by James Philip
The country ground, surrounded by croquet lawns, public playing fields and parks and the local zoo was a relaxed, and again, oddly ‘English’ setting that made some men feel at home, and others recollect their part-buried grief and despair. The coming series finale in Sydney was at once anticipated and dreaded, for afterwards what would a man have to distract him from the wreckage awaiting him back in England?
Colin Cowdrey talked later of his sense that several of his men, friends drawn together in such terrible adversity like men in war – rather than thousands of miles away from it – would fight to the death to the end of the Australian tour but after that, their personal Everests surmounted, they might easily tumble down the other side of the mountain.
He had already decided to ask that Yorkshiremen Phil Sharpe and Jimmy Binks, Warwickshire bowlers Ken Bannister and Tom Cartwright, and batsman Bob Barber, Gloucestershire seamer Tony Brown, Worcestershire left-armer Norman Gifford, and Northamptonshire batsman Roger Prideaux be invited to join the party in New Zealand. While he entertained reasonable doubts that not even the Duke of Norfolk could magic all these men half-way around the World in the present crisis, if any of them reached New Zealand in time he knew they would be employed.
By mid-afternoon MCC were batting. Twenty minutes after tea the tourists raced past the home side’s 117 for the loss of three wickets with Geoff Pullar, exorcising some of the frustrations of his tour to date with unlikely agricultural enthusiasm on his way to a century just before the close, by when MCC had reached 260 for 5. Declaring at 350 for 6 at luncheon on Saturday Cowdrey held back David Larter until, irritated by the resistance of the Country side’s middle order he called upon him to break the log jam. This achieved Tony Lock and Ray Illingworth worked through the rest of the batting and but for an early closure due to bad light, MCC would have won by and innings.
That evening the party jumped on a chartered flight back to Sydney rather than spend another sultry night in the country. The following afternoon MCC returned to Mascot Airport to catch another two hundred mile flight almost due north to Tamworth in the New England North West of New South Wales.
MCC won the match by an innings at the Tamworth No. 1 Oval, an untypically small ground for Australia with short boundaries at a canter in hot, stifling humidity and scampered back to the air conditioning of their Sydney hotel with almost indecent haste at its conclusion.[98]
That Wednesday before the Fifth Test in Sydney was the day that at the request of the Australian Government HMS Ark Royal, the cruiser Belfast and three escorting destroyers departed Sydney Harbour to confront a US Navy task force which had denied a New Zealand frigate[99] free navigation in the Coral Sea west of Nouméa, New Caledonia. This now obscure incident – glossed over in later years, and somewhat overshadowed by hugely more momentous later Anglo-American ‘misunderstandings’ – had arisen out of a request for assistance by the embattled French colonial administration on the island.[100] Suffice it to say that in coming to the assistance of the French the Royal Navy, according to one’s point of view, either caused or defused a flashpoint which might have led to a full-scale shooting war in the South Pacific.
While these war or peace events were playing out over a thousand miles away off the western shores of the island of Grande Terre that, at the time, the attention of the Australian nation was firmly affixed to the drama unfolding at the Sydney Cricket Ground.
Chapter 22 | Fifth Test – Controversy
The wicket Athol Watkins the curator of the Sydney Cricket ground had prepared for the deciding match of the series was what teams expected of a Sydney wicket. On Thursday afternoon the England brains trust had inspected the track with no little suspicion and been relieved by what they had found, especially reassured by its green tinge ahead of its final rolling. The surface was hard and warm to the touch, without obvious blemish albeit the Paddington – north - End gave the impression of being the drier. Typically, the Sydney wicket favoured the bat early on and brought the spinners into the game later.
‘How do you feel about opening?’ Dexter inquired of his vice captain.
Colin Cowdrey hesitated, communicating his mixed feelings to his skipper. He had prospered batting in the middle order after struggling as a makeshift opener at the outset of the tour.
‘Well, I...’
‘The other option would be to ask Illingworth to open with David [Sheppard],’ Dexter had come back. ‘He’s in good form, Peter [Parfitt] is rather in Alan Davidson’s pocket at the moment,’ he went on, thinking aloud.
It was decided.
England needed to win the match to take the series and to reclaim the Ashes; Dexter wanted all the firepower he could muster to take twenty Australian wickets. Weakening – on paper, at least – the batting by playing only five specialists was a gamble but then the England skipper was nothing, if not a sportsman. For all his suave modernity Dexter was a man cut out of the Percy Chapman – and ironically, the Gubby Allen – mould with a little streak of Douglas Jardine thrown in. He wanted to win and if that meant taking risks, so be it.
So it was that Ray Illingworth remained in the side from Adelaide, promoted to open the batting with David Sheppard while Peter Parfitt stepped down and David Larter, his energies undimmed by the bowlers’ graveyard in South Australia returned to the side. England would field five batsmen, Sheppard, Barrington, Dexter, Cowdrey and Graveney; five bowlers, Trueman, Statham, Larter, Lock and Illingworth; and John Murray behind the stumps.
Later some authors claimed that Dexter had wanted an ‘extra’ bowler because he had ‘sprung something’ in his own bowling shoulder at the Manuka Oval in the excitement of bowling to the Don. There may be some truth in this – possibly undermining his reputation as a sporting gambler – since he was to use himself sparingly in the forthcoming Test. The counter to this would be that with five other bowlers – six if one includes Ken Barrington and his leg breaks - to juggle, his bowling services were not really needed. In any event, England went into the Fifth Test with a superbly balanced attack.
Not so the Australians but then Richie Benaud’s calculus was different to Dexter’s. Australia already held the Ashes and although it would be much to be preferred to win the series outright, simply drawing the match would be sufficient to ensure that the Ashes were retained perhaps, in the current circumstances, for many years to come.
Benaud was tempted to bring back fit again Peter Burge in the middle order; eventually he plumped for retaining Barry Shepherd, meaning the eleven was unchanged from Adelaide.
A thing which had blighted many previous overseas tours but not thus far - in the Tests at least - was the variable standard of umpiring. In fact the tourists had been impressed by thirty-four year old South Australian Colin ‘Col’ Egar who had stood in every Test and would be the senior umpire at Sydney. Noting that he ‘gave the batsman’ the benefit of the doubt more often than not, he was meticulously even handed and consistent between the teams; and personable. When a home umpire was ‘trusted’ by a visiting side it was no mean compliment. However, from their previous acquaintance with Egar’s partner at Sydney the tourists’ opinions were less unanimous.
Thirty-seven year old Louis ‘Lou’ Rowan, a police detective on the Queensland drug squad was a less amenable character who – on a bad day - tended to treat cricketers like persons of interest at a crime scene. He had stood in the abbreviated Third Test a month ago and steadfastly ignored half-a-dozen palpably ‘adjacent’ appeals for leg before wicket in the chaos of the two Australian innings. The last couple of such appeals had been waved away with something rather too much like disdain for the Englishmen’s taste. In fact he had not given an Australian batsman out LBW in any of the three matches involving the tourists he had officiated in that season.
The two umpires were both undoubtedly ‘strong characters’; the difference was that Egar seemed to like, and was comfortable socialising with cricketers and Rowan, well, there was always something of the jaundiced policeman in him.
> Losing the toss was not a wholly disastrous start for Ted Dexter’s side. There was still a tinge of green in the wicket and in Fred Trueman and Brian Statham he had the best men in Australia to exploit any early ‘juice’ in the surface.
Bill Lawry, the rock of Adelaide, went early unable to withdraw his bat from a Trueman out swinger and was well taken by Dexter at third slip. Neil Harvey, who had announced that the Fifth Test would be his swansong found the middle of the bat from the outset, countering such movement as there was playing late or shouldering arms. Bobby Simpson was strangely out of sorts at the other end and after an hour it was no surprise that he ‘clothed’ a regulation delivery from Brian Statham to Ray Illingworth at cover.
That was 38 for 2.
However, the morning’s excitement was over and Norm O’Neill played David Larter’s would-be thunderbolts with ease and apparently, all the time in the world, off the back foot.
Australia reached 82 for 2 at the luncheon interval.
Neil Harvey began to play more expansively after the break. The wicket had ‘flattened out’ and the ball was coming onto the bat nicely, enabling both batsmen to play through the line without fear of late movement. The fifty stand came up in the first over of the afternoon, the hundred in mid-session and the one hundred and fifty shortly before tea.
At 201 for 2; the home side had taken control of the match and both batsmen were in the nineties with the by now capacity crowd of nearly sixty thousand on the edge of their seats willing their hero, Harvey, to the milestone of another century in his last match.
More in hope than expectation Ted Dexter had ‘fired up’ David Larter during the interval, encouraging him to bounce and generally ‘rough’ up the two well set Australian batsmen when play resumed.
‘I don’t care if you get clouted for thirty or forty runs,’ he had declared, ‘but I want them both to know that they have been in a game of cricket!’
Norm O’Neill was hit and felled in the third over after tea. The short pitched ball had ricocheted off his gloves onto his brow above his right eye and reeling away he had demolished his stumps in collapsing to the dusty ground.
David Larter was one of crickets ‘quiet men’; the sort of gentle giant who would not say boo to a goose off the field. On the field he could be an ogre but as he stood a little apart from the men who had hurried to the batsman’s assistance he looked a little lost.
Fred Trueman stopped him joining the group around the quickly bloodied O’Neill, who was sitting dazed amid the wreckage of his stumps.
‘Not your fault, lad. He had a bat in his hands. He should have hit it or got out of the way,’ the Yorkshireman remarked tersely.
Lou Rowan had been the umpire at the Randwick End; the ball that hit O’Neill had been the fourth or fifth ball pitched so as to target the batsman’s torso and head. Ironically, the ball which had felled Norm O’Neill had only been fractionally short of a good length; had he not tried to pull it to the mid wicket boundary it would have probably passed him by at ribcage height.
Rowan now took several steps towards the young fast bowler and in Fred Trueman’s hearing said: ‘That’s a first warning for intimidating bowling!’
David Larter was not looking at Rowan and made no sign of hearing him; Trueman on the other hand, with his hands on his hips scowled at the umpire.
‘If we can’t bowl bouncers at Australia’s number four,’ he protested, ‘who the Hell can we bowl them at?’
Issuing a warning to a bowler for ‘intimidatory bowling’ was within the purview of any umpire but he normally spoke to the bowler first, and if he actually issued a warning it was, if not stipulated, then accepted ‘good form’ and common courtesy to notify the offending bowler’s captain at the same time he ‘warned’ that bowler.
At that moment Ted Dexter was helping Norm O’Neill to his feet as the Australian team’s physiotherapist, Richie Benaud and an elderly member of the New South Wales Cricket Association board who was a retired doctor came out to the middle.
It was Trueman who told Dexter that Rowan had just warned David Larter for ‘unfair play’.
‘Look, what’s going on here?’ the England captain inquired, approaching Rowan.
‘Your man is bowling to injure the batsman.’
This rather took Dexter aback.
‘Not deliberately,’ he objected. ‘Cricket is a man’s game. The occasional knock is inevitable.’
Rowan had adopted his policeman’s frown.
‘He’d better watch out, that’s all.’
‘Pity the beggar doesn’t watch out for LBWs, skipper,’ Fred Trueman observed just loudly enough for both Rowan and Colin Egar to hear.
By that juncture the new batsman Brian Booth was marking out his guard.
Sawdust had been put down to dry up Norm O’Neill’s spilt blood on and around the popping crease nearby and the mood of the crowd was, if not openly hostile as David Larter trudged thoughtfully back to his mark, then...tense.
It was genuinely one of those very rare occasions when one felt one could have cut the atmosphere with a knife.
Everybody held their breath as Larter galloped in.
A delivery intended to ‘york’ the new batsman pitched a couple of feet short of its planned length and Brian Booth crashed it through the covers for four. He shouldered arms to the next two balls, and met the next, the seventh of the over with a straight defensive bat.
The crowd had been holding its collective breath.
The final ball of the over pitched short and rocketed over Booth’s head.
Rowan hesitated, bit his tongue and called: ‘Over!’
The eye of the storm seemed to have passed; and tempers come off boiling point. Sensing as much Ted Dexter threw the ball to Fred Trueman to take up the attack from the Paddington End.
Fiery Fred in ‘bouncer fettle’ was a different and in some ways more problematic proposition than David Larter. The latter was taller, his fastest ball definably ‘faster’ but his ‘bouncer’ did exactly that, it bounced; Trueman’s bouncer tended to skid onto a batsman, especially if he bowled it with a slightly lower, rounder arm. Basically, it was a lot easier to duck beneath or sway out of the way of David Larter’s ‘short stuff’ than it was Fiery Fred’s which had an uncanny knack of following a man if he made the slightest miscalculation in his evasive action.
The natural pace of the first day wicket which had seen the batsmen sending the ball skittering effortlessly to the boundary earlier that afternoon; now contributed to what commentators and spectators at the SCG that day would subsequently describe as the most brutal half-hour of cricket they had ever witnessed.
‘If Trueman made a passable imitation of Harold Larwood at his most intimidating during the Bodyline Tour of 1932-33; then David Larter was every bit as dangerous as either Hall or Griffiths on the West Indian tour of 1960-61,’ observed one seasoned correspondent.[101]
Neil Harvey ‘wore’ two short pitched balls in Trueman’s opening over, retaliating by clattering two others into the mid-wicket pickets. It was gladiatorial, mesmerising entertainment, pure drama; the fading glory of the most naturally talented batsman who had played for Australia in the 1950s starkly opposed by the guile and ferocity of one of that era’s great fast bowlers summoning his old powers for one last titanic struggle.
And at the other end the man who had put Norm O’Neill in hospital was charging in like a man possessed.
Brian Booth took a rising delivery in the ribs.
He gallantly pressed forward the next ball and in the blink of an eye the red scuffed, supposedly softened red cherry was nestling in Tom Graveney’s midriff.
Barry Shepherd walked out to the wicket.
206 for 2 had become 217 for 4 inside ten minutes.
David Larter’s first ball to the new batsman, a blindingly fast bouncer clipped his right shoulder and flew away for four ‘leg byes’. With immense courage Shepherd got into line next ball and dropped a rising delivery safely at his feet. His third
ball cut back into him and the ball seemed to snick – with a loud, woody-sounding contact - the inside edge of his bat somewhere under his left armpit and spear into Fred Trueman’s hands at leg slip. Snapping up the ball at ankle height he held it aloft triumphantly as he and his team mates lustily appealed.
In those days there were many batsmen who ‘walked’, not waiting for the umpire to raise his finger. More Englishman were of this mind, although not unfailingly; Australians were more prone to leaving the decision to the men in white.
Barry Shepherd stood his ground.
Standing at the Randwick End Lou Rowan might have been a statue. Colin Egar, positioned at point on the leg side had automatically signalled the catch had been taken by cupping his hands but Rowan appeared not to have looked in his direction. The appeal died on the lips of the tourists. Dexter realised his men were looking to him.
There were hands on hips, and heads shaking.
Lou Rowan stood as unmoving as a statue.
‘Let’s get on with this, chaps,’ Dexter ordered.
The umpire was the final arbiter of all things on the field of play. Emotions were running high but if Rowan did not think a catch had been taken, that was that. Everybody made mistakes, players and umpires alike; that was the game.
As David Larter passed a stone-faced Lou Rowan to return to the start of his run up the statue reacted as if he had been stung by a hornet.
‘What was that?’
‘Nothing,’ Northamptonshire’s angry Scots speed merchant muttered without breaking stride.
The trouble was that although an umpire’s word was law once he mislaid the trust and respect of the men on the field or in any way appeared partial to one side or the other, he was hopelessly diminished in the eyes of the men whose respect he needed most if he was to successfully oversee affairs; the players.
Lou Rowan had not quite ‘lost’ half the men involved in the Fifth Test but he was ‘well down that road by then’ Ted Dexter later wrote.