced a somewhat unconventional introduction to cricket but one that was no less inspiring. He learned to bat on a dust-covered road next to the vacant lots of a Johannesburg gold mine, surrounded by its vast mountains of excavated earth. There, he faced the bowling of his elder sister with just a tin can for a wicket, the back garden of the family cottage being too small for the purposes of cricket. At the age of six he was spotted by the former South African wicketkeeper E. A. Halliwell, who boldly predicted that he would play for his country before he reached 20. Halliwell was only five months out with his prophecy: Mitchell made his Test debut in June 1929 at Birmingham, scoring 88 and an unbeaten 61 against an England attack that boasted the likes of Harold Larwood and Maurice Tate.
That his sister was the most profound influence on his formative years, however, is not in doubt; he could not have had a more proficient teacher. Talented enough to earn a place in the women’s XI at the Wanderers Club as a more than handy bat, she also impressed on her brother the qualities of sportsmanship for which he later became so admired. What he didn’t learn about batting from his sister he gleaned from a book, and not just any book: it was the first he owned and was written by the batting idol of the day, Jack Hobbs. As Duffus remarked: ‘If it were possible to point to one batsman after whom Mitchell modelled his style, for he has many strokes peculiarly his own, then that batsman would be Jack Hobbs. When he is not wholly on defence, Mitchell exalts the craft of batsmanship.’
If so he kept it well hidden on this occasion, and though South Africa were now in complete command, neither he nor Van der Bijl showed any inclination to force the pace or chance their arm. Instead they stuck rigidly to the script of dragging out England’s pain for as long as they could, and continued to grind remorselessly on. Duffus calculated that after tea, with the lead steadily mounting towards 400 and the faster bowlers unable to raise a gallop, ‘the time was ripe to thrash the tired attack’. In the final analysis it would appear that this was one of several missed opportunities by both sides to irrevocably alter the course of the game, or to send the equivalent of a thousand volts surging through it. Unfortunately, the mindset that dictates a team must score as many runs as possible to win a timeless Test, no matter how slowly, too often exerted a numbing effect on the majority of the batsmen – the venturesome Ames and Valentine apart. Certainly, the rattle of three quick wickets shortly before the close might have given Van der Bijl and Mitchell cause to regret their dilatory approach.
The pair had nudged South Africa’s lead over 400, topping an aggregate of a thousand runs for the match in the process, when Mitchell trod on his stumps, executing a back-foot drive off Verity having made 89 out of an opening partnership of 191. After almost four hours without a wicket it was a rare moment of delight and relief for England; and, as so often happens after ending a long stand, they proceeded to capture two more in quick succession. Doug Wright, interviewed about the match 43 years later, referred to it as an extraordinary passage of play: ‘Most people were probably dozing in the evening sun, perhaps thinking of returning home, when suddenly it all happened . . .’
The next man in, Rowan, appeared and disappeared in the space of three balls, subtly deceived by a slower delivery from Verity, before Wright himself removed Van der Bijl in the next over without addition to the score – three runs short of becoming the first South African to make two hundreds in a Test. At the start of the over Wright had served up a full toss that just begged to be clattered to the boundary. Nourse, who was batting at the other end, recalled that, ‘Van der Bijl was so astonished at the sight of a full toss coming at him that he did not know what to do with it. He patted it back instead. Two balls later, he was caught at short square-leg trying to do what he should have done to the full toss.’ Paynter was the fielder and threw the ball high into the air, hardly able to believe his luck. Van der Bijl had batted for 230 minutes and struck seven fours, but missed out on the one that mattered. South Africa plunged from 191-0 to 191-3 in the space of barely two overs. ‘No doubt Van der Bijl will remember that unpunished full toss as long as he lives,’ Duffus reflected.
England and Wright might have bagged another before the close but Hammond, fielding at mid-off, could not cling on to a drive of bludgeoning power from Nourse that streaked towards him out of the evening shadows.
South Africa: 530 & 193-3 (Van der Bijl 97, Mitchell 89) lead England (316) by 407 runs.
Day six: Thursday, 9 March
Ironically, after that late flurry of wickets, South Africa made what was their most assertive start of the game when play resumed on the sixth day. Already trailing by a monstrous 407 runs, and with the prospect of more to come, England found themselves in the desperate position of having to amass a record fourth-innings score to win the match. Although they held the record for the highest last-innings total in a Test at that time – 411 against Australia at Sydney in 1924 – it had been mustered in a losing cause. Melville could not have put it any better when he said, ‘If England can win, I am ready to congratulate them on cricket’s greatest feat ever.’
The overnight pair, Nourse and Viljoen, were swiftly into their stride, setting a tempo that never slackened on a ‘gruelling hot day with the heavy humid atmosphere typical of a Durban summer’. There was another small crowd in, no more than between 300 or 400, Duffus estimated. The players had become used to the smattering of spectators who attended those often eerily quiet pre-lunch sessions. ‘Despite the fact that the match was considered to have become dreadfully dull, there were always five or six thousand present by the afternoon,’ the journalist reiterated. Happily, he continued, the verdict of most Durbanites was not reflected in the rest of the country; the distance seemed to lend the timeless Test an appeal all of its own:
For those who watched the game day after day, it was at times a wearisome affair, but to the thousands of people all over Southern Africa who heard or read the scores in intervals, through broadcasts, newspapers or word passed hourly through countless city offices, it was the most absorbing match of all. In Johannesburg, or in Cape Town a thousand miles away, there was much more enthusiasm than round the field at Durban.
Viljoen tucked away the first ball of the morning, bowled by Wright, for a comfortable single, and Nourse drilled the second to the boundary with a rasping square-cut; he then pulled the eighth so ferociously to the fence that it caused Edrich to duck hurriedly to the ground at short-leg, the Kent leg-spinner opening with his familiar medley of long-hops and unplayable deliveries. When Farnes, back at full bore after his brief guise as a medium-paced trundler the previous day, dug one in short at Nourse, it received the same treatment: a thunderous hook struck the fence with such explosive force that Pollock reported he half-expected to see it disintegrate in a shower of sparks. Jackie McGlew wrote of Nourse that, because his follow-through was negligible and his backswing so short, ‘spectators were often amazed at the speed with which the ball would rocket to the boundary’. With 34 added in the first half-hour, South Africa had regained the initiative and England’s predicament appeared more forlorn with every run.
Nourse was in his element but, having put on a rapid 51 with Viljoen, he allowed exuberance to get the better of him. In attempting to repeat the hook off Farnes, he mistimed the shot, sending the ball high into the air but at no great distance, and Hutton completed the catch close to the wicket. Nourse’s departure for 25 did nothing to stem the flow of runs, however. Melville looked in some discomfort with his injured leg but did not consider himself inconvenienced enough to use a runner, and was soon threading the ball through the gaps and leaning into some silky cover-drives.
After lunch, with the Springboks having increased their lead to 506, Perks pretended to crawl back to the field on his hands and knees, much to the amusement of the few hundred spectators. England finally separated Melville and Viljoen – who rivalled each other for timing and elegance during a stand of 104 – when the latter, having made 74, played on to a ball from Perks
, whose ability to hurry the batsman even on this wicket was no mean achievement. Despite the immensity of the task confronting the tourists, they never veered from the high standard they set for themselves in the field, a couple of fumbled catches aside. Ames was as polished as ever behind the stumps and the pace and determination at which Paynter chased the ball in the deep, the accuracy and length of his throwing, astonished the spectators. ‘Their morale was amazing,’ Duffus acknowledged.
They had also been in the field since before lunch on the previous day and, when Dalton walked out to replace Viljoen at 346 for five, it was to be greeted by the sight of all 11 fielders, and one of the umpires, sitting or sprawled full-length on the grass. Dalton contributed a breezy 21 that included a six onto the grandstand roof off Wright, giving the players another welcome excuse to flop down on the turf. ‘The field had a nice sit-down,’ Pollock reported, ‘until some busybody retrieved the ball and made them all get up again.’
Hammond made his 25th bowling change of the game when he whistled up Hutton for an over of leg-spin, before Wright disposed of Dalton soon after with an agile catch off his own bowling, plucking a crunching straight drive off his bootlaces. Moments later Verity was convinced he had snaffled another when he bowled a ball that appeared to graze Grieveson’s bat before lodging in Ames’s pads. So convinced that he had got his man, in fact, he appealed not once but three times. At the third time of asking, Verity turned to the umpire and said, ‘I’m appealing for a catch at the wicket,’ and for the third time the umpire informed the bowler, ‘Not out.’ The rules state: ‘The striker is out if the ball is “hugged to the body of the catcher”, even though he has not touched it with his hands. Should the ball lodge in the fieldsman’s clothing, or in the top of the wicketkeeper’s pads, this will amount to its being “hugged to the body of the catcher”.’
Verity’s quiet manner of appealing was as much a feature of his cricket as his high classical action, variety of pace, unwavering line and length and easy seven-pace run-up. It was said that his appeals were so quiet that ‘only the umpire and batsman at his end could hear him’. His fellow Yorkshireman, the fast-medium Bill Bowes, remembered his ‘nice enquiry’, adding, ‘He didn’t scream his head off or throw his arms up, like some of us did.’ Hutton wrote of him, ‘there was no sharp practice’, while Jack Fingleton recalled that his appeals made ‘with fingers cupped to mouth’ were invariably followed by a wry smile and a wink to the batsman. It was rare for Verity – the most phlegmatic and fair-minded of men – to display even the slightest emotion on the field, let alone to appeal three times in the same breath. Equally, he would not let the incident rankle; he returned briskly to his mark, eager to complete the job in hand, there were four more wickets still to take.
Hammond, just as the England captains Douglas Jardine, Bob Wyatt and ‘Gubby’ Allen had done before him, knew exactly what to expect every time he threw Verity the ball: artistry, accuracy, reliability and imperturbability. But he was more than just the patient pivot of England’s attack. He was, as his Australian spin rival ‘Tiger’ O’Reilly described him, ‘the essence of a team man’. There was not a young player, either on tour with England or at Yorkshire, who did not benefit from his encouragement and generosity of spirit. Hutton, whose admiration for Verity knew no bounds, said, ‘Hedley was always willing to come out and bowl at me in the nets for ten minutes . . . Nothing seemed too much trouble for him.’ Hugh Bartlett told the author Alan Hill how he ‘took him under his wing’ during those early days on tour in South Africa, and was always passing on tips to help him improve his batting: ‘Hedley was a marvellous, steadying influence on people.’ There was about him a calming presence and quiet wisdom – ‘his natural dignity’, Hutton called it – all the qualities that would make him such an outstanding officer when the time came, as Verity knew it would.
In fact, the threat of war and the quickening beat of martial drums were as much a part of the timeless Test as every run scored and every wicket taken. The inevitable chatter about war among spectators, interspersed with the shrill cries of the newspaper boys, did not go unnoticed out in the middle and provided a constant accompaniment to the sounds of the cricket. The England players listened to the latest news bulletins and voraciously consumed every newspaper they could lay their hands on, though they did not make for comfortable reading. Thousands of air-raid shelters had already been delivered to homes throughout Britain, solidifying the players’ view that war was inevitable. The civic defence of London and the recruitment and training of ARP wardens had been under way for months; the expression ‘war effort’ was much in use; the plans for the evacuation of a million or more children from the capital were in readiness.
The snail’s pace of the cricket contrasted graphically with the terrifying speed in which events were unfolding some 5,000 miles away, highlighting the absurdity and the futility of the timeless Test. The words ‘unreal’ and ‘dreamlike’ were often used by the players in the coming days and weeks, and it wasn’t difficult to see why. At times it felt as if they were operating in a vacuum or, at worst, as if they were perpetuating a charade – one that was no nearer reaching a conclusion, despite having entered its sixth day.
After his early scare against Verity, Grieveson spent a tiresome 40 minutes attempting to get off the mark but stuck with his captain while he kept the scoreboard ticking over at the other end. When South Africa reached tea on 387 for six they had accumulated a lead of 601, and were for all intents and purposes out of sight. England re-emerged for the final session with Gibb wearing the gloves. Ames, whose work behind the stumps was a triumph of sustained focus and skill, conceding only six byes while South Africa hoarded 917 runs, took a well-deserved rest in the outfield.
During this time Melville advanced swiftly through the nineties, striking three effortless boundaries in an over off Wright, and reached a maiden Test century in 199 minutes with what was described as ‘a storm of cheering’ from some 3,000 spectators. It took an exceptional ball to dismiss him, and Farnes produced it, trimming his off stump with a fast outswinger to end a graceful and commanding innings of 103. Bowling flat out Farnes then rounded up the tail, having Langton magnificently caught at slip by Hammond – who proved that almost two days of unremitting concentration in the field had not dulled his reflexes – and flattened the leg stump of the obdurate Grieveson for 39.
The Springboks were all out for 481, leaving England with ‘a mere 696 to win the match’, as Paynter put it, though it is possible he phrased it somewhat more colourfully than that. Verity bowled 766 balls in all – 17 more than Somerset’s Jack White, another left-arm spinner, managed against Australia at Adelaide in 1929 – to return the remarkable match figures of 95.6-23-184-4. Farnes’s second-inning’s efforts were rewarded with a highly respectable four for 74 from 22.1 overs.
South Africa: 481 (Melville 103, Van der Bijl 97, Mitchell 89, Viljoen 74; Farnes 4-74).
England still had a potentially nerve-jangling five minutes to negotiate before the close, but faced only one ball, from Newson, after Hutton’s appeal against the fading light was upheld. For the sixth evening in succession the stumps were pulled early and England’s opening pair could not get off the field fast enough, almost as if they feared that the umpires might suddenly change their minds.
England: 316 & 0-0 need 696 runs to beat South Africa: 530 & 481.
Six
The Long Reply
‘If it was batting they wanted, we were a batting side’ – Walter Hammond
Day seven: Friday, 10 March
It was a week since Hammond led England on to the Kingsmead pitch for the start of the timeless Test, with what Duffus remembered as ‘a fresh ambitious spirit’; a week, 1,327 runs and 30 wickets, since Farnes bowled the first ball to Van der Bijl on a sunlit morning, before a noisy and expectant crowd of several thousand. Now, on the second Friday of the match, it was muggy and overcast with the threat of thunder and, though admission fees had been waived for the rest of the gam
e (it appeared that even the officials had all but washed their hands of it), there were still precious few spectators. A Test that was supposed to have lasted only five days had spectacularly surpassed all expectations in terms of its longevity, aided and abetted by a pitch that, in the words of Pollock, refused ‘to grow old gracefully’. The Natal Mercury, attempting to drum up any last vestiges of interest, offered a cash prize of five guineas to the reader who could correctly predict its date of completion. When Hutton and Gibb returned to the middle to embark on ‘England’s hopeless task’, as one South African newspaper triumphantly headlined it, there were no more than a hundred or so regulars occupying their favourite seats – all of whom were content only for the match to run and run.
That morning before the start of play the England side had taken their usual stroll from their hotel to the ground. ‘By now we not only knew the way but many of the shop-keepers and people living on the route. After all, it was the seventh day,’ Wright recalled. ‘A fair amount of good-humoured banter passed between us regarding the 696 runs we needed. No one gave us the slightest chance.’ Yet England remained undaunted; they were not a side easily demoralised or deflated. How could they be anything other when they possessed strokemakers of such dazzling fluency and attacking disposition as Hammond, Ames, Hutton, Paynter and Valentine? Tired as they were, they were determined to back themselves in the face of such seemingly insuperable odds. As Wisden remarked: ‘Few people imagined they had a ghost of a chance of averting defeat, much less of scoring such a colossal total.’