Spofforth, the Demon Bowler

In the 140 years since Test Match cricket began, there have been many bowlers who were greatly feared by the batsmen who faced them, but the original Demon Bowler; the first great bowler to appear on the international stage; was the Australian F. R. Spofforth.
Frederick Robert Spofforth was born at Balmain, near Sydney, in 1853, and was brought up in the Australian bush. He grew to be well over six feet tall, lean and strong, with a piercing eye and a great bristling moustache.
   In those days, cricket in Australia was played with underarm bowling, but when the young Spofforth watched the fast overarm bowling of  the touring Englishman George Tarrant he decided to copy him. A few years later he watched another touring Englishman, Alfred Shaw, with his changes of pace and flight, and resolved to use these methods too. He experimented with different grips of the ball whilst using the same bowling action. If he can be said to have had a single stock delivery, it would be a medium-paced off-cutter, placing two short-leg fieldsmen for close catches, but often bowling batsmen "through the gate" between bat and pad. Incidentally, this shows that intelligent pad-play was still in its infancy, since at the time a batsman could not be out LBW to a ball that pitched outside the off stump.  
   He was soon taking an impressive number of wickets, and although he was not selected for the first-ever Test Match between Australia and England, at Melbourne in March 1877, he did play in the second a fortnight later; his first victim, ironically enough, being his unwitting mentor Alfred Shaw. He was then duly selected to visit England with an Australian cricket team in 1878. 
   Oddly enough, no Tests were played on that tour, but Spofforth announced his powers, and the strength of Australian cricket, when in a single day at Lord's he took 10 wickets for 20, bowling the great W.G. Grace for a duck and twice dismissing M.C.C. for very low scores. Then, when an England team returned to Australia six months later, he scored his first international triumph, taking 6 for 48 and 7 for 62 at Melbourne in the only Test. In the first innings of this match he achieved the first-ever Test hat-trick.

  It was in 1882, at the Oval, that Spofforth attained immortality. In a very low-scoring match played on a wet pitch, he took 7 for 44 in the first innings and 7 for 44 in the second, dismissing England for only 77 and winning the match by 7 runs. It was this debacle that caused a journalist to lament "the death of English cricket", with the comment that "the body will be creamted and the ashes taken to Australia"; thereby unwittingly establishingthe symbol of the oldest rivalry in Test cricket. 
   Other notable performances followed, all at Sydney: 7 for 44 in 1883; 6 for 90 in the second Test in 1885, followed by 5 for 30 in the third. On the 1884 tour of England he took 207 wickets in all matches 

Spofforth played his last Test in the 1886/7 series against England; being succeeded by the likes of Turner, Ferris and Trumble as spearheads of the Australian attack. His final tally was 94 Test wickets in 18 matches for an average of 18.41. Not long afterward his final Test he moved to live in England.

    After settling in England, he played some matches for Derbyshire, where his family had originated, and also played club cricket for Hampstead, taking a great number of wickets at less than 10 runs apiece. 
 His final appearance in first class cricket was at the Scarborough Festival in 1896, finishing with 8 wickets for 74 for M.C.C. against Yorkshire: a Demon to the very last.
   Unlike many sportsmen, he had a successful career after retirement. He became director of a tea importing company, and when he died in 1926 he left the very substantial sum of £164,000. He was clearly as effective as a businessman as he had been as a Demon Bowler. 

Ranji

The great batsman K. S. Ranjitsinhji, known to all and sundry simply as "Ranji", was born to an extensive family of princely Rajputs in 1872. His birthplace, Jamnagar, was a city in Nawangar; one of a cluster of native-ruled states on the north-west coast of India, towards what is now the frontier with Pakistan. The situation of these native-ruled states was anomalous: they were seen as part of Britain's Indian Empire, but were technically sovereign states in alliance with the British Crown. Ranji's home state contained about a third of a million inhabitants, and its princes lived extremely lavishly in vast palaces, but the land was arid, liable to droughts and subsequent famines; it was economically backward and riven with typhoid and cholera. One oddity was that its ruling princes, despite having extensive harems, often failed to father male heirs, thus leading to confusion over the succession. The Rajputs were traditionally ferocious warriors, and by Ranji's day supplied soldiers for the British army in India. 
   The British Viceroy in India kept a careful eye on the native states: British representatives "advised" their rulers, and the young princes were encouraged to attend special schools where they would learn English ways; sport being an essential part of the curriculum. Accordingly Ranji, at the age of 8, entered Rajkumar College in the town of Rajkot. (This began an odd coincidence, which endured throughout Ranji's life, with Gandhi, just three years older, whose father had been chief minister there for several years. Gandhi also received an English-style education, though not at Rajkumar). Here Ranji gained his first experience of cricket. By the age of 16 he was excelling at the sport, and also at gymnastics, tennis and racquets; and he won prizes for his recitation of English poetry. It was therefore no great surprise that in 1888 he and two other young Kumars (princes) were selected to be taken to England to further their education at Cambridge University.
   Ranji was at first educated by a private tutor, before matriculating at Trinity College in 1892. At Cambridge he was, from the start, determined to improve his cricket. Apart from playing in matches as often as he could (sometimes two in a day!) he hired some of England's leading Test Match players, like Richardson, Lockwood and Hearne, to bowl endlessly at him in the nets. (Imagine any student doing that nowadays!). Ranji was fast on his feet and was blessed with good eyesight and strong, supple wrists; and because he had never been formally coached as a youth, was willing to attempt shots no-one had ever seen before; particularly deflecting straight balls behind square on either side of the wicket.
  He duly achieved his "blue" for playing in the annual match against Oxford in 1893. He did not score many runs in that match, but, more importantly, he made the acquaintance of C. B. Fry, a member of the Oxford team, who was to have a tremendous influence on Ranji's life. Fry was one of Britain's greatest sportsmen of all time: he played in an F.A. Cup Final, broke the world record for the long jump, and was unlucky not to get to play rugby for England; but cricket was his greatest love. Unlike Ranji, who played by instinct, Fry had a scientific, analytical approach to the game. When Ranji produced the "Jubilee Book of Cricket" in 1897, it seems that much of the book was in fact the work of Fry. But Fry was also something of a "Renaissance man", who achieved a first class degree at Oxford and could have made a career as a senior diplomat or civil servant, but instead chose to play cricket. He inevitably became captain of England in the years before the First World War.                  

   It was largely because Sussex was Fry's county that Ranji decided to make it his cricketing home, for he had no previous connections there. Although he never took up permanent residence in the county, dividing his time between a hotel in Brighton and the rooms he retained in Cambridge, he played full seasons for Sussex every year from 1895 to 1908. Like all cricketers, he had the ocasional failure, but his batting average for each season never fell below 45, and his rate of scoring was always very fast. In all first-class cricket he amassed 72 centuries. He was also an excellent slip field, and could bowl off-breaks when required. Keen and knowledgeable followers of cricket who watched him bat were amazed. The more literary among them indulged in metaphors about the mysteries of the Orient, the bat as a wand, Ranji "conjuring" runs or springing like a panther on a loose delivery, and so forth; whereas the old professional Tom Wainwright was reduced to saying, "Ranji? He never made a Christian stroke in his life!"

   It came as no surprise that in 1896 Ranji was selected for the England team against the touring Australians. After having been surprisingly omitted from the first test, he was called up for the second, at Old Trafford, and although England lost, he enjoyed a sensational debut in an exciting match. Coming in at number 3, he scored 62, and then, as England were forced to follow on, dominated the second innings by hitting 154 not out in a little over three hours. The England total of 305 left the Australians needing just 125 to win the match, and although Tom Richardson then bowled 43 overs unchanged, taking 6 for 76, they sneaked home by 3 wickets. The press were loud in Ranji's praise. 
  Ranji toured Australia with A. C. Maclaren's team in 1897-8, and was personally successful, though the team was not; but his Test career was to be brief. He scored more runs against Australia in 1899, but then in 1902 only once reached double figures in four Test innings, and was never selected again. Nevertheless, an enduring legend had been established. (Gandhi was in England at the same time, studying to become a barrister, but it seems certain that he and Ranji never met)

  In his career in England, Ranji never encountered any serious racial prejudice or discrimination; and indeed spent two years as captain of his county. He was, after all, a prince, he had been to Cambridge, he was an excellent host, always very generous to guests and friends, a good speaker (described as "unaccented"), and loved the traditional country sports of shooting and salmon-fishing. In consequence he was always in demand socially, and was at ease in all company, up to and including members of the royal family. 

   Ranji's county career came to an abrupt end in 1908, though he did return for a full season in 1912. The reason was simple: after the death of a cousin he became the ruler of his state, with the approval of the British Raj, and was now officially the Jam Saheb of Nawangar. He threw himself into improving his impoverished state; clearing slums, building roads and railways, establishing irrigation schemes and creating a port for the pearl-fishing industry. This was how the British expected native princes to behave; though he also lived in great spendour and spent vast sums entertaining visiting dignitaries, as well as many of his old cricketing friends.
   He never married. He always enjoyed the company of attractive ladies, and it was said that he had a discreet relationship with an English girl, but as an Indian Hindu prince he could never marry her. All this was very different from his princely predecessors, who had numerous wives as well as the usual harem stock of eunuchs and dancing girls. Ranji dismissed all of these on his accession.

When war came in 1914, Ranji, in common with almost all the Indian ruling princes, immediately offered the services of his state to the British government. He provided soldiers and paid for medical facilities and transport, and was commissioned as an honorary Major, but, much to his disgust, was never allowed to go anywhere near the front line. He did, ironically, suffer a serious wound unconnected with the war, because in summer 1915, whilst with a shooting party in Yorkshire, he was blinded in the right eye by a clumsy friend. For the rest of Ranji's life he wore a glass eye, and a doctor had to bathe the eye socket every day.

   In 1920 there came a completely new development, when he was chosen to be one of three representatives of India at the Assembly of the League of Nations in Geneva. He took C.B. Fry along as an advisor, and when nominated to the Finance Committee, asked Fry to act as his Substitute Delegate. A few years later a crisis arose when Mussolini occupied the Greek island of Corfu, and the former British Prime Minister Arthur Balfour asked Ranji to deliver a speech in response. Fry wrote appropriate paragraphs which Ranji read out, and Mussolini withdrew.  It was at this time that Fry was approached by a delegation from Albania who offered to make him King of their impoverished mountain country; an offer which Fry, probably wisely, turned down. Ranji also turned down an invitation to become a member of the Permanent Council of the League.

Ranji's cricketing days were now behind him, but he found consolation in the success of his nephew Duleepsinhji, who by 1929 was playing, like Ranji before him, for Cambridge University and Sussex. Duleep was a more orthodox batsman than his uncle, but equally effective. Ranji was proud to be present at the second Test against the Australians in 1930, when Duleep scored 173 on the first day. As it happened, this innings was eclipsed by the young Don Bradman, who made 254, and Australia won the match comfortably. Bradman remarked that Duleep's off-driving was so powerful that, after fielding at cover and mid-off to him, he was obliged to get his hands bandaged. But, as with Ranji, Duleep's career was sadly cut short. His health broke down and he was unable to go on the 1932-3 tour of Australia (the infamous "bodyline tour"). His place was taken by another Indian nobleman, the Nawab of Pataudi, who duly maintained the tradition by scoring a century in his first Test. 

Ranji's world, the world of the Indian princes, was changing beyond recall. The Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms opened up senior ranks in the Indian civil service to native Indians, and the aim of the British government was clearly to bring a degree of self-government in India. Ranji attended the Round Table Conference on the future of India, but so did Gandhi, who had abandoned his career as a barrister and now wore just a loincloth and cloak, and brought along a goat to supply him with milk. Winston Churchill was disgusted. Caught between the British moves towards democracy and Gandhi's call for a boycott of British goods, what place was there for the independent princes? None at all, it would seem. Ranji had always been a strong supporter of the British Empire in India, but in 1933, in his capacity as Chancellor of the Chamber of Princes, he had to endure a public rebuke from the Viceroy, Lord Willingdon. It saddened him very deeply. In the Second World War the Indian princes, unlike Gandhi's nationalists, gave their full support to the British war effort, but in 1947 Mountbatten forced them to merge their states in an independent India, whether they wanted it or not.

Ranji did not live to see this. All his life he had suffered from asthma attacks and other respiratory problems, and in spring 1934 he fell seriously ill. After several days of violent coughing, he died on April 2nd. He was given lavish obituaries. The Ranji Trophy, the most prestigious contest in Indian cricket, is named after him.

Footnote.

C.B. Fry died in 1956, at the age of 84. In the 1930s he was puzzled by the career of Sir John Simon as Foreign Secretary and then as Lord Chancellor. "I knew him at Oxford, and I was much cleverer than him!" he complained. But Simon was making history while Fry was only been making runs. 
        
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Taleban bans cricket!

The Afghanistan cricket team has made an impressive impact recently, including a memorable victory over the West Indies in the World 20/20 Cup, but we are now informed by the "Times" that a resurgent Taleban has banned the sport, along with other games.
   A tribal elder explained, "The Taliban said the three sticks [the stumps] behind the player represent Allah. Throwing the ball at them means you hate Allah. So stop playing. 
  "Some villagers refused. They said, "Afghan players have raised the national flag all over the world. We will play". But then the Taliban started shooting, and some youngsters got wounded".

It strikes me that this reasoning provides an excellent excuse for anyone who wants to get out of school cricket. After all, children from a Christian background can argue that the three stumps represent the Holy Trinity. This would be just as valid.
   I wonder if anyone will try it?

England vs. Australia: Ten Great Ashes Tests

I have selected ten matches in which there were very close finishes, dramatic changes of fortune, or new records set


1. The Oval, August 1882. Australia won by 7 runs

Australia 63 (Barlow 5-19) and 122 (Massie 55, Peate 4-40)
England 101 (Spofforth 7-46) and 77 (Spofforth 7-44)

This was the match which gave birth to the term "the Ashes", though it was in fact the ninth between the two countries. It was an exceptionally low-scoring game, resulting from the wet weather and a pitch which would probably nowadays be deemed unplayable. (It should be remembered that until the 1950s pitches were left uncovered during a match, and in consequence some surfaces made batting extremely difficult). Massie, opening Australia's second innings, was the only batsman to reach 50. England, needing only 85 to win, were destroyed by Frederick Spofforth, the original "demon bowler". The great W. G. Grace scored 32, but only two other Englishmen reached double figures.

   
2. Sydney, December 1894. England won by 10 runs

Australia 586 (Gregory 201, Giffen 161, Richardson 5-181) and 166 (Darling 53, Peel 6-67)
England 325 (Ward 75, Giffen 4-75) and 437 (Ward 117, Giffen 4-164)

This is the first of only two occasions when a team following-on has won a test match (for the other one, see later). Australia opened the match with a huge total, and England set them only a modest target to win; but then it rained overnight, producing a classic "sticky wicket", on which the Australians found Bobby Peel's left-arm spin almost unplayable. Giffen's immense all-round performance went unrewarded.  


3. In summer 1902 there were two great matches within a few weeks! At Old Trafford in July, Victor Trumper scored a century before lunch on the first day, and England's last man in, the unlucky Fred Tate in his only test match, was bowled second ball to enable Australia to snatch victory by 3 runs. Then next month, this happened:-

The Oval, August 1902. England won by 1 wicket

Australia 324 (Trumble 64, Hirst 5-77) and 121 (Lockwood 5-45)
England 183 (Trumble 8-65) and 263-9 (Jessop 104)

England, set a moderate total to win the match, collapsed to 48 for 5. Gilbert Jessop then smashed his way to what is still the fastest century in Ashes tests, but when the 9th wicket fell, England were still 15 short of their target, and it was left to the Yorkshire pair of Hirst and Rhodes to see them home.


4. The Oval, August 1926. England won by 289 runs

England 280 (Sutcliffe 76, Mailey 6-138) and 436 (Hobbs 100, Sutcliffe 161)
Australia 302 (Gregory 73) and 125 (Rhodes 4-44)

This match could have been influenced by the weather, but wasn't. The England second innings had to begin on a very dangerous drying wicket, but Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe defied the conditions with an opening partnership of 172, and eventually England won easily. Wilfred Rhodes had been recalled to the team at the age of 48, and responded with six wickets in the match. This victory gave England their first series win against Australia since before the First World War.


5. Lord's, 1930. Australia won by 7 wickets

England 425 (Duleepsinhji 173) and 375 (Chapman 121, Grimmett 6-167)
Australia 729-6 declared (Bradman 254, Woodfull 155) and 72-3

England witnessed the awesome run-scoring power of Don Bradman for the first time. Despite scoring 400 on the first day, with a brilliant century from the young Indian prince Duleepsinhji, England were overwhelmed as Bradman then reached 250 in less than six hours. In the second innings Grimmett chipped away at the England batting with his leg-spin, while Percy Chapman, England's captain, threw caution to the winds with a hard-hit century. Sir Neville Cardus, looking back on it many years later, described it as "the ideal cricket match". It was certainly action-packed: 1600 runs being scored off almost 500 overs in less than four days of cricket!


6. Adelaide, January 1933. England won by 338 runs

England 341 (Leyland 83, Wall 5-72) and 412 (Hammond 85, O'Reilly 4-79)
Australia 222 (Ponsford 85, Allen 4-71) and 193 (Woodfull 73, Bradman 66, Allen 4-50, Larwood 4-71)

This is immortalized as "the bodyline test". To counter the menace of Bradman, Harold Larwood, England's fastest bowler, was instructed to pitch short and aim at the batsman's body, with no fewer than six short-leg fieldsmen clustered round for a catch. (We should remember that batsmen in those days had no helmets and no body-armour). The Australian captain, Bill Woodfull, was struck several times, to the disgust of the crowd, and the wicket-keeper Bert Oldfield suffered a fractured skull when he top-edged a pull shot onto his forehead. Bradman was too quick on his feet to be struck, but it reduced his run-scoring to merely mortal levels. (Oddly enough, England's most successful fast bowler in the match, Gubby Allen, did not bowl bodyline). The whole episode led to an angry exchange of telegrams between Australia and England.


7. Leeds. July 1948. Australia won by 7 wickets

England 496 (Washbrook 143, Edrich 111) and 365-8 declared
Australia 458 (Harvey 112, Loxton 93) and 404-3 (Morris 182, Bradman 173 not out)

England thought they had a chance of defeating Bradman's all-conquering team when they set a target of over 400 on the last day, but in vain. This was Bradman's last great innings, in his penultimate test match. What is remarkable by today's standards is that England bowled well over 100 overs on that final day, making no attempt to waste some time as Bradman and Morris destroyed the attack, adding nearly 200 runs between lunch and tea. It couldn't happen nowadays! (In Bradman's final innings, at the Oval a month later, he was bowled by Eric Hollies for 0, thus reducing his career average to less than 100!)


8. Manchester, July 1956. England won by an innings and 170 runs

England 459 (Richardson 104, Sheppard 113)
Australia 84 (Laker 9-37) and 205 (McDonald 89, Laker 10-53)

This match was one-sided from start to finish, but is remembered for Jim Laker setting a record unlikely ever to be beaten, with 19 wickets. The Australians were wholly unable to cope with his off-spinners on a helpful surface.


9. Leeds, July 1981. England won by 18 runs

Australia 401 (Dyson 102, Botham 6-95) and 111 (Willis 8-43)
England 174 (Lillee 4-49) and 356 (Botham 149 not out, Alderman 6-135)

This is only the second occasion in which a team following-on has won the match. After losing the first test badly and drawing the second, England recalled Mike Brearley as captain. The position appeared hopeless as England were reduced to 135 for 7 in their second innings, but then Ian Botham and the tail added more than 200 with some vigorous hitting, enabling Bob Willis then to blow away the Australian batting. This is always remembered as "Botham's match", but Willis's role at the end was just as important.


10. Birmingham, August 2005. England won by 2 runs

England 407 (Trescothick 90, Warne 4-116) and 182 (Flintoff 73, Warne 6-46)
Australia 308 (Langer 82) and 279 (Flintoff 4-79)

The 2005 series is generally reckoned to be the best of recent years. Australia won the first match, and almost won this, the second. England were well ahead for the first four days, and the fifth looked to be of short duration, with Australia on 175 for 8: over 100 behind. But then Warne, Lee and Kasprowicz brought them within three runs of victory, before finally Kasprowicz gloved a ball from Harmison down the leg side and was caught behind. (To add to the interest, later video analysis suggested he shouldn't have been given out!). Andrew Flintoff was adjudged "man of the match", but if the result had gone the other way the award would surely have gone to Shane Warne.

Low-level Cricket

For many years I took part in a "lads-and-dads" cricket team which played occasional matches in the evenings and at weekends. Some of the players were genuinely talented, others were not, and took part solely to make up the numbers. These, of course, are the ones I remember best.

We won a few matches; others we lost. Our most alarming moment came when we had a fixture at Keele University. We found the pitch occupied by a team of gigantic West Indians: one looked exactly like Clive Lloyd; another looked exactly like Charlie Griffith. They were hurling a ball around at 100 miles per hour and snatching it out of the air. They took one look at our motley crew and burst out laughing. "Oh, man, we're not playing you, are we?" they chortled in disbelief. It turned out they'd gone to the wrong pitch. We weren't half relieved. At the opposite level of ability, we once played against a team who did not possess the standard white kit. We never found out all their names, so our score-book contained entries like "Bowled Brown Trousers"

Aran, an Indian, impressed us at the start because he had an M.C.C. coaching certificate, but our favourable impression waned when we actually saw him play. For an enthusiastic sportsman, he was quite the slowest on his feet I have ever come across. Once when I was at the non-striker's end when he was batting, the ball eluded the wicket-keeper and I called him for a bye. He moved so slowly that fine leg had time to throw to the bowler's and and run him out. He was furious. "It is never the non-striker who calls for a run! It is always the striker!" he berated me, incorrectly. On another occasion he contrived to tread on his own hand whilst attempting a sweep shot and decided to retire hurt. He was scathing of the way I held the ball for bowling an off-break, telling me I'd never get it to turn. But the only time I saw him bowl was in a practice knock-around. Tony, who was a strong batsman, tended to dispatch anything on his pads into the trees; but when Aran bowled, Tony said the ball came through the air so slowly, and with so little rotation, that he could read the maker's name on it. Tony simply hadn't the heart to smash this bowling, and played every delivery with an exaggeratedly-correct forward defensive stroke. "Well, at least I kept him quiet!" said Aran afterwards.

My principle, when I was captain, was less to ensure a win than to make sure everyone who had volunteered to take part should get a chance to do something. Thus those who could bowl well might have to bat after the non-bowlers, and any volunteering would always be accepted. This sometimes led to odd results. Geoff had played very little recent cricket, but wanted to have a go at bowling. His first delivery, right-handed,was a wide. He then switched to the left hand: another wide. Finally he abandoned these attempts and said he would have to complete the over bowling underarm. Result: more wides! I don't think he played again.

Bill was no cricketer, but such an entertaining character when sober that it was always worthwhile picking him. He generally had difficulty in pushing up his batting average for the season to more than about 2. In one match he was told it was essential for him to defend his wicket as long as possible and not to bother about scoring runs. This suited Bill's unusual defensive procedure, which was to ignore any ball wide of the stumps; staying completely motionless at the crease and not even deigning to pick up his bat. He found this could be quite demoralizing for the bowler. On this occasion, Bill followed the instructions for some time, until eventually he received a ball which actually bounced twice before it reached him. Bill thought he was justified in having a swipe at it, and was duly caught. Once when Bill was bowling it occurred to him that the non-striker might have ventured out of his ground, and calculating there wasn't the time to turn and look, he held the ball behind his head and performed a back-dive into the stumps, driving them violently against the umpire's shins. Bill looked upwards amidst the wreckage with a smile on his face and enquired, "Oh, by the way, umpire: how's that?" First slip was so convulsed with laughter that he actually fell over. I used to have a photograph of Bill executing a square cut, which would not have been out of place in a coaching manual, so perfect was his position; but a spoilsport friend who also knew Bill asked whether there was any reason to believe that the bat had actually made contact with the ball. When I discussed this with Bill, he told me how he once overheard a conversation between two fielders while he was batting:- "He's only got one stroke". "He hasn't even got that!"

Most cricket is played at a much higher level than this, but we could hardly be bettered for entertainment value.  

The Romance of the Ashes

On a miserably cold and wet day at the Oval cricket ground in August 1882, the England team, set a mere 85 runs to beat the Australians, were skittled out by Frederick Spofforth, the original “demon bowler”, and lost the match. In this debacle the great W. G. Grace scored 32, but the other ten Englishmen managed just 41 runs between them. A few days later, the following mock obituary notice appeared in the “Sporting Times”:-
       “In affectionate memory of English Cricket, which died at the Oval on 29th August 1882, deeply lamented by a large circle of friends and acquaintances. R.I.P. (N.B. The body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia)"
     (Like all good humorists, the author managed to combine two separate issues currently in the news; cremation of the dead being a controversial matter of doubtful legality, bitterly opposed by many in the Church)
      Thus began the most famous tradition in cricket: the contest between England and Australia for the “Ashes”. The 1882 match was not the first between the two countries, but it stirred the popular imagination as never before. But the “Ashes” did not yet actually exist. This is the romantic story of how they began.

The victorious Australians were still playing in England when an English team set sail for Australia on September 14th. It consisted of just twelve players; an absurdly small squad by today’s standards, which was reduced even further when their fast bowler, Fred Morley, broke a rib in an accident. Only three men from the Oval match were included; the most notable absentee being W. G. Grace. The captain was a tall, handsome young aristocrat: the Honourable Ivo Bligh, second son of the Earl of Darnley.

This is Bligh's team. Standing: Barnes, Morley, C.T.Studd, Vernon, Leslie. Seated: G.B.Studd, Tylecote, Bligh, Steel, Read. In front: Barlow, Bates. Of these, Barnes, Barlow, Bates and Morley were professional cricketers from working-class backgrounds; the rest were gentleman amateurs from the great public (independent) schools and universities. In no other sport at that time would amateurs and professionals have played together for their country.

Bligh was an odd choice in many ways. He was just 23 years old, and had never played international cricket (the term “Test Matches” did not come into use until many years later). At Eton and Cambridge University he had excelled at tennis and racquets as well as cricket, and had scored over a thousand runs for Kent in the 1880 season; but he would never have been rated as one of the best batsmen in England, and although clearly a fine athlete, his health was never good. Nor would he make any significant contribution with the bat on this tour: his attainment of immortality came from a different source.
     On the voyage out, which lasted two months, the team made the acquaintance of Sir William and Lady Janet Clarke. Sir William, a great philanthropist and past president of the Melbourne Cricket Club, was said to be the richest man in Australia. He invited them to spend Christmas at Rupertswood, his very grand country house outside Melbourne. This was to be a momentous event both in the life of Ivo Bligh and in the history of cricket, because the Clarke household included a young lady who acted as the children’s governess and music teacher as well as a friend of Lady Janet. She was Miss Florence Morphy, aged 22, an orphan; the seventh and youngest child of a police magistrate of Irish extraction. Bligh was immediately smitten with her.

Meanwhile there were matches to be played.  It was an unusually wet summer in Australia, with results being affected by rain on uncovered pitches; but large crowds attended, often running to 20,000 or more per day. The first match against William Murdoch’s Australian team took place at Melbourne at the end of December, and resulted in England losing by 9 wickets after succumbing to the off-spin of George Palmer and being forced to follow on. The second match, also at Melbourne, began on January 19th, and this time there was a comprehensive victory for England, by an innings and 27 runs. William Bates took 14 wickets in the match, including a hat-trick. It would be all to play for in the third match at Sydney a week later.

In his capacity as captain, Bligh was often called upon to make speeches. He generally spoke of his goal being “to beard the kangaroo in its den” and “to bring back the ashes”. He was of course referring to something which did not actually exist, and must initially have puzzled his audiences, but Murdoch’s Australian team understood the reference to the “Sporting Times” joke, and were able to reply in kind. Very soon, Australian papers were taking up the theme: who could claim possession of the ashes?

The Sydney match ran into four days. After the first innings it was evenly balanced, with England holding a lead of just 29 runs. On the third day a huge crowd turned up to watch Spofforth bowl out England. 7 for 44 to the dreaded demon bowler; England dismissed for a paltry 123: the match and the ashes were surely Australia’s. But no! Richard Barlow, bowling slow-medium left-arm, did even better than Spofforth: 7 for 40; Australia collapsing to 83 all out, with only two men reaching double figures: an easy win for England! Unlike the popular image of Victorian cricket, the match was an ill-tempered affair, with each side accusing the other of deliberately cutting up the pitch to aid the bowling of Spofforth and Barlow, and some of the players reportedly almost coming to blows at one point.

There followed a fourth match in mid-February against a “Combined XI”, when not even a century by Allan Steel (the only one of the series) could prevent an Australian victory. It has been disputed ever since whether this constituted a “proper test match”; but at the time no-one appeared to question that England had won the right to “take back the ashes”. Bligh had contributed very little as a player (his highest score was only 19, and he did not bowl); the victories resulting from the bowling of the northern professionals; Bates of Yorkshire and Barlow of Lancashire. But as captain, Bligh was given the publicity and much of the credit.

He had other matters on his mind. On January 3rd he wrote to his parents requesting permission to marry Florence Morphy. Lady Janet Clarke had already warned him that Lord and Lady Darnley would not be happy about a son of theirs attaching himself to a penniless girl of no family; and she was of course quite right: parental consent was not given. This whole episode puts us firmly back into the Victorian period. Here we have a highly educated man, on the verge of his 24th birthday, in the process of achieving great international sporting fame and success, yet feeling he could not become engaged to be married without the approval of his parents - and the approval being denied, apparently for reasons of pure snobbery! Bligh pondered his next step.

But what of the Ashes themselves? Here, unfortunately, the evidence is confused and contradictory. At some stage, presumably at Rupertswood, Bligh was presented with a tiny urn; such as might have stood on a lady’s dressing table holding perfume; but now containing ashes. Ashes of what? It is usually believed to be the ashes from burning a bail, or a stump; but it is sometimes said to be the ashes of the leather casing of a cricket ball. And when exactly was it presented? After the third match the Melbourne magazine “Punch” published some execrable verses about the return of the “urn” to England. Does this mean that the urn had already been presented, and furthermore that this was common knowledge? Or was the magazine speaking purely metaphorically? Maybe more than one urn was presented? These puzzles are unlikely ever to be solved. Quite separately, a Queensland lady in February gave Bligh a small velvet bag to hold the urn. He sailed back to England in May 1883, taking the urn with him. It would stand on his mantelpiece for the rest of his life. What ranked highest in his mind, however, was winning his parents’ consent to his marriage.
     He went about the task with great determination, as befitted an international sporting captain. He told his father that, rather than give up Florence, he would settle permanently in Australia. After six weeks, Lord Darnley gave up the struggle, and wrote to Florence agreeing to the match, though with no great enthusiasm.

       Ivo Bligh returned to Australia to marry Florence Morphy in February 1884. The bride was given away by Sir William Clarke, and the wedding breakfast was held at Rupertswood. None of Bligh's family attended. The Melbourne “Punch” celebrated the event in yet more extremely bad poetry. After a honeymoon in New Zealand the happy couple returned to England.

Ill health meant that Bligh played little cricket after this, and he never represented England again. Indeed, for the rest of his life he comes across as a curiously diffident personality. It was almost as if he had exhausted his entire life’s supply of energy and initiative in winning the Ashes and gaining his father’s consent to his marriage. (Alternatively, like many sportsmen since, he simply did not know what to do with himself after retiring) He tried working as a stockbroker, but soon gave up. He moved to Melbourne for a couple of years, but that didn’t work out either. It was Florence who emerged as the stronger personality, and she must have found these years frustrating. They had three children, but money was short and there was little prospect of improvement.

Lord Darnley died in 1896, and Ivo Bligh’s elder brother, Edward, succeeded to the title. He was a highly eccentric personality, and had not managed to father a male heir when he died suddenly in 1900. So, unexpectedly, Ivo and Florence found themselves the 8th Earl and Countess of Darnley and owners of the family home of Cobham Hall in Kent. In many ways this was less good than it sounded. The great house was very expensive to run, a combination of death duties and collapsing agricultural prices meant that the estate was heavily encumbered with debt, and any wealth had to be shared with brother Edward’s widow.
    As a nobleman, Bligh had a part to play in the nation. The Darnley title was an Irish one, so he sat in the House of Lords as an Irish representative peer, and occasionally spoke in debates. He also served as a Deputy Lord-Lieutenant and a Justice of the Peace, but he still appeared a shy, diffident character. Florence, by contrast, relished her new status as a great lady. She became a close friend of Queen Mary, and she received the Australian Prime Minister, Billy Hughes, when he came to England. In the First World War she opened Cobham Hall as a nursing home for wounded Australian servicemen, with herself acting as Matron, and was created a Dame of the British Empire (D.B.E.) for her war work. She had indeed come a very long way from her former life as an orphan music teacher in Melbourne!
     Financial worries continued, however. Much of the Darnley estates had to be sold, and in 1925 the family’s magnificent collection of paintings was auctioned off. This raised over £70,000, but since it included works by Titian, Poussin, Lely, Canaletto, Gainsborough and others, one can only guess at how many millions such a sale would fetch today! In 1923 Cobham Hall was rented out to an American, and the family moved to a smaller house in the grounds. Such a decline was not atypical of the old aristocracy at that time. (Cobham Hall is now a girls' school)

Ivo Bligh, 8th Earl of Darnley, died in 1927, aged only 68. The little urn with the Ashes was presented to the M.C.C., and it has remained at Lord’s ever since. Florence, now Dowager Countess of Darnley, managed to further confuse the story of the Ashes when she told Bill Woodfull, the captain of the 1930 Australian team in England, that Lady Janet Clarke had burnt a stump and presented it to Bligh in a little wooden urn - whereas the existing urn is made of terra-cotta. One imagines her as a formidable matriarch in her later years: her daughter once referred to her as "the old dragon"!
     She died in 1944: the last direct link with the story of the Ashes.

The words pasted on the little urn are taken from the inimitable verse of the Melbourne "Punch":-
"When Ivo goes back with the urn, the urn;
Studds, Steel, Read and Tylecote return, return;
The welkin will ring loud,
The great crowd will feel proud,
Seeing Barlow and Bates with the urn, the urn;
And the rest coming home with the urn".

(Sources: "Wisden Book of Test Cricket, 1876-77 to 1977-78":  "Wisden Book of Cricketers' Lives":   Illingworth and Gregory, "The Ashes":   Berry and Peploe, "Cricket's Burning Passion")

W.G.'s Birthday Party, by David Kynaston

This is the best book I have ever read on the history of cricket. It is centred round the occasion when in July 1898 a match was scheduled to coincide with the fiftieth birthday of Dr. William Gilbert Grace (universally known simply as “W.G.”), the greatest sportsman of the later Victorian era. The match was the traditional annual contest at Lord’s cricket ground between the “Gentlemen” and the “Players”; that is, amateurs versus professionals.

One of the most notable features of the second half of Victoria’s reign was the extraordinary growth of spectator sports, with huge crowds turning up especially to watch football and cricket. In this development the role of Grace was central. A superb athlete, he could no doubt have excelled at any sport, and he had dominated cricket ever since he burst onto the scene as a teenager. Attendance at any match where he was due to play was guaranteed to be massive. For years he had been one of the most famous men in the country, and his trademark beard made him a gift to the cartoonists; instantly recognisable to all. He always particularly enjoyed the annual Gentlemen vs. Players fixture, and on the minority of occasions when the amateurs won, it was usually as a result of his contributions. It was thus most fitting that his birthday should be honoured in this way. He would, of course, captain the amateur team.

The book gives a detailed report of the match (in which Grace himself, though handicapped by an injury, remained undefeated at the end, but could not prevent his team from losing), but there is much more to it than this. Kynaston investigates every participant in the match, including even the umpires, and tells us about their future careers, how long they lived, and even how much they left in their wills, and in this way he gives us a snapshot of late Victorian society.

Cricket was a unique sport in one particular respect. The main tennis and golf tournaments of the time were exclusively amateur, and so were the Olympic sports. Football had by this time become dominated by the professional teams, and rugby was shortly to split into the two codes of Union (amateur) and League (professional), separated by a strict apartheid. But in cricket amateurs and professionals played side-by-side, and had done so ever since the game was first organised back in the 18th century. (Nor, incidentally, was there ever any colour bar in English cricket. The Indian prince, Ranjitsinhji, played his first match for England in 1899 and was universally hailed as a genius. By the 1920s the England team was playing matches against the West Indies, where most of the star players were black and often from very humble backgrounds. My mother, who was brought up in Yorkshire at that time, once told me that the first black man she ever saw was a professional cricketer from the West Indies). True, the county teams were always captained by amateurs; amateurs and professionals stayed in different hotels, changed in different rooms, and were even indicated differently in the scorebooks; but despite all this, the Honourable Alfred Lyttleton, the son of a nobleman and himself a future cabinet minister, and Richard Barlow, the Lancashire factory-hand, played together in the England team, and this could not have happened in any other sport at the time.

Professional sportsmen of the time were invariably drawn from the working classes. (Indeed, before the coming of free universal education, professional sport was practically the only way in which a boy of real talent could find a route out of the slums). A professional cricketer, footballer or boxer could expect to earn higher wages than a skilled artisan, and those who reached international standard would be well rewarded (though with nothing like the immense sums received nowadays), but sporting careers were beset with hazards. A bad injury or loss of form could mean that income suddenly stopped, and even the best players would pass their peak while still comparatively young. Top sportsmen were, and still are, always under temptation to spend freely whilst earning well, only to wind up penniless later in life. A really good professional cricketer might continue to earn a decent wage into his forties, but what then? The best he could hope for would be that, provided he was presentable enough and behaved himself, he might be taken on as a coach at one of the great independent schools or colleges. Professional sport, therefore, was a purely working-class matter. (When in an early novel by P. G. Wodehouse, "Psmith in the City", his hero, Mike, an ex-public school boy, is so extremely bored with his job in a bank that he seriously considers resigning and becoming a professional cricketer, this is intended to show how desperate he was to escape. And, as we might have expected from Wodehouse, a sudden stroke of luck enables Mike to avoid the grave loss of caste resulting from such a step)

Despite Grace’s enormous fame and prestige, his position was ambiguous, for he was a notorious “shamateur”: that is, whilst retaining the status of an amateur, he actually contrived to earn far more out of his cricketing career than did any of the professional players. Also, he was hardly a “gentleman” in the normally accepted sense of the term: he was not a product of the traditional independent schools and universities (he had qualified as a doctor only after twelve years of part-time study); he was too unwashed, too much a Gloucestershire yokel, he was without any intellectual or cultural interests, and his keenness to win frequently verged on outright cheating or intimidation of umpires. It was perhaps for these reasons that he was only occasionally invited to captain England. But at the same time, he was always kind and encouraging to youngsters, and always did his best to help the professionals; so as well as being admired for his talents, he was also liked and respected by his fellow-cricketers.

It comes as no surprise to learn that, of all the men who played in this match, the amateurs as a class lived longer than the professionals, and also died richer, but there was still a significant overlap. Two of them, one amateur and one professional, committed suicide by shooting themselves (for some reason, there has always been a significantly high suicide rate among cricketers). One of the professionals died completely destitute, and two others became bankrupt and dependent on the help of friends. On the other hand, one of the amateurs left only £137 at his death, whereas one of the professionals became a successful businessman, leaving over £57,000; a very considerable sum for the time. W. G. Grace himself finally retired from first-class cricket in 1906, and even after that he continued to play in local club games up to the outbreak of the First World War. He died in 1915 at the age of 67, leaving a disappointing £7,278, despite a lifetime of high earnings. After the war, the Grace Gates were erected at Lord’s as a memorial, with the simple inscription (suggested by F. S. Jackson, a member of Grace’s team in the 1898 match, but now Sir Stanley Jackson, chairman of the Conservative Party and future Governor of Bengal); “The Great Cricketer”

In January 1963 the cricket authorities finally announced the abolition of the distinction between amateurs and professionals, and the annual Gentlemen vs. Players match thus ceased. It could long have been seen as a ridiculous anachronism, but many people, including some illustrious old professionals, were sad at its passing.

Wilfred Rhodes

If, a hundred years ago, you had asked a Yorkshire cricket fan, “Who’s the best all-rounder in the world?” he might well have replied, “I don’t know, but I can tell you that he bats right-handed, bowls left, and comes from Kirkheaton”. The point of this answer was that it applied to two mighty stalwarts of the Yorkshire and England teams: George Hirst and Wilfred Rhodes. (The photograph shows Hirst, on the left, with Rhodes)
Kirkheaton is a small village of stone-built houses on the slopes of the Pennines, not far from the great wool manufacturing town of Huddersfield in what used to be called the West Riding of Yorkshire. George Hirst was born there in 1871, leaving school aged ten, working in a dye-works and playing weekend cricket until invited to a county trial at 18, but not gaining a regular place in the team until three years later. He originally won recognition as a fast-medium bowler, being one of the first exponents of making the ball swing in the air, as well as a strong, aggressive batsman and a superb fielder. In 1896 he achieved his first “double” of a thousand runs and a hundred wickets for the season: he was to reach this milestone 14 times, including a “double double” of 2000 runs and 200 wickets in 1906; the only man ever to manage this extraordinary feat. He was called up into the England team for the tour of Australia in 1897-8, winning 24 Test caps altogether, but never having quite the same impact as he did at County level.
Wilfred Rhodes was born in the village in 1877, and like Hirst he began as a Saturday cricketer for the village, working as a railwayman at nearby Mirfield during the week. In 1896, however, he was already skilled enough to be employed as the club professional al Galashiels on the Scottish border. After two seasons there he was called into the Yorkshire team; the county’s chief spin bowler, Bobby Peel, having been sacked for drunkenness. His impact was immediate: despite his youth and inexperience the accuracy of his slow left-arm bowling was infallible, he could turn the ball sharply from leg to off and even the best batsmen had difficulty reading his deceptive line of flight. On a wicket taking spin, he was virtually unplayable. So in his first season, 1898, he took 154 wickets, then 179 in his second, and over 200 in each of the next three: over a thousand wickets by the age of 25! It could have come as a surprise to no-one that in 1899 he was selected for the England team; his first Test, with nice symbolism, being the last ever played by the legendary W. G. Grace. In his early days Rhodes was seen as number 11 batsman, but this was soon to change.
There was a sensational series against Australia in 1902. In the first Test the visitors, caught on a bad wicket, were dismissed by Hirst and Rhodes for just 36 runs: Rhodes’s contribution being 7 wickets for 17 runs in 11 overs. Then in the last Test, England were set a modest total of 263 for victory. They collapsed to 48 for 5, then the great hitter Gilbert Jessop smashed his way to a century in an hour and a half, but when Rhodes entered as last man in to join George Hirst, a further 15 runs were still needed. “We’ll get ’em in singles, Wilfred”, said Hirst, and the pair duly saw England home.

In 1903-4 Rhodes was selected for his first tour of Australia. Many experts doubted whether he would be able to turn the ball on the hard, unresponsive Australian wickets, but this fear proved to be unfounded. One of the central themes of the series was his contest with the great Australian batsman Victor Trumper. In the second innings of the first Test at Sydney, Trumper scored 185 not out, destroying all the English bowlers except one: Rhodes in this innings took 5 wickets for 94 runs; the rest of the England attack, 3 wickets for 357 runs between them! Then in first innings of the second Test, Australia were dismissed for 122, of which Trumper scored 74. Rhodes took 7 wickets for 56 runs, 15 for 124 in the match, despite having no fewer than eight catches dropped off his bowling! (The second England innings was a close parallel: all out for 103, 62 of these being contributed by Johnny Tyldesley). But in this series Rhodes also began to emerge as a batsman: at Sydney he and R. E. Foster put on a world record total of 130 for the last England wicket. Rhodes was left on 40 not out, and decided that he liked batting. In fact, his batting was improving all the time: he had scored his first century in 1901 and two years later reached his first “double”. He was to repeat this achievement almost every season until the First World War; though critics maintained that his bowling was losing its old lethal penetration.
When Rhodes returned to Australia for the 1911-12 tour, everything had changed. He did not take a single wicket, and yet he played in every Test. This time he had been chosen to open the batting with the young Jack Hobbs. The pair were quickly in business, with an opening stand of 147 in the Adelaide Test and then 323 at Melbourne. So Rhodes had now taken part in world record stands for both the first wicket and the last: a unique achievement. The pair managed eight century opening partnerships before Test cricket was brought to a halt by the First World War.

Rhodes dropped out of Test cricket after the war, but, in his mid-forties, rediscovered his bowling. More “doubles” followed; his sixteenth and, as it would turn out, his last, coming in 1926. But that summer witnessed yet more amazing events. Once again the Australians were touring England, having won overwhelmingly the three previous postwar series. Rain prevented any conclusions in the first four matches, and for the final match Rhodes was recalled to the team. He was not far short of his 49th birthday, but as he told the selectors, “I’m still landing them there, or thereabouts”. Three members of the England team, including the captain, Percy Chapman, had not even been born when Rhodes had made his first international appearance back in 1899. The turning-point of the match came when Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe opened the English second innings with a stand of 172 on a terrible pitch, but Rhodes too played his part in England’s victory. By this time he hardly spun the ball at all, but his line and length were as immaculate as ever as he lured great batsmen like Woodfull, Ponsford, Bardsley and Collins to destruction: 6 wickets for 79 runs in the match.
Even this was not quite the end, because in the winter of 1929-30 Rhodes was selected for the team to tour the West Indies. He was now the oldest Test cricketer of all time. This series marked the emergence of George Headley as the first-ever world-class black batsman, scoring four centuries in the Tests, including 223 at Kingston, Jamaica. But he never managed to dominate Rhodes, who bowled for marathon spells in the stifling heat: 256 overs in four Tests, the most he had ever bowled in a series, never conceding more than 2 runs an over on average. It was all reminiscent of his duels with Victor Trumper a quarter of a century earlier.

Rhodes finally retired from cricket at the end of the 1930 season. Fittingly, his last match was in his home county of Yorkshire against the touring Australian team, who had brought with them a young man who was emerging as the most devastating batsman of all time. So Wilfred Rhodes, who had begun his career bowling at W. G. Grace, ended it by bowling at Don Bradman. “And I’d have had him first ball if mid-off had been awake!” he liked to recall afterwards.
In retirement, George Hirst spent seventeen happy years as a much-loved coach at Eton College. Rhodes had a season coaching at Harrow, but did not enjoy it very much: his method being to walk down the wicket after an imperfect shot and say, “Jack Hobbs used to play them like this”. He died in 1973: for the last years of his life he was blind, but he continued to attend matches and always enjoyed reminiscing about the game. Modestly, he would describe himself as a “good utility player” rather than a star. In his career he had scored almost 40,000 runs, including 58 centuries, held 764 catches and taken 4,187 wickets; this last being a record which we can be confident will never be equalled.

The joys of junior cricket

For many years I was in charge of various junior cricket teams. The standard of play was seldom very high, but there was often great entertainment to be had.

The first task was to form a squad of players. We asked new boys to fill in a form telling us how much cricket they'd played; whether they batted, bowled or whatever. One solemnly wrote, "I have never played cricket, but if I did, I would be an all-rounder". What the boys lacked in skill, they often made up for in seriousness of approach. I remember umpiring one match where a diminutive bright blond youth was blocking stoutly. He couldn't have been more than twelve years old. He asked me how I thought he was doing. I told him that he clearly had a good defence, but since this was a limited-overs match, he ought to be trying to score more runs. "Yes, I know, that's the trouble, sir", he replied, "I'm essentially a five-day cricketer!"

Sometimes tactics were taken very seriously. Once I was umpiring at the bowler's end, watching one of my team sending down quite good off-breaks. In the middle of an over he measured out a longer run. charged in and hurled the ball down wide of the off stump. "Whatever are you doing, Sean?" I hissed at him. "Captain told me to try a quicker one", he replied. "Yes, but I think what he wanted", I said, "was for you to try a quicker one off the same run-up. If the batsman sees you take a much longer run, he'll be expecting a quicker one, won't he?" A look of gradual dawning comprehension crept over the youth's features. "Got it!" he said. His little friend Simon the contibuted, "What you could do is take a long run-up and then bowl a slower one!" "That's good thinking, Simon!" I said.

We didn't win that match, nor did we win when, after we were dismissed for a low score, I said to my fast bowler, "It's up to you now, Mark! Which end do you want?" "Downhill, sir!" he replied. He went to measure out his run-up, then came back looking puzzled, "Which end is downhill?" he asked. I replied that it all looked pretty flat to me. He decided to take other advice. "Dad!" he cried, "Which end's downhill?" Not surprisingly, he failed to skittle the opposing batsmen.

But the prize for bad observation would have to go to the occasion when one of our opponents broke his bat. It didn't just split down the grain ofthe wood, which is the usual thing; the bottom of his bat actually broke off, something I've never seen elsewhere. The boy, not surprisingly, went off cursing, saying that he'd only got the bat that summer; and eventually returned having borrowed someone else's bat which, as it happened, was of exactly the same make as the broken one. My captain showed his general alertness by exclaiming, with understandable surprise, "Oh! How did you manage to fix that up?" We didn't win this match either.

I think the most inept bit of cricket I ever witnessed was when a boy, highly intelligent but notably unathletic, attempted to take an extremely easy catch. He brought both hands together, but not only did they both miss the ball, they both missed each other, and the ball fell unimpeded to the turf. I don't think that technically he could be said to have dropped the catch, since at no stage did the ball make contact with any part of his person. The strangest incident was when, just as the batsman was playing the ball, a boy fielding on the boundary was bitten by a crow. The batsman went to inspect his injuries, and there was an appeal for a run out, which I refused to give. The fielder later explained, "It was a nice little crow which must have fallen out of its nest. I went to pick it up, and it bit me!"

Later on, I was in charge of a girls' team. They had a cunning plan under which, when a girl bowled a bad ball, she would squeak "Oh!" in frustration, presumably in an attempt to get the batter to collapse with giggles. I am afraid it seldom worked. But the girls did provide me with one highly surrealist experience. Once when I was having to keep the score as well as umpire, as is not uncommon at this level, our opponents brought on a new bowler. I called out, "Bowler's name, please!" "Von Wittgenstein!" came the reply. She was, sadly, no relation to the great man. I would have liked to say that the way she was bowling suggested that she wasn't convinced of the reality of the wicket, but that would be unfair.

I never managed to discover a first-class cricketer, but a few of my boys did reach international standard in other sports: David Gilford, who became a Ryder Cup golfer; Alun Carter, who played back-row for Wales, and James Haskell, a current member of the England rugby team; and from the girls, Rachel Parish, who won medals for shooting at the 2006 Commonwealth Games.

Cricket: Fantasy Teams

A few years ago, a poll was held to pick what would have been the greatest cricket team of all time. As I recall, the people chosen were:-

Hobbs
Hutton
Bradman
Richards (Viv)
Grace (capt)
Sobers
Botham
Evans (wk)
Lindwall
Trueman
Bedi

Certainly a very strong team!

Christopher Martin-Jenkins recently produced a book, “The 100 Best Cricketers of All Time”: his top eleven names make interesting reading (in this order):-

Bradman
Grace
Sobers
Warne
Hobbs
Tendulkar
Barnes
Hammond
Richards
Gilchrist
Marshall

This is not quite a team, having too many batsmen and insufficient bowlers. (The next four names on his list were all bowlers: McGrath, Muralitharan, Imram Khan and Rhodes)

The “dream team” of the great cricket writer Sir Neville Cardus, from all the cricketers he had watched, was said to be:-

Hobbs
Trumper
Bradman
Macartney
Jackson (capt)
Faulkner
Miller
Rhodes
Oldfield (wk)
Larwood
Barnes

Cardus always preferred the elegant stroke-players and the “characters” to the grafters!

After Don Bradman’s retirement in 1948, journalists selected what they thought would have been his ideal Australian team from his era:-

Ponsford
Morris
Bradman (capt)
Macartney
McCabe
Gregory
Miller
Tallon (wk)
Lindwall
Grimmett
O’Reilly

And for an equivalent English team:-

Hobbs
Hutton
Hammond
Duleepsinhji
Compton
Jardine (capt)
Ames (wk)
Tate
Larwood
Verity
Wright

The Australian team looks stronger; the English team being somewhat short on bowlers.

More recently, when Ritchie Benaud retired as a TV commentator, he nominated the ideal Australian team of his time:-

Morris
Taylor
Chappell (Ian) (capt)
Chappell (Greg)
Harvey
Miller
Gilchrist (wk)
Warne
Lillee
McGrath
Alderman

and also the ideal England team:-

Hutton (capt)
Boycott
May
Compton
Dexter
Botham
Knott (wk)
Laker
Trueman
Statham
Bedser

It is noticeable that these two teams have much the same overall structure and balance. The Australians would be more difficult to bowl against, having more left-handers.

You can create fantasy teams of your own. For instance, here is a postwar team consisting entirely of Bs:-

Boycott
Boon
Bradman
Barrington
Border
Botham
Boucher (wk)
Benaud (capt)
Broad
Bedser
Bedi

The team could probably do with another fast bowler from somewhere; otherwise it looks very powerful

As far as real teams are concerned, rather than fantasy ones, the strongest team ever assembled in my time was, I think, the “Rest of the World” XI that played England in the summer of 1969 :-

Richards (Barry)
Barlow
Kanhai
Pollock (Graeme)
Lloyd
Sobers (capt)
Bland
Proctor
Engineer (wk)
Mackenzie
Intikhab

Although Mackenzie was a little past his best, and Bland was selected mostly for his exciting fielding, I’m confident these players could have held their own against any fantasy side.

The most thrilling Test Match side I remember was the West Indies team of 1963 - the first series I ever watched on television. Ten of the team played in all 5 tests, beating England 3-1, with one match drawn. Oddly enough, they never settled on who should open the batting with Conrad Hunte. This is the team from the Lord's Test, the drawn match, which was the most exciting one in the series:-

Hunte
McMorris
Kanhai
Butcher
Sobers
Solomon
Worrell (capt)
Murray (wk)
Hall
Griffith
Gibbs

It's a shame the West Indies can't manage to find such a team nowadays!