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with illustrations by the author Foreword by Mike Coward

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This edition published in 2008 First published in 1958 Copyright © Arthur Mailey 1958 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act. Allen & Unwin 83 Alexander Street Crows Nest NSW 2065 Australia Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100 Fax: (61 2) 9906 2218 Email: [email protected] Web: www.allenandunwin.com National Library of Australia Cataloguing-in-Publication entry: Mailey, Arthur. 10 for 66 and all that. ISBN 978 1 74175 532 9 (hbk.) Mailey, Arthur. Cricket players–Australia–Biography. Sportswriters–Australia–Biography. Cricket–Australia. 796.358092 Internal design by Joanna Palmer Illustrations by Arthur Mailey Set in 11/15 pt Warnock Pro by Midland Typesetters, Australia Printed in China at Everbest Printing Co. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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GLOUCESTERSHIRE V AUSTRALIA At Cheltenham, August 1921 GLOUCESTERSHIRE (2nd Innings)

C.S. Barnett b. Mailey A.G. Dipper b. Mailey R.P. Keigwin c. Mayne b. Mailey H. Smith c. & b. Mailey W.R. Hammond b. Mailey F.G. Robinson b. Mailey W.H. Rowlands b. Mailey F.J. Seabrook c. & b. Mailey P. Mills c. Pellew b. Mailey C. Parker n.o. J.G. Bessant b. Mailey Extras Total

25 4 65 0 1 4 23 30 3 8 0 12 175

In Gloucestershire’s first innings Warwick Armstrong, going on early, took 2–53; Mailey, given the ball when the tail-enders batted, got away with 3–21. In the county’s second innings, Armstrong, after being belted around for a few overs, threw the ball to Mailey saying rather sarcastically: ‘Here, you can have a go at the good batsmen now and I’ll have a crack at the tail-enders.’ RESULT: 10 FOR 66 AND ALL THAT—and all this.

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Contents

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16

List of illustrations Foreword to the 2008 edition by Mike Coward Foreword to the 1958 edition by the Rt. Hon. R.G. Menzies

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Dream Days Youth Opposing My Hero Picked for Australia Watering the Wicket Test Captains Men at the Other End The Party in the Shack Bosanquet’s Disciples How Great is Jim Laker? Rebels of Cricket Tinkering with the Rules Cricket—Its Joy and Its Future Cricket Dramatised A Test and Two Policemen The World v Mars

1 11 19 28 33 47 61 77 92 115 121 132 143 157 166 171

Epilogue

177

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Illustrations 5 7 8 35 40 41 45 49 50 52 53 57 64 66 84 93

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Mrs Rumble Alma Cottage My only picture was a pin-up of Vic Trumper ‘Something seemed to go wrong’ Dr Pope I nearly collapsed Wally Hammond Percy Fender Bill Woodfull M.A. Noble The ball ricochetted off Warwick’s stomach H.L. Collins Frank Woolley ‘You’d better leave Bob Wookey to me’ Oscar Asche leaves for London Freddy Brown

106 Clarrie Grimmett 108 Bill O’Reilly 112 ‘Now you know why I left that man there’ 117 Tayfield’s field in Melbourne 120 Maurice Tate 122 Lindsay Hassett 127 Harold Larwood 134 Johnny Douglas tore off his glove . . . 137 Bob Wyatt 139 Mackay v Laker 140 I saw my old friend Neville under the stand 145 A memory of Barrie 153 Percy Chapman 158 Douglas Jardine 164 Neville Cardus 165 Bill Bowes 173 ‘Patsy’ Hendren

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Foreword to the 2008 edition BY MIKE COWARD

ears ago, during a television tribute to composer Stephen Sondheim, singer Dorothy Loudon paused during a key change of ‘Broadway Baby’ and thundered: ‘I bet you didn’t know what you had when you wrote this one, Steve.’ As obscure as it may seem, this quotation sprang to mind as I happily revisited 10 for 66 and All That, which Arthur Mailey wrote in the autumn of a remarkable life and saw published just nine years before his death at the age of 80. Perhaps the wisdom gained from living so many summers gave Mailey an inkling that his uplifting story and observations on cricket would comfortably stand the test of time. Much like the game that seduced him from boyhood, there is a simple beauty, a joyfulness and timelessness about Mailey’s work. 10 for 66 and All That is best known for containing arguably the most beautiful and poignant observation in all Australian cricket writing. Recounting his dismissal of his childhood god, Victor Trumper, Mailey wrote: ‘I felt like a boy who had killed a dove.’ These few unforgettable words open a window to the soul of one of the most endearing characters in Australian cricket: one who did not take life or himself or his art too seriously.

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10 for 66 and All That More than anything, it was his generosity of spirit and heartfelt gratitude for the smallest of blessings that enabled him to rise from a humble dwelling with hessian walls in Waterloo in inner southern Sydney and to scale the heights of sport and society. He had no need to call upon a colleague from the fourth estate he served so admirably as a cartoonist and journalist to write the foreword to the first edition of 10 for 66 and All That. Bob Menzies, a friend and admirer who also happened to be the prime minister of the country, undertook the task. What better illustration could there be of the egalitarianism of Australia in the 1950s? Such was his faith in Mailey and his abilities on and beyond the cricket ground that Menzies penned his very warm foreword in March 1956 when 10 for 66 and All That was still a work in progress. Describing Mailey as ‘one of the great human beings of cricket; the genial humorist even to the onlooker’, he foretold a ‘delicious book’. And he was right. There is, however, much more to the work than its deliciousness. Most striking to cricket’s cognoscenti is the book’s relevance today in a country unrecognisable from Mailey’s time. With a deft touch and the wit and self-deprecating humour for which he was renowned, Mailey addressed matters that have so often preoccupied his successors—be they cricket players or craftsmen poised above a sketchpad or keyboard. When he was plying his trade as a leg-spin and googly bowler the ball was bigger, the stumps were smaller and, to use his words, ‘there was no offside l.b.w. concession’. He had to bite his tongue when Herbert Sutcliffe, to name but one distinguished batsman of the day, pushed his pads out to counter a ‘wrong ’un’ pitched fractionally outside the off

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stump and spinning quickly and so threateningly towards the middle stump. Clearly of the view that the bowler was a persecuted species Mailey roguishly and unapologetically flouted new rules that forbade using resin to allow a better grip on the ball and lifting the seam with the fingernail. The self-confessed peaceful and meek citizen became a rebel. Indeed he confides that his captain Herby Collins was a co-conspirator and that England captain J.W.H.T. (Johnny won’t hit today) Douglas was responsible for similar acts of skulduggery. How naïve to think such trickery is new. Indeed, the reading of his chapter ‘Tinkering with the Rules’ will no doubt bring a wry smile to the face of many contemporary players and to erstwhile England captain Mike Atherton in particular. Atherton had dust not resin in his pocket at Lord’s in 1994. Aside from ball-tampering, the greatest blight on the game since the World Series Cricket revolution of the 1970s redefined every aspect of the game has been match-fixing and the gambling of sums of money almost beyond calculation and imagination. The monetary stakes were not as high but nevertheless Mailey and Collins were exposed to these nefarious practices at Adelaide in January 1925 during an Ashes series. With the England team requiring 27 runs to win with two wickets in hand on the seventh day of the match, Collins was visited by ‘a fabulous-looking racecourse man’. Collins said to Mailey: ‘This fellow says it’s worth a hundred quid if we lose the match. Let’s throw him downstairs.’ The man took his leave before he was manhandled and Australia won by eleven runs.

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10 for 66 and All That As Mailey observed, there were times when Collins, bookmaker and gambler, found gambling repulsive. Mailey’s respect and affection for Collins is beautifully encapsulated in his description of his favourite captain: ‘Herby was an enigma, a paradox, a riddle, a parcel of sharp contrasts, a model of inconsistency, a collection of discords, which harmonised and made an interesting and likeable character.’ The player of the 21st century will find 10 for 66 and All That as instructive as it is entertaining. And he will also find it inspirational, for Mailey defied odds beyond the understanding of the middle class of the modern era to prosper at a game which gave him an identity and, ultimately, such a fulfilling life. Of course, each generation is sufficiently arrogant to believe it is breaking new ground and taking the game where it has never been before. 10 for 66 and All That exposes this as a falsehood, and provides richly rewarding insights into the game as it was governed, played and followed in less complicated days. The modernists believe they were responsible for structured team meetings and the forensic analysis of opposing players. Not so. Mailey and his colleagues spent countless hours away from the middle theorising how best to combat the master batsman Jack Hobbs—who in 2000 was adjudged by the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack to be the third greatest cricketer of the 20th century behind Don Bradman and Garfield Sobers. With an acid touch that would no doubt be heartily endorsed by Clarrie Grimmett, ‘Chuck’ Fleetwood-Smith, Bill O’Reilly, and, latterly, Shane Warne, Mailey bemoaned the ineptitude of captains unable to set a field for a leg-spinner and decried the ubiquitous medium-pace trundler and his deleterious impact on the game. With very few exceptions the

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great spin bowlers of cricket were personalities and men of character—not always pleasant but invariably interesting. Mailey may well have been irked by Warne’s welldocumented excesses away from cricket but he would have revelled in his extraordinary ability, enjoyed aspects of his rebelliousness and applauded his preparedness to help friend and foe alike. When once reproached for sharing tips with England’s leg-spinner Ian Peebles, Mailey made it clear that his art was international. Warne was of the same view and possibly has never received appropriate acknowledgement for the assistance he rendered leg-spinners the world over throughout his career. In this regard he was as selfless as Mailey. 10 for 66 and All That is abundantly rich in humour and Mailey paints wonderful pictures of the giants of the game, dissecting their personalities and techniques along the way. Mailey’s philosophy of life and cricket is for the ages. He was eternally grateful for the good things that cricket gave him and with characteristic generosity passed it on. And the cricket community is greatly in the debt of Allen & Unwin, which is in the happy position to ensure it is passed on further. That Mailey’s story is as fresh, uplifting and rewarding as it was in 1958 says much about the glorious game and this fine man who adorned it so. Long may 10 for 66 and All That sustain us. Mike Coward Sydney, January 2008

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Foreword to the 1958 edition BY THE RIGHT HON. R.G. MENZIES P.C., C.H., Q.C., LL.M., Prime Minister of Australia umour which, according to the Oxford Press, is ‘that quality of action, speech or writing which excites amusement’ is at one and the same time universal and local. It is universal because in all countries laughter is one of the saving and balancing faculties of mankind. This is, no doubt, as true among the Esquimos as it is among the Hottentots. But humour is also local, because what is funny in one country is frequently a matter of gravity in others. Hollywood’s humour, which in my own lifetime began with the excruciating wit of the wellthrown custard-pie, has now developed the mystery of the rapid fire and (to the foreigner) unintelligible wisecrack. The wit of the Frenchman, who loves nothing so much as a crisp epigram, is quite different from that of the Englishman who, particularly in the late eighteenth century, loved nothing more than a whimsical epitaph. The sophisticated word-turning of the New Yorker has little in common with the earthy chuckles of Yorkshire and Lancashire. There have been those who used wit when the sun shone, and who reserved the accents of high tragedy for the tragic occasion. On the contrary there have been those (and there were many of them in England during the Blitz) who

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10 for 66 and All That could take their pleasures sadly but met their disasters with defiant fun. An essay could be written on such matters. But I am not writing an essay. I am introducing a book by Arthur Mailey. Arthur Mailey was a great cricketer; one of the bowlers of the century. He was a slow bowler. He was not as slow as J.M. Barrie claims to have been; but he was a slow bowler of ingenious prodigality. He didn’t bowl to keep an end but to begin, for the batsman, an ending. The simple and opulent full toss outside the leg stump, duly despatched with eagerness to the leg boundary, was the mere preliminary to the ball which looked like a high and floating full toss but ended by dropping and twisting and letting the wicket-keeper come into his own. But why should I speak of Mailey the cricketer? More competent people have done this, and even more will, I hope, as the years go on and as memory mellows with the years, do it again. The truth is that my friend, Arthur, didn’t ask me to do this job because he respected my expert cricketing opinion; behind his puckish façade he has far too much sense for that. Arthur Mailey asked me to write a foreword for what I know will be a most delicious book for two admirable reasons. One is that, though he is no political partisan and perhaps votes against me when the spirit (or some other ingredient) moves him, he feels in the goodness of his heart that it would do an Australian Prime Minister no harm if it became known that he was on friendly terms with a famous cricketer. The second reason is that he thinks that I understand something of his nature as a human being. Both reasons are valid. Of the first, I need say no more. Of the second, all I need say is that no living man has had

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more human benefit from great cricketers and great cricket than I have. And, from what I have said, it will be obvious that I am Arthur Mailey’s debtor. For the truth is that cricket is a game not only of skill but of character. It is not something to be hustled through. It requires time, the setting and the delicacies of art to achieve its full expression. That is why every great cricketer is not only a member of a team but an individual endowed with the fascinating faculty of conveying by bat or ball or gesture his personality, far across the distant ropes or pickets and into the very hearts and minds of the spectators. Arthur Mailey was one of the great human beings of cricket; the genial humorist even to the onlooker; the sardonic humorist even to the Woodfulls and the Ponsfords. I was just about to think of him in the past tense, when I saw him at the Testimonial Match to himself and Johnny Taylor on the Sydney ground come out at the interval and please the vast assemblage, including myself, by knocking over Johnny’s middle stump. Many years as it may be since Arthur Mailey bowled in a match, it was fascinating to see him take the ball and spin it up from his hand and amble up to the wicket and take the middle of the house. He was dressed in ordinary clothes, as Johnny was. The whole thing was dramatic and delightful. To explain Arthur Mailey’s character to you all I need say is that when he finally came back and up to the Committee Box he looked at us and said, ‘You know, I made a great mistake that time I took four wickets for 362 on the Melbourne ground; I should have bowled with my coat on.’ One of the glories of being a lover of cricket is that one never meets an old cricketer of international renown without mentally recapturing a sort of cinematograph of him playing at

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10 for 66 and All That his best. But the even greater glory is to enjoy the friendship of a great and famous cricketer who touched nothing in the game that he did not adorn, and whose rich and chuckling humour made friends not only in his own time and on his own playing fields but in the memory of many thousands to whom he brought admiration, pleasure and a rich contentment. R.G. Menzies 28 March 1956

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Dream days hy did I take up cricket? What cell in a partly developed brain caused me to possess a fanatical ambition to succeed at cricket? When and where did it happen? It could not have been prompted by a desire to become rich or glamorous, two of many states which to my young mind were far beyond the reach of a slum kid like myself. Even if I had cherished such desires they would have been quickly dissipated, so far as cricket was concerned, after I saw one of my heroes, Reg Duff, meandering down the Chinese quarters in Haymarket, Sydney, shabbily dressed and with his hair poking through his straw hat. I had seen pictures of this compact figure, wearing the short, turned-up-at-the-ends Kaiser-like moustache, which made his handsome features even more attractive, opening Australia’s innings with the great Victor Trumper. Seen in the street that day he looked merely forlorn—certainly there was no wealth or glamour about him—but the sight did not depress or disappoint me. That dapper little man had walked out with Trumper which was reason enough for him to remain one of my idols, if only a lesser one.

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10 for 66 and All That No, it was something else that made me want to become a cricketer, something far more intangible than a desire for wealth and fame. And, when you think of it, what prompts a person to try to succeed at anything? At what age does one get a desire to become a collector of butterflies or postage stamps or pewters; to climb Everest, swim the English Channel or hurl the discus further than anyone else? These ambitions are seldom hereditary. My father didn’t know the first thing about cricket; the first game he condescended to hesitate in his walk to watch was a minor one in which I played. As far as I know nobody on either side of my family had played any game, let alone cricket. Prenatal influence certainly cannot be blamed because my mother, I remember, seemed to spend all her time cooking over an open fireplace or washing clothes in the backyard, sixteen feet by sixteen in area. She had no time to think of frivolities like cricket. Therefore, the mystery of the origin of my desire for cricket must remain as obscure as the germ which sent the brave Hillary to the top of Everest or the curious Picard to the bottom of the ocean. My environment, from the days when instinct and reason were suspicious of each other, pointed the way to crime or at least to the life of a confidence man, rather than that of a cricketer. There was sufficient poverty and frustration to destroy the germ of ambition in any form. Even a better sense of values would have been a hindrance rather than a blessing, causing me to be discontented with the life around me and sowing a bitter envy for the possessions of other people.

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I lived in the same world as the boy next door or the beersodden hag down the lane who screeched, ‘Willie! Willie! come ’ome, you young b——, and get my beer before the pub shuts.’ The terrified Willie would drop the home-made bat and race home like a hare. I hated the woman not because of her thirst but because she had deprived me of somebody to practise my bowling on. Home influence was somewhat divided. An idealistic, imaginative, industrious mother found it rather difficult to manage on my father’s wages when Bacchus had taken his share. My father, a handsome soldierly man, proud of his Northern Irish ancestry, thought the possession of ‘blue blood’ was a worthy exchange for a somewhat meagre regard for his own family. A gentleman to his fingertips, charming, easy-going and gentle, he just had that one weakness which has grown out of all proportion since his day—a liking for booze. My parents, however, shared at least one really worthwhile ideal—they loved the Royal Family. While we had no Gainsboroughs, Reynolds, Rembrandts or Van Dycks, there were pinned to the sagging hessian of the walls, almanacks bearing pictures of the haughty Queen Victoria, the Prince Consort, the robust Battenburg, with Lord Kitchener thrown in to prove Father’s loyalty to his second love. My ancestors, I was given to understand, migrated to Australia with a British regiment—it might have been the Third Buffs, a name I often heard at the meal table. On the other hand there might have been some convict strain. I don’t know for sure, nor do I care very much. As a girl, Mother worked as a housemaid at some swell houses around Sydney. Later, she was employed at Petty’s, a

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10 for 66 and All That time-honoured exclusive hotel which the city’s early ‘bluebloods’ used to patronise. She would speak of champagne, chicken, caviare, beautiful frocks and immaculate evening suits. Such things belonged to another world but to me it was as if she were telling fairy stories. Alongside Petty’s was St Philip’s church where we were both christened and married. One sizzling summer afternoon after the day’s washing was done and that most potent smell of sun-bleached unironed linen floated through the kitchen— I was almost going to say laundry—my mother said, ‘I always wanted to go back to Petty’s Hotel one day and be served with a meal. It was such a homely place.’ Twenty-five years later her dream came true. On the night of a Sydney Test match we dined at Petty’s and watched through the window a wedding group leaving the church. It was chicken we dined on and champagne we drank. A woman often dropped in while my mother was ironing and they would have tea together. Her name was Henrietta Rumble. It was Henrietta Rumble, carrying a black maternity bag, who had plodded over the sandhills of Waterloo, South Sydney one January morning in the late 1880s. With her was my tenyear-old crippled brother, who had been aroused from his bed a couple of hours before to fetch Mrs Rumble to our home where ‘Mother wasn’t feeling too well’. Let us imagine the picture that met the eyes of the local milk carter. Silhouetted against the dawn sky over Randwick way, the gaunt Mrs Rumble, with her spacious skirts trailing in the wind and the big black bag swinging past her body like a pendulum which had completely ignored all the laws of

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gravitation, hurried to give aid. Beside her laboured the cripple, bobbing from his long to his short leg and vice versa, occasionally making up a certain amount of leeway by hopping five or six yards on his ‘good’ leg and allowing the other one to dangle in the air like the shawl round his companion’s neck. Coming to a rise near Waterloo school, they stopped and in the gloom the boy pointed to a little wooden shape on a distant hill, and off they set again. When they arrived at the two-roomed dwelling, Father was boiling a bucket of water in the backyard, an oil lamp flickered in Mrs Rumble the bedroom, and, as Mrs Henrietta Rumble told me some years later, ‘Your lovely mother was quietly sobbing in bed.’ Apart from causing a certain amount of interest in my own family and a greater measure of apprehension on the part of the local tradespeople, my entry into the world caused scarcely a stir. On any score card I was ‘absent, too young’. Almost before I knew the difference between insults and compliments, Mrs Rumble told me I was a very good baby, if not particularly good-looking. I had a large head and a frail body.

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10 for 66 and All That My lungs, however, struck a rich note in the dear old soul’s heart. Her husband, a docile henpecked man with a wispy moustache, was the local wicket-keeper, a position of relative dignity in this village Bedlam. His brand of diplomacy was an acquisition to his wicket-keeping: no man in the village of Zetland was more generous to umpires before and occasionally after the match. Fred Rumble never whipped the bails off without a certain amount of preliminary lobbying. ‘This fellow’s taking a risk, Charley. I’ve already told him he’s standing in line with his middle stump. “That doesn’t matter,” says he, “the umpire’s blind, anyhow.” I’ll have to appeal, Charley, if this goes on.’ When the batsman was ready for the kill Fred Rumble’s high-pitched voice would split the air to high heaven, sending Charley the Umpire’s index finger shooting straight up in judgement. Hence our loyal midwife’s attraction to my lungs. Alma Cottage, which still stands—or rather leans against the house next door—was built on the slope of a sandhill. It began as a two-roomed hessian-lined wooden structure and was designed by my father’s brother Sam, who seemed to do his best to avoid any of the Wren influence but showed a strong leaning toward Heath Robinson. This was rather fortunate because the steep slope of the ground demanded something unorthodox so that the family could reach the ground from the kitchen without the aid of a fire escape. A distinctive feature of Uncle Sam’s design was that as each child was born another room could be tacked on the back, and two steps to the ground were built in readiness for the next addition. But I have to record that operations ceased when the seventh child came, since the

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Alma Cottage Waterloo Council objected to two steps jutting out into the back lane. During the winter the hessian partitions bellied and flapped like the sails of a ship in distress and clouds of sand blew through the cracks of the floor. The only picture I had in my room was a pin-up of Victor Trumper, a replica of the one at Lord’s which shows a beautiful off-drive. When the wind blew, Vic appeared to go through his whole repertoire of strokes. As we were unable to expand, Father, aided and abetted by brother Sam, hit on the idea of knocking the side walls down and using the brick walls of the houses on either side which had just been built. This work was carried out when our neighbours were on holiday. The alteration made our rooms eight inches wider, which was quite satisfactory in a place with a sixteen-foot beam. This brainwave reaped further rewards for us later when we sold the old home as a brick house. I intended to visit the old home one day—but my solicitor advised me to wait till the neighbours were on holiday.

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My only picture was a pin-up of Vic Trumper

With unemployment and other financial disadvantages, times were pretty tough in my young days, so tough that seven of us had to take it in turn to get the top of Father’s boiled egg. In some ways poverty is a stimulant: it drove me to execute my first work of art for public adoration. It was a drawing of a girl who looked like a cross between a Gibson Girl and Queen Victoria. The inscription read: Ballroom Dancing Taught SELECT. 6d. a lesson.

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This enterprise may have swelled the family treasury but I paid a terrific price. My room was divided to accommodate the pupils. The bed was pushed up against the hessian, on the other side of which was the piano, belted for hours by my crippled brother William, whose treble gave some indication of the tune but whose left hand showed a complete lack of discipline. Even now when I hear ‘Dolly Grey’ I suffer every emotion but nostalgia. Still, it was in this humble dwelling of billowing hessian, hissing sand and the melancholy whine of wind through the rafters, that two heroes—Walter Hugh and Henry Charles— were born. Tall, dark, handsome Walter lost his arm at Passchendaele and eventually died of his war injuries, and the quietly spoken, idealistic Henry Charles fell at Ypres. When my mother took a remembrance token from France to put on Henry’s grave at Ypres in 1921, the Customs officials on the Belgian border charged her duty. An over-zealous attitude to their duty, one feels. It was in this shack that the writer lived with his gods of the cricket field and the field of art. For some strange reason cricket and art were the two callings that appealed to him more than any others. Possibly because of limited mental powers, and a strong desire for personal independence, he preferred a future which was individual, congenial and, to his unsophisticated mind, romantic. He found the brick State school across the paddock cold and unsympathetic. All the teachers, with the exception of Dick Spears, lacked understanding and resiliency. He was belted because he was discovered sketching instead of poring over some futile mathematical problem.

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10 for 66 and All That He gave up the struggle to acquire a comprehensive education after four years and after combing the city, got a job pressing trouser seams. It was to be the first of many jobs.

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2. Youth o celebrate the occasion of my first job, Mother bought me my first hat—a straw ‘pepper-and-salt’. The other hats, from a pill-box issued to Father when he enlisted for the Crimean War, to the ‘fore and aft’, had passed, like the crown of England, from one head to another, with less dignity perhaps but certainly with a greater degree of peaceful cooperation. When I reported for duty the foreman of the place, with a sinister smirk on his face, showed me to the cloakroom. Returning at the lunch interval to the hat depository I saw other employees examining my straw model. It fell on the ground. One man gave it a kick. The rest joined in and when it was kicked to me I swallowed a large lump in my throat and added my contribution to the fun; while I thought of my mother who had worn her knuckles to the bone—and not so metaphorically either—trying to save money to buy what was now a heap of straw. At the end of the day I collected the remnants, carried them home and made the excuse that the hat had blown off and rolled under the hoofs of a cab horse. I also suggested that straw hats were not convenient in the rush and bustle of a big city like

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10 for 66 and All That Sydney. With that amazing thrift and adaptation she possessed, my mother turned the mess of straw into a Gibson Girl creation, put it on sideways and gave the impression that things were looking up for the Mailey family at last. Like the hat my seam-pressing days did not last very long. My boss, the meanest man I ever knew, caught me leaning over the pressing board thinking. What was I thinking? About Victor Trumper as usual, I fancy. I couldn’t imagine he had ever had to press seams or be cooped up in a factory and ridiculed by his workmates. Perhaps he was living in a castle or a palace somewhere listening to lovely music while he was served with the tastiest food. Perhaps sitting on the deck of one of those wonderful Orient ships on his way to England. England? Gosh, I’d never even spoken to anybody who’d been to England. What chance did I have of ever getting there? Certainly not as a seam presser on five bob a week, nor as a cricketer the way things were going. Maybe though if this job lasted long enough I could save enough to see England when they came to play us again . . . a bob a week . . . a terrific struggle but it’d be worth it. Next week I would be able to save it because I was due for a rise to six bob a week. Gosh, fancy sitting on the Hill and seeing Victor Trumper in the flesh—and all the others, MacLaren, Jessop, Armstrong— ‘What’s up with you—are you sick or something?’ It was the boss’s voice and at that moment it was like a fast ball in the teeth. ‘Why aren’t you working? Come on, tell me.’ ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I must have been dreaming, sir.’ ‘Well, you’re not paid to dream. Get your coat and get off the premises. Come back tomorrow for your pay.’ It was a long walk home. I didn’t quite know how to break

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the news to Mother. Five shillings wasn’t much money but at least it could buy a week’s bread and some soup bones. I felt very ashamed. And I told her the truth. ‘Never mind, son, you might get a better job nearer home. And as for your wages—if you do go back, throw the money in the old miser’s face. Simon Legree, I would call him, the mongrel!’ I didn’t know who this Simon Legree was, but I remember his name was always used when unpleasant people were discussed by the family. What reputation he had was vindicated a few weeks later. Willie, the village hag’s son, working in the same factory scalded his legs when carrying an urn of boiling tea up a flight of stairs. After weeks of unemployment owing to his injuries he returned to the factory and made a personal claim for compensation. ‘Compensation!’ roared the boss. ‘Why, we ought to make you pay for the tea!’ By comparison Simon Legree was a gentleman. During my unemployment I often walked to the Sydney Domain—about three miles from my home—where I knew men from adjacent offices would be practising in the nets. Never was I invited to bat and seldom to bowl but I fielded like a slave and helped them to pack the gear at the end. Anything to be near cricket. Often when something prevented practice I would stroll across the Domain to the National Art Gallery and spend the afternoon admiring the great pictures, particularly ‘Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon’, ‘Rorkes Drift’ and ‘The Scoffers’ by Frank Brangwyn, and a painting of Arundel Castle

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10 for 66 and All That drenched in burning sunset. These were my favourites probably because they were the largest and came all the way from England. It was during these visits to the Domain that I discovered something which possibly turned the whole course of my life. Somewhat disappointed and depressed because of my failure to find work I happened to be passing Waterloo Park where several youths were playing with a cricket ball. Of course I joined in. One who seemed to know more than the others had learnt the trick of bowling the ‘bosie’ or ‘wrong ’un’. I could always bowl an ordinary leg-break but this new freak ball which Bosanquet had brought to Australia (either when on tour with P.F. Warner’s team in 1904 or while travelling through Australia en route for New Zealand a short time previously) mystified me. However, I cottoned on to it after a time and rushed home like somebody who had found a nugget of gold. I practised night and day, first of all spinning it in the air, then later allowing it to reach the ground a few feet ahead of me. Although a labour of love, it had its drawbacks because nothing was safe from destruction in the modest dining-room. What little crockery we possessed was smashed to pieces. No other woman but my mother would have stood this bombardment even with an orange (I couldn’t afford a cricket ball). I was playing junior cricket in a local paddock at the time but didn’t have sufficient courage or ability to use the ‘bosie’ which, completely uncontrollable, might easily have struck the umpire or batsman at the bowler’s end. More experienced bowlers had used it in club matches, notably H.V. (Ranji) Hordern who went off to Philadelphia to study dentistry. He claimed much success with it during tours through England

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with a couple of Philadelphian teams and later returned to play against England and South Africa between 1908 and 1911. In the meantime, a fine New South Wales batsman, Charles Barnes, although not a regular bowler, had exploited this particular ball and caused havoc against Victoria on one occasion. At his heels came Sid Emery, who visited England during the 1912 triangular contests. The arrival of the South Africans with Schwartz, Vogler, Faulkner and other ‘bosie’ bowlers gave further impetus to Bosanquet’s creation. These men were far ahead of me in technique and experience and it may have been unfortunate that two of them —Sid Emery and Charles Barnes—were members of Redfern, a club of which later I became a member. But of course when I discovered the ‘bosie’ it was not in my wildest dreams that before very long I would be playing in first-grade cricket, let alone in inter-state or Test matches. Being unskilled and largely uneducated, getting and keeping a job was my dominating problem: the jobs I took to keep out of the poor-house could scarcely have improved my chances of playing for a selfrespecting club. Often my shortcomings almost drove me to complete surrender of all the principles inculcated in me by my mother. It was a dangerous age for me to be in such desperation: I could so easily have thrown in the towel and drifted on to the scrap-heap of human endeavour. In fact, I gave up cricket for almost a whole summer and went fishing with my mother and crippled brother because I felt that here, at least, was congenial and sympathetic company. I didn’t mind being a labourer or a paper-seller or even a collector of bottles and broken glass but I did want something

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10 for 66 and All That regular, something that might lead to independence and freedom, even if the luxuries of life were to be denied me. Generally speaking, and regular employment apart, I don’t think I was too much of a flop as a youngster. My home-made kites flew better than those of any of the other lads; the locomotives I made out of old clocks were much admired by my companions. With my boomerang, which always came back to me, I killed snakes out Botany way without turning a hair. When I was twelve, and for five-and-sixpence, I painted a plaque as a wedding present. I won a boxing bout and a rifle match in the slums. I stole tomatoes in a Chinaman’s market garden and got a real good belting for doing so. (I can still hear War Lee’s uncovered toes crack as he booted me through the bush.) I was something of an expert at writing excuse letters for schoolboy truants who had gone fishing instead of attending school—in fact, I wrote so many that my own education was neglected. Then there was the mouth organ. No Christmas carol was complete without young Mailey on this instrument. The proprietor of the music shop had such faith in me that he would allow me to take a mouth organ and pay for it after I had finished my house-to-house collection. I enjoyed to the hilt all these activities until the time came when I realised that I couldn’t go on doing everything off my own bat, that I must conform with modern requirements, adjust myself to a world that demanded good speech, fine clothes and some organised sense of values. At sixteen I was given the opportunity to become a glassblower. A galvanised iron shed in which a furnace melted glass to a light amber liquid was my next workroom. On a summer

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day the heat was intense. Even without the furnace the unprotected shed registered 110 degrees in the shade. The floor was of roughly laid bricks which often burnt holes in my hobnailed blucher boots. This was hell all right, but it held at least three virtues. I became the youngest bottle-blower in the state at a wage of £3 a week—half as much as an MP received in those days. It allowed me to buy decent clothes and pay the fee to join an art class. And, much more important perhaps, the continual spinning of the four-foot pipe which held the molten glass gave me fingers of great strength and toughness. When bowling, my fingers never became calloused, worn or tired, and this, I feel, was responsible for the fact that I never met a bowler who could spin the ball more viciously than I, even if my direction or length were faulty. ‘Chuck’ Fleetwood-Smith might have been an exception. Continual blowing expanded and strengthened my lungs and later enabled me to bowl for hours without showing much sign of fatigue. Thinking back, I feel that greater use could have been made of my lung power when appealing, but as it was I seemed to get along on what was described by Neville Cardus as a ‘somewhat apologetic whimper’. After work I hurried out of the bottle works, in clothes saturated with sweat, rushed up to Redfern oval and practised in the nets. My length, never at any period of my cricketing career satisfactory, was at this time abominable. Several times the ball went off course and struck the batsman in the next net and on at least one occasion the ball was taken off me. After practice I sped back to the house, tore some clothes off the nail on the back of the bedroom door, and off I went to my drawing lessons at ‘Watty’s’ studio at the other end of the city.

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10 for 66 and All That A crazy strike broke out in the bottle works and much against my grain as an individualist I too had to stop work. I never went back. I had saved £26 and it paid for my first trip on an ocean ship as a third-class passenger to Tasmania. That was the first and last time I had to pay my own fare on a sea voyage, and I have made eleven trips to England, three to America, three to Africa and six to New Zealand. Although I was sorry that a strike should put an end to my job I certainly wasn’t sorry to give up my tough labours at the bottle works. In retrospect, it becomes part of the obvious pattern of my life, but it wasn’t so easy to live through. While I was there I used to practise bowling during ‘spellos’ and lunch intervals. I always had a cricket ball with me wherever I was working, just in case there was a brick wall or a fence to bowl at. And I sometimes think of the two Yorkshire bottle-blowers drinking large mugs of ale during those intervals and singing out as I practised: ‘Oh, yes, you’ll go to England, lad— IF YOU PAY YOUR OWN FARE!’ Did it ever occur to them, in later years, that fifty per cent of their prophecy came true?

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3. Opposing my hero ore unemployment—and still I carried a cricket ball as I trudged the streets. I had drifted into a lower grade of cricket, though it was still of a fairly good standard, and I was told by some of my team-mates that I was capable of bowling a very dangerous ball. It didn’t come up as often as it should, but it might lead to something. However, I should be well advised to lessen the spin and concentrate on length. I was flattered that my fellow cricketers should think that even a few of the balls I delivered had devil in them. All the same, there was a rebellious imp sitting on my shoulder that whispered: ‘Take no notice, cobber. They’re crazy. Millions can bowl a good length but few can really spin the ball. Keep the spin and practise, practise, practise.’ Then came a commission for a house-painting job. It was a house near Botany Bay and it belonged to my brother-in-law. Wages? A bat that had been given to my brotherin-law by a distant relative who had taken part in the 1904 English tour. But what a relative! It was Victor Trumper himself—the fantastic, legendary Trumper, my particular

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10 for 66 and All That hero. A hundred pounds could not have given me more pleasure. Fancy getting a bat which my hero had actually used in a Test at Lord’s: a flattish bat with a springy handle and a blade curved like the bowl of a spoon. This was another link closer to the great batsman and I was more than ever determined to improve my bowling. The ‘wrong ’un’, that legacy from the great Bosanquet, like Bateman’s ‘one-note man’ seemed to be getting me somewhere, for after several seasons in Sydney lower-grade teams I found myself in first grade, a class of cricket in which inter-state and Test players participate. At the same time, and having done my house-painting, I got another regular job. I became an A Class labourer on the Water and Sewerage Board. Things were certainly coming my way: I had never worn a collar and tie to work before. My mother had always hoped that I would get a ‘white collar’ job like Mr Rumble some day— and here it was. It is difficult to realise that a relatively minor event in one’s life can still remain the most important through the years. I was chosen to play for Redfern against Paddington—and Paddington was Victor Trumper’s club. This was unbelievable, fantastic. It could never happen— something was sure to go wrong. A war—an earthquake —Trumper might fall sick. A million things could crop up in the two or three days before the match. I sat on my bed and looked at Trumper’s picture still pinned on the canvas wall. It seemed to be breathing with the movement of the draught between the skirting. I glanced

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at his bat standing in a corner of the room, then back at the gently moving picture. I just couldn’t believe that this, to me, ethereal and godlike figure could step off the wall, pick up the bat and say quietly, ‘Two legs, please, umpire,’ in my presence. My family, usually undemonstrative and self-possessed, found it difficult to maintain that reserve which, strange as it may seem, was characteristic of my father’s Northern Irish heritage. ‘H’m,’ said Father. ‘Playing against Trumper on Saturday. By jove, you’ll cop old harry if you’re put on to bowl at him.’ ‘Why should he?’ protested Mother. ‘You never know what you can do till you try.’ I had nothing to say. I was little concerned with what should happen to me in the match. What worried me was that something would happen to Trumper which would prevent his playing. Although at this time I had never seen Trumper play, on occasions I trudged from Waterloo across the sandhills to the Sydney Cricket Ground and waited at the gate to watch the players coming out. Once I had climbed on a tram and actually sat opposite my hero for three stops. I would have gone further but having no money I did not want to take the chance of being kicked in the pants by the conductor. Even so I had been taken half a mile out of my way. In my wildest dreams I never thought I would ever speak to Trumper let alone play against him. I am fairly phlegmatic by nature but between the period of my selection and the match I must have behaved like a half-wit.

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10 for 66 and All That Right up to my first Test match I always washed and pressed my own flannels, but before this match I pressed them not once but several times. On the Saturday I was up with the sparrows and looking anxiously at the sky. It was a lovely morning but it still might rain. Come to that, lots of things could happen in ten hours—there was still a chance that Vic could be taken ill or knocked down by a tram or twist his ankle or break his arm . . . My thoughts were interrupted by a vigorous thumping on the back gate. I looked out of the washhouse-bathroomwoodshed-workshop window and saw that it was the milkman who was kicking up the row. ‘Hey!’ he roared ‘—yer didn’t leave the can out. I can’t wait around here all day. A man should pour it in the garbage tin— that’d make yer wake up a bit!’ On that morning I wouldn’t have cared whether he poured the milk in the garbage tin or all over me. I didn’t belong to this world. I was playing against the great Victor Trumper. Let the milk take care of itself. I kept looking at the clock. It might be slow—or it might have stopped! I’d better whip down to the Zetland Hotel and check up. Anyhow, I mightn’t bowl at Trumper after all. He might get out before I come on. Or I mightn’t get to bowl at all—after all, I can’t put myself on. Wonder what Trumper’s doing this very minute . . . bet he’s not ironing his flannels. Sends them to the laundry, I suppose. He’s probably got two sets of flannels anyway. Perhaps he’s at breakfast, perhaps he’s eating bacon and eggs. Wonder if he knows I’m playing against him? Don’t suppose he’s ever heard of me. Wouldn’t worry him anyhow, I shouldn’t think. Gosh, what a long morning! Think I’ll

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dig the garden. No, I won’t—I want to keep fresh. Think I’ll lie down for a bit . . . better not, I might fall off to sleep and be late. The morning did not pass in this way. Time just stopped. I couldn’t bring myself to doing anything in particular and yet I couldn’t settle to the thought of not doing anything. I was bowling to Trumper and I was not bowling to Trumper. I was early and I was late. In fact, I think I was slightly out of my mind. I didn’t get to the ground so very early after all, mainly because it would have been impossible for me to wait around so near the scene of Trumper’s appearance—and yet for it to rain or news to come that something had prevented Vic from playing. ‘Is he here?’ I asked Harry Goddard, our captain, the moment I did arrive at the ground. ‘Is who here?’ he countered. My answer was probably a scornful and disgusted look. I remember that it occurred to me to say, ‘Julius Caesar, of course’ but that I stopped myself being cheeky because this was one occasion when I couldn’t afford to be. Paddington won the toss and took first knock. When Trumper walked out to bat, Harry Goddard said to me: ‘I’d better keep you away from Vic. If he starts on you he’ll probably knock you out of grade cricket.’ I was inclined to agree with him yet at the same time I didn’t fear punishment from the master batsman. All I wanted to do was just to bowl at him. I suppose in their time other ambitious youngsters have wanted to play on the same stage with Henry Irving, or sing with Caruso or Melba, to fight with Napoleon or sail the seas with Columbus. It wasn’t

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10 for 66 and All That conquest I desired. I simply wanted to meet my hero on common ground. Vic, beautifully clad in creamy, loose-fitting but welltailored flannels, left the pavilion with his bat tucked under his left arm and in the act of donning his gloves. Although slightly pigeon-toed in the left foot he had a springy athletic walk and a tendency to shrug his shoulders every few minutes, a habit I understand he developed through trying to loosen his shirt off his shoulders when it became soaked with sweat during his innings. Arriving at the wicket, he bent his bat handle almost to a right angle, walked up the pitch, prodded about six yards of it, returned to the batting crease and asked the umpire for ‘two legs’, took a quick glance in the direction of fine leg, shrugged his shoulders again and took up his stance. I was called to bowl sooner than I had expected. I suspect now that Harry Goddard changed his mind and decided to put me out of my misery early in the piece. Did I ever bowl that first ball? I don’t remember. My head was in a whirl. I really think I fainted and the secret of the mythical first ball has been kept over all these years to save me embarrassment. If the ball was sent down it must have been hit for six, or at least four, because I was awakened from my trance by the thunderous booming Yabba who roared: ‘O for a strong arm and a walking stick!’ I do remember the next ball. It was, I imagined, a perfect leg-break. When it left my hand it was singing sweetly like a humming top. The trajectory couldn’t have been more graceful if designed by a professor of ballistics. The tremendous leg-spin caused the ball to swing and curve from the off and move in line

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with the middle and leg stump. Had I bowled this particular ball at any other batsman I would have turned my back early in its flight and listened for the death rattle. However, consistent with my idolisation of the champion, I watched his every movement. He stood poised like a panther ready to spring. Down came his left foot to within a foot of the ball. The bat, swung from well over his shoulders, met the ball just as it fizzed off the pitch, and the next sound I heard was a rapping on the offside fence. It was the most beautiful shot I have ever seen. The immortal Yabba made some attempt to say something but his voice faded away to the soft gurgle one hears at the end of a kookaburra’s song. The only person on the ground who didn’t watch the course of the ball was Victor Trumper. The moment he played it he turned his back, smacked down a few tufts of grass and prodded his way back to the batting crease. He knew where the ball was going. What were my reactions? Well, I never expected that ball or any other ball I could produce to get Trumper’s wicket. But that being the best ball a bowler of my type could spin into being, I thought that at least Vic might have been forced to play a defensive shot, particularly as I was almost a stranger too and it might have been to his advantage to use discretion rather than valour. After I had bowled one or two other reasonably good balls without success I found fresh hope in the thought that Trumper had found Bosanquet, creator of the ‘wrong ’un’ or ‘bosie’ (which I think a better name), rather puzzling. This left me with one shot in my locker, but if I didn’t use it quickly I would be taken out of the firing line. I decided, therefore, to

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10 for 66 and All That try this most undisciplined and cantankerous creation of the great B.J. Bosanquet—not, as many may think, as a compliment to the inventor but as the gallant farewell, so to speak, of a warrior who refused to surrender until all his ammunition was spent. Again fortune was on my side in that I bowled the ball I had often dreamed of bowling. As with the leg-break, it had sufficient spin to curve in the air and break considerably after making contact with the pitch. If anything it might have had a little more top-spin, which would cause it to drop rather suddenly. The sensitivity of a spinning ball against a breeze is governed by the amount of spin imparted, and if a ball bowled at a certain pace drops on a certain spot, one bowled with identical pace but with more top-spin should drop eighteen inches or two feet shorter. For this reason I thought the difference in the trajectory and ultimate landing of the ball might provide a measure of uncertainty in Trumper’s mind. Whilst the ball was in flight this reasoning appeared to be vindicated by Trumper’s initial movement. As at the beginning of my over he sprang in to attack but did not realise that the ball, being an off-break, was floating away from him and dropping a little quicker. Instead of his left foot being close to the ball it was a foot out of line. In a split second Vic grasped this and tried to make up the deficiency with a wider swing of the bat. It was then I could see a passageway to the stumps with our ’keeper, Con Hayes, ready to claim his victim. Vic’s bat came through like a flash but the ball passed between his bat and legs, missed the leg stump by a fraction, and the bails were whipped off with the great batsman at least two yards out of his ground.

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Vic had made no attempt to scramble back. He knew the ball had beaten him and was prepared to pay the penalty, and although he had little chance of regaining his crease on this occasion I think he would have acted similarly if his back foot had been only an inch from safety. As he walked past me he smiled, patted the back of his bat and said, ‘It was too good for me.’ There was no triumph in me as I watched the receding figure. I felt like a boy who had killed a dove.

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4. Picked for Australia y first season in these A Grade games was not marked by any great success. My length was far too erratic, my approach to the wicket a hesitant, stuttering run that gave the impression I wasn’t particularly anxious to get rid of the ball. Nevertheless, my effort against Vic Trumper, whether a fluke or otherwise, remained in my favour and apparently I lost little or no prestige when later my hero attacked my bowling as if I were sending down a toy balloon. I have good reason to believe that it was Trumper himself who spread the news that Mailey was capable of bowling an occasional good ball though he needed plenty of practice and a tour if possible. Imagine my feelings, when, up to my knees in mud during my Water Board employment, I was approached by a tallish man who asked: ‘Would you like to come to Canada and the States on a cricket tour?’ It was Edgar Mayne, a batsman who had toured England with the 1912 Australian team and a great admirer and personal friend of Trumper. This team, which, besides Mayne, included Kelleway, Emery, Matthews, S.E. Gregory, Webster, MacLaren,

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Whatty, D. Smith and Carkeek, had returned from England via America and lost by three runs to the Philadelphians, mainly because of Barton King, who in the match captured nine wickets for 78 runs. Now our chaps wanted another crack at them. We were managed by R.B. Benjamin, a small rotund Jew wearing the biggest diamond I had ever seen, and this time the team consisted of A. Diamond (captain), S.H. Emery, C.G. Macartney, W. Bardsley, H.L. Collins, L.A. Cody, P.S. Arnott and myself of New South Wales; J.N. Crawford, E.R. Mayne, J. Down and G. Campbell of South Australia. We lost only one match, against Germantown C.C., Philadelphia, in August 1913. For the local side P.H. Clark scored a brilliant 82 and in the Australians’ second innings collected six for 38 with his off-breaks. It was here that I saw the best fielding in my life. We had only three men bowled out in two innings. W.P. O’Neill took ten slip catches. Young Malley? In the first innings he was caught by O’Neill but on his second visit to the wicket was more successful—0 not out. Following our return to Australia I found myself a pygmy among giants. I was asked to join a team to tour New Zealand, the tour being organised by that great benefactor of New Zealand cricket, Arthur (now Sir Arthur) Sims. And what a team we had! It comprised M.A. Noble (captain), V.T. Trumper, V.S. Ransford, H.L. Collins, J.N. Crawford, W.W. Armstrong, F. Laver, W. McGregor, C. McKenzie, L.A. Cody, E.L. Waddy and Dr C.E. Doffing. These were the men I had idolised. In that canvas-lined bedroom many hours had passed while I lay with my hands

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10 for 66 and All That behind my head imagining myself in the field with them. Now fantasy had become reality, and, as must always be the case when this happens, it left me wondering whether I was really wide awake or still dreaming. Unlike many cricketers I have travelled with, not one of these particular players had to be taken off the pedestal I had put them on, least of all the admirable, sincere Frank Laver, about whose team management I had heard vicious reports from time to time. There was trouble with the Board of Control which culminated in the refusal of six of Australia’s greatest cricket personalities—Armstrong, Hill, Trumper, Ransford, Carter and Laver—to tour England in 1912, the tour which I have just mentioned. But just what it was all about I didn’t know at the time. I found it hard to go back to labouring after the heady excitement of these tours, but having become more or less a regular member of the New South Wales team after the First World War I was conscious that my fortunes were definitely on the upgrade. It was in the early summer of 1920 that I took my next step forward. I had risen to the rank of water meter cleaner, a job I feel was sponsored by a cricket-loving foreman, who regarded a complimentary ticket to the Sydney Cricket Ground a just reward for one who could close his eyes to the deficiencies of meter cleaners. The M.C.C. team skippered by Johnny Douglas had just arrived in Australia and was cleaning up the southern states. The scene shifts to a coolabah tree near a suburban fowlhouse. I sat under its branches cleaning a water meter. Cricket

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was in the air and Australia’s team for the First Test was about to be chosen. As I unloosened the bolts of that meter I allowed myself to wonder whether I had an outside chance of wearing the green cap. A white Orpington which had just produced an egg chuckled as it blinked its way across the yard, while a large Rhode Island rooster threw his beak to the heavens and crowed majestically. Thought-reading is not confined to humans. I seemed to make little headway with meters that day and was preparing to snatch a quiet nap in the afternoon shade when I heard: ‘Piper . . . piper . . . Test team picked. Piper.’ I had a few coppers in my pocket and was prepared to spend one for such news even if it meant having to walk one tram section to my home. I got the paper and deliberately looked at every page but the one on which I knew the Test team would be printed. I was longing to know if I had made the Australian team but had no wish at all to learn that I had been left out. As I went on feverishly turning the pages even the fowls seemed to be jeering at me. Go on, Mailey, you coot. Can’t you take it? What a fine Test player you’d make—you’re just a bundle of nerves. I made an effort and slapped the paper open at the fateful page. Although there was a mass of print before my eyes the names of the team hit me as if they were printed in headline size. MAILEY, NSW . . . yes, I was in. I cannot be sure whether I reassembled the water meter. After all, it was thirty-six years ago. Perhaps the poor old lady in the cottage hasn’t had any water since. But I do remember what happened in the tram-car on the way home. All the men on the tram were greedily devouring their papers. I felt I must talk to somebody to convince myself that

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10 for 66 and All That it wasn’t all a dream. Opposite me a big burly chap was reading a racing guide. ‘Did you see the team?’ I asked. ‘Wot team?’ ‘The Australian Test team. It’s just been picked. It’s in the papers.’ ‘Give us a squint,’ he demanded. He ran his eye down the names. ‘What do you think of it?’ I asked. ‘B— lousy. I dunno why the ’ell they picked Mailey.’ I left the tram, the bloke and the paper at the next stop.

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5. Watering the wicket scrambled through my first Test without doing much harm and felt that with a little luck I might be chosen for the second match of the series to be played a month or so later. A Test match place meant £25, almost eight weeks’ wages at the Water Board, and perhaps more important, a measure of pride to a little hard-worked woman and her war-crippled son who watched the match from a public stand. My independent mother never went to the Members’ enclosure even though she had a ticket. ‘Too many toffs there,’ she said. ‘And we’re quite happy. We’ve got some of our digger friends here.’ I remember one occasion when she wasn’t so happy though. Out in the middle I was having a pretty rough time at the hands of Jack Hobbs, Patsy Hendren and Frank Woolley, and the crowd became hostile. The immortal ‘Yabba’s’ voice boomed out: ‘Oh, for a strong arm and a walkin’ stick!’ every time I attempted to bowl. However, I eventually picked up a couple of wickets,

I

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10 for 66 and All That changed quickly into mufti in the interval and joined my mother whose eyes, I noticed, were still moist. She turned round and said fiercely to a rather roughlooking character: ‘Now say what you said about him on the field!’ ‘Blimey, lady,’ he said, ‘it was only a joke. I knew all the time you was his old lady. I was only kiddin’ to yer. He’s the best bowler in the team.’ After that they became good friends. I had much broken time at the Water Board that summer. Inter-state games and Tests in other states occupied me and I must confess that I also used some of the Board’s time, for which I was paid, practising and attending lunches. One lunch engagement might have had a disastrous ending or perhaps not taken place at all if the luck which so often got me out of trouble on the cricket field had not come to my assistance again. Australia had just beaten England in a Sydney Test match and the New South Wales members of the Australian team were invited to be the guests of the directors of Farmers, Sydney, at lunch the following week. By a strange coincidence, on the morning of this lunch I was asked by my employers, the Water and Sewerage Board, to hurry down to Farmers and fix up a water meter that had been giving trouble. There was I, an ordinary, common Water Board labourer, who after fixing a water meter for my hosts would be sitting down to a three- or four-course meal with waiters, napkins, silver cutlery, cut glass and posh company and possibly a good orchestra playing soothing music a few yards away. Usually I had my lunch in somebody’s backyard, possibly near

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a fowl-house or in a shed, sometimes on a kerbstone when I would pull my hat down to my nose to hide my identity. While I was taking apart the offending water meter I became completely lost in thought, deep in anticipation of that fabulous lunch soon to be had high up in the building. In half an hour, I thought, I’ll be joining the happy party. But the meter had other ideas. I found that putting the mechanism together was quite a different matter from taking it apart. The engineer put his head round the door to the basement. ‘Hurry up with that job,’ he said. ‘We’ll be short of water directly.’ Something seemed to go wrong. Rusty water was squirting out of the joints and nothing I did would stop it. The engineer came down to me and hovered around. Then he bent over the meter to get a close view of the trouble. A shaft of black water caught him full in the face and he retired hastily, cursing the inefficiency of Water Board employees.

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10 for 66 and All That When it was looking as though the basement would be flooded out, I somehow turned the right bolt. With frantic haste I threw off my overalls, had a quick wash, and rushed over to the lift. ‘Which floor, please?’ ‘The Directors’ Lunch Room.’ The attendant looked at me suspiciously. ‘Are you sure?’ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘positive.’ He started the lift, mumbling something about the directors giving a lunch to some prominent cricketers and I was bound to find I had made a mistake. When he let me out of the lift he stood at the doors, obviously expecting me to return in some haste. For all I know he is still waiting there. In the Lunch Room I was met by Dr R.J. Pope, who travelled with many Australian teams as honorary medical officer, and he introduced me to the chairman, Norman Pope, his brother Parke and another director, George Wright. I immediately apologised for being late. ‘My dear fellow,’ said Norman, ‘it is we who should apologise. Some damned fool from the Water Board cut the water off and we’re all late.’ I left my useful but uncongenial employment with the Water Board when I was chosen to tour England with the 1921 Australian team under the fabulous Warwick Armstrong. Armstrong was a man of strong convictions, tenacious to the last, but lacking somewhat that flexible demeanour so necessary for touring captains. Like other Australian cricketers who came to England it

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was the idea of actually seeing and playing at Lord’s that filled me with tremendous excitement and pride. There are other English cricket grounds that have their dignity, their traditions and their fame, but for the Aussie it is Lord’s and Lord’s alone which has the aura of a cricketer’s Nirvana. Nevertheless, there was something almost as thrilling waiting for me in London in 1921: an invitation from the chief of the Bystander and Graphic to meet the editorial staff and discuss the possibility of doing cartoons for their publications. I had slept well the night after receiving an invitation to play in my first Test match, but I had no sleep after hearing from the Bystander. This news ranked in importance with my first meeting with Victor Trumper—it touched the very quick of my ambition. Restrictions concerning players working for newspapers were kindly eased by the Australian Board of Control, and my captain, Warwick Armstrong, perhaps not fully realising that he himself might be the subject of some of my cartoons, allowed me the current match off to attend this most important meeting. Having tossed sleeplessly in my bed at the Cecil Hotel all night I set off along Fleet Street that lovely May morning with spring in my heart and the pavement buoying me up as if it were composed of rubber cushions. As I sat at the table discussing the Bystander and Graphic requirements with the important people who knew, oh! so much about them, I wondered whether, in fact, they really would take any of my work. I had done some drawings in Australia for which I was paid as much as seven shillings and sixpence each. But they were crude and not up to the standard expected by a London periodical.

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10 for 66 and All That But, amazingly enough, we seem to have settled how many cartoons I should do and at what intervals I should deliver them and the burning question was gently laid at my door: what remuneration would satisfy me? As a Water Board labourer I had received £3 7s. 6d. a week. But then I was a fairly efficient and experienced labourer. I couldn’t very well ask that much for mere amateurish drawings. Secretly I had to admit to myself that I would have been thrilled to see my cartoons in a London journal for no payment whatsoever . . . While my muddled brain was hovering between £3 7s. 6d. and gratis the chairman came to my rescue. ‘Well, gentlemen, may I suggest a figure as a basis for negotiations? Say, one thousand pounds a year—twenty pounds a week.’ My head reeled. My heart thumped. This was unbelievable. It was like an umpire giving me Jack Hobbs’ wicket without an appeal. I recovered sufficiently to hide my excitement and jubilation and to say, with studied calmness: ‘Gentlemen, that seems fair enough. I can accept your offer.’ A new world had opened to me. From that moment I set about and drew cartoons far into the night. While other members of the team were enjoying the night life of London and provincial towns, back in his bedroom Australia’s googly bowler was bent over a drawing board muttering to himself, ‘Twenty quid a week! Twenty quid a week!’ He never went back to hard work again.

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But of course there was a social side to the tour. The man who taught me how to cope with it, and, in doing so, taught me more about the philosophy of life in one day than all my dumb schoolteachers had taught me during my term at school, was our honorary medical officer, Dr Roland Pope. A genuinely charming man, perfectly mannered (except when in conflict with waiters and taxi drivers) this extraordinary medico lived for cricket. He played for Australia while at Edinburgh University. His score on that occasion proved that his knowledge of medicine and his diplomacy and charm would be of much greater value to Australia than his cricket. If you are surprised that such qualities are so invaluable to an Australian touring team, let me remind you that many of our cricketers came from pretty tough homes where manners and other social graces hardly were considered the necessities of day-to-day living. It can be a big jump from an ordinary working-class environment to a Lord Mayor’s banquet or a personal invitation to a Royal function. As a member of the Australian eleven one is sometimes the centre of attention, just as an English Test cricketer is in Australia, then one is expected to behave with, shall we say, sophisticated confidence and at least to mask the rich and wholesome if unpolished characteristics of one’s inheritance. Personally, while resenting the bombastic know-all attitude of some of my countrymen, I would very much regret the passing of the golden twang of gum trees and the provocative personality of the average Australian. The man from Wagga Wagga, even if he has made his pile, is richer if, in place of the Little Oxford Dictionary, he carries in his pocket a sprig of the potent mimosa. But when in England, and particularly at

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10 for 66 and All That English social functions, it is best for Australian ebullience to be toned down. That is where—on this and other tours of the period—Dr Roland Pope came in. Dr Pope, a good Australian and, like all good Australians a good Britisher, tried to knock the sharp edges off his cricketing countrymen with a sculptor’s chisel and not with a coarse file—which would have left a surface fit only for a coat of varnish. It was the fastidious doctor who took my hand on excursions into what were, for me, many strange places. It was he who showed me the difference between a fish-knife and an ordinary one and how to bow a black neck-tie—unnecessary accomplishments in my own home. In the matches I had off I accompanied the ‘Doc’ to the Tate and National Galleries, to music recitals, to a house in Yorkshire with a magnificent Turner collection, to a flat in London which overflowed with the poetic canvases of Corot. Almost without my knowing it, the kindly and designing doctor put invitations my way which resulted in my meeting the most interesting people in Dr Pope England and from the Continent,

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and visiting their palatial homes, where often I found myself sitting at banquets with great artists, authors, philosophers, Cabinet Ministers and others who weaned me from the more awkward influence of my early life. On one such visit, to Hillington near Sandringham, as a guest of Viscount Downe, president of the Scarborough Cricket Festival, I was with his lordship’s daughter, Ruth, touching up a landscape which we had almost finished, when we were distracted by steps on the gravel path. Looking round, I saw our neighbours, King George V and Queen Mary, approaching. I nearly collapsed. His Majesty jokingly said that I should be playing cricket instead of fooling around with a paintbox. His friendly criticism put me at my ease, but the Queen was a little more severe. After

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10 for 66 and All That quizzing the picture for some minutes, Her Majesty said that it wasn’t really bad but the sun seemed to be out of shape. Feeling obliged to make some explanation, I apologised for the defect and said that since arriving in England I had almost forgotten what the sun looked like. This explanation was smilingly accepted, and I was told that I would be forgiven if, instead of playing in the next Test match against England, I would practise painting the sun. That night I lay in a high-posted sixteenth-century bed. On the walls were a Gainsborough, a Reynolds and a couple of delightful Constables. The period furniture included a grandfather clock which majestically ticked the peaceful hours away. A manservant crept silently into the room, left a glass of hot milk and a biscuit, drew the burgundy velvet window curtains, and after saying, ‘Your breakfast shall be brought up at nine, if you wish, sir,’ moved out of the room like a shadow. I looked round once more at my exquisite quarters, thought of Their Majesties coming up the path, and muttered a short prayer for Dr Pope; but as I dozed off to sleep the burgundy velvet curtains seemed to billow and flap, cracks in the floor emitted a cloud of sand, and I am sure I saw a vision of Henrietta Rumble and brother William crunching their way over the sandhills. Perhaps since those days I have become blasé to the charm and grace of England, and in this self-satisfied mood I am inclined now to find fault not only with its cricket but with its way of life. Being more subject to the whims and moods of other strong nations, England has been forced to shed some of its

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conservativeness and lean towards a more democratic state of affairs. Unfortunately, this has also meant a deterioration in English manners. Jack has become as good as his master, but, alas, lacks his master’s innate good taste. I may have been blinded by the glitter and pomp of my first trip to England in that summer of 1921, but it seemed to me that servants had a fine respect for their masters and there existed a reciprocity which brought a full measure of happiness and understanding into the life of the average Englishman. Farm-hands were not very well paid perhaps, in relation to their wealthy employers, but they seemed to be happy and well attuned to the real and wholesome things of life. Since then, owing to heavy taxation, direct and indirect, and death duties and all the rest of it the big estates have been sliced up, and the easy-going rural life has made way for something more brittle in the shape of tin hare tracks and pools, something more subterranean in TV for home entertainment. The lovely old taverns with their characterful cronies have almost disappeared. The smart alecks and spivs who grew wealthy during the war and the post-war depression ‘modernised’ the village inn by converting pretty little oak-beamed bedrooms into obnoxious and garish cocktail bars. I knew of a small tavern which breathed the soul and spirit of brave Australian airmen. It was their London rendezvous and a sanctuary for memories, and held all kinds of photographs and emblems of their gallants, all of whom at one time or another had proposed marriage to Hebe behind the bar. All this is gone—except perhaps a faded replica of the gay and vital Hebe. The new proprietor waved his hand and said, ‘Let’s clean

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10 for 66 and All That all this rubbish out and paint the walls clean,’ and, pointing to a chair in the corner which famous Australians always occupied before being killed, added, ‘Take it around to Ike and take what he gives you for it.’ Fortunately, this is not typical of the present spirit of England but there is at least one section of English society having a lot of fun today that wouldn’t have been allowed to breathe in the early twenties when Jack was just as good as his master—but too modest to boast about it. I could think of a great deal more to say on this theme but I had better leave it to the sociologists and statisticians, who, like many modern cricket writers, seem to have figures at their fingertips. What does concern me is the ‘democratising’ of cricket in England since the days when I was playing. The fact that owing to various features of the Welfare State there are fewer amateurs in cricket may be one reason why a professor has been chosen for the captaincy of England. This is not a social question, and although I am inclined to think that Jack as an individual is as good as his master as an individual, I am not convinced that he would have similar qualifications as a leader. The average professional cricketer is purely and simply a tradesman, and in most cases he has learnt his trade in a pretty grim school. He has a six-day-a-week job and the regularity of his work is likely to drive him into a groove. Unless he is a very exceptional man he stays in that groove for security and the result is loss of incentive, the spirit of adventure and ambition. If such a man is invited to captain a team which contains a couple of amateurs it is quite likely either to embarrass him or,

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if he suffers from an anti-social complex, make him arrogant and mildly vindictive. On the whole, and considering this state of affairs, wouldn’t it be better for the game and for the mutual comfort of amateurs and pros if everyone was paid for his service as in Australia? Let us abolish the designation ‘amateur’ and ‘professional’ and call them just cricketers. Allow the players themselves to fashion their own social totems and taboos, as people do in Bloomsbury and Mayfair, in Waterloo and Darling Point. When Wally Hammond was a pro he not only acted but played like an amateur—only more so. And when he became an amateur, he played and acted like a pro, only more so. Herby Sutcliffe was another great English batsman who was never a pro at heart, although his style of batting suggested it. Frank Woolley and Jack Hobbs, however, were far too modest to be anything but pros. Both were self-contained, and while their style of batting was consistent with amateurism, both realised, like the champion egg-laying hen, that if their product wasn’t up to standard, the fact of wearing a crown wouldn’t save their heads. Although Jack did Wally Hammond have the honour of captaining

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10 for 66 and All That England, he felt at the time like the best man who was asked to become a bigamist because the groom failed to appear. I have no desire here to try to convince anyone that the abolition of amateurism would rid English cricket of class distinction. In every class of cricket, from back street to Test, we have snobs, mental and social. I feel that it would be a dull world without this snobbishness, in addition to which many of us would have to make personal sacrifices to maintain this apparently idealistic state. Neville Cardus would go crazy if he had to spend half an hour with a commercial traveller: I know, because I introduced him to one a few years ago. But this whole question touches on the vital subject of Test captaincy—and that deserves a chapter in itself.

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6. Test captains hile the amateur status and professionalism still exist in cricket I would prefer to be captained by an amateur, providing, of course, he is true blue and not bogus. Johnny Douglas, who led England in Australia in 1911–12 and 1920–21, although a strict disciplinarian was an ideal leader, but very often misunderstood and under-rated because his brand of diplomacy was consistent with frankness and moral courage. Another Johnny Douglas now would do cricket no harm. The question of the standard of international captaincy is one too often influenced by current results. As in England, Australia and other cricketing countries, we have seen some great men and also quite a number of misfits. Of England’s captains, I would rate Archie MacLaren, Sir Pelham Warner, Johnny Douglas, Douglas Jardine, Gubby Allen and Percy Fender in the top flight. It may seem strange that I should include two men, Jardine and Allen, who were at loggerheads regarding tactics during the 1932–33 tour to Australia, but then their disagreement or differences were the result of the clashing of strong wills rather than personal efficiency.

W

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10 for 66 and All That Jardine had at his command a superb bowler in Larwood, a force that Allen lacked. Every captain of a defeated team is the target for criticism and Allen was no exception, but I feel sure that, from every point of view, and allowing for the relative skill of both sides, Allen got more out of his team than did Douglas Jardine. Allen was a keen student, so was Jardine, but where Jardine belonged to the atomic bomb era, Gubby fought his battles with pike and spears. When Gubby’s battle ended, the noise and strife ended with it, but in the tough Scot’s case, the ‘death dust’ lingered for a considerable time. I found the cynicism of the one and the gaiety of the other quite refreshing and contrasting. I like soda water and I like champagne—but not when mixed. My assessment of Sir Pelham Warner as a captain is not based on information I gained on the field, or watching, but merely through conversation. ‘Plum’ must have been a very shrewd captain, particularly when supported by his own batting prowess. Archie MacLaren? I played against him once in Sydney and then on that ill-fated occasion at Eastbourne when he collected a youngish side and stopped the Australians’ triumphal 1921 tour. Up to then we hadn’t lost a match and had never looked like losing one; yet in that game, and despite our having a first-innings lead of 131 runs, we lost to MacLaren’s team by twenty-odd runs. MacLaren used only three bowlers: Aubrey Faulkner, Clem Gibson and Michael Falcon, and thereby vindicated his Lord’s boast early in the season, that if allowed to choose his own team, he would beat Australia.

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Our skipper, the twenty-stone giant Warwick Armstrong, had grinned at this. ‘Archie, old boy, you haven’t got the Bolter’s chance.’ Alf Noble, our captain on the 1909 tour, usually contended that MacLaren was the most capable of English captains he had played against, though there was one occasion when he told me that spin-bowler George Trott was his idea of the perfect captain—Trott of course was an Australian. And while we are on personal choices, Sir Pelham Warner gave me Alf Noble as his choice: mine is Herby Collins, about whom I shall say much more in the course of this chapter. I mentioned Percy Fender. He will always be well up in my list of England’s captains, and in this I have the support of nearly every member of the 1921 Australian team. We always felt much more comfortable when Fender’s name was not on the list of probable captains of the English eleven we were to face. A knowledge of slow bowling is a great Percy Fender advantage to a captain, and (sweater not only was Fender himself borrowed a good slow bowler but his from unerring field placing made Tom him a rather terrifying figure Webster) as a possible England captain— to Australians, that is.

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Bill Woodfull One of my sharpest memories of Fender was when, in Sydney during the 1920–21 series, he walked out into the arena like a bullfighter. The crowd, annoyed with Fender for sending certain cables about the tour to England, was in an ugly mood. I happened to be bowling at the time and was able to watch Fender’s reaction to this hostile demonstration. His face was white, his teeth were clenched and the glint of battle seemed to send sparks from his eyes. At any moment I expected him to rush over to the fence and ‘dong’ somebody on the head with his bat. Luckily for us all he didn’t last long: the boos of the crowd turned to cheers of delight and that was the end of the drama. Douglas Jardine had almost the same experience in Adelaide in 1932 when a ball from Larwood hit Woodfull over the heart. Although the Adelaide crowd is probably the best

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behaved in Australia, I did think that on this occasion the place would be torn down. What did Jardine do about it? In the midst of all the noise and turmoil he walked away from his fielding position close to the wicket and stationed himself in the outfield where the din was at its worst. Whether he did this as part of his match strategy or to tantalise the crowd I don’t know, but whatever the reason he was certainly going out of his way to invite trouble. Of the two—Fender and Jardine—I believe Fender, because of his technical knowledge of slow bowling, was the better captain. I am stressing this angle on captaincy because I myself suffered at the hands of incompetent captains who had their own opinions about the placing of my field. Coming to more recent times, we saw Richie Benaud, a potential match-winner, reduced to an ordinary bowler when Australia visited England in 1953—and Doug Ring, a very talented bowler, placed on the scrap-heap, and none too gently. Even that most likeable cricketer, Bill Woodfull, failed to get the best out of FleetwoodSmith but only because he lacked the necessary knowledge of the finer points of slow bowling. Even Test captains cannot be expected to be experts in every department of the game, but I think it is reasonable to ask that, all things being equal, an expert on spin bowling should be regarded as better qualified to captain his country than one who isn’t. Alf Noble told me that spin-bowler George Trott was his choice as captain, Sir Pelham Warner gave me Alf Noble, who bowled slow off-breaks, and my choice is Herby Collins, left-arm slow. Of recent England captains who in my opinion were rather too orthodox and lacked a fine knowledge of tactics

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10 for 66 and All That I would cite Freddy Brown, Norman Yardley, Wally Hammond and Sir Leonard Hutton. The same criticism I would apply to Bill Woodfull and Lindsay Hassett, who although miles apart in their attitude toward life generally, joined forces so far as safety-first tactics were concerned. I always thought Victor Richardson was a far more capable skipper than either, and I could never understand why Woodfull was chosen in preference to Richardson to captain the 1930 side in England. Don Bradman’s success as a captain was mainly due to the fact M.A. Noble, Australia’s that he was able to supply his side greatest captain with a bagful of runs. This is no reflection on his captaincy, but the fact remains that a matchwinning batsman or a bowler of relative skill has the advantage over the ordinary useful player, although both are equally useful as strategists. Early in his career as captain Bradman suffered a little from a lukewarm attitude towards him on the part of a section of his team. There seemed to be a tinge of jealousy or envy, and while this was not apparent during actual play, nevertheless the feeling existed. Two Australians who stood on a peak as captains were Alf Noble and Herby Collins. Many may be surprised that I should

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prefer Collins to Armstrong, but having played under both men I reserve the right to make this choice. Warwick led a pretty good team in 1921 from every point of view. Every member of the team, with the possible exception of Gregory and McDonald, had captained his state in Sheffield Shield matches and knew something about strategy and general tactics. Often on a warm June afternoon on the mellow county grounds of England, Warwick would doze at point and allow the game to drift like a ship left in the hands of its crew. There were very few batsmen in England in 1921 who could back-cut and Warwick, after having a couple of glasses of ale at lunch, knew that there was a sanctuary in one part of the field where his siesta had little chance of being interrupted. Early in that tour he did make the mistake of fielding in the slips at Leicester, and a ball, after hitting him on the top slope of

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10 for 66 and All That his stomach, ricochetted past his nose and after fifty or sixty feet in the air, was caught by Carter, the wicket-keeper, who had hardly moved from his original position. Warwick opened his eyes lazily, affected a Falstaffian smile, and after muttering something about ‘wasps being bad today’, moved over to point. Tremendously tenacious and a relentless fighter, Warwick Armstrong bluffed rather than cajoled the opposition out. When he couldn’t think of an answer, he smiled blandly and lumbered away. But nobody could deny his courage, his capacity for hard work and his determination. These qualities were more pronounced when he was in conflict with somebody he didn’t like. Warwick had strong dislikes and cast-iron convictions. To him reciprocity was a coward’s weapon and he didn’t have much time for arbitration, unless he himself could act as the arbitrator. When I and a few others crossed swords with him in connection with a Yorkshire fixture, which had been arranged against Warwick’s will, I felt that the ‘Big Ship’ nursed that incident for a considerable time. To be frank, I thought his subsequent reactions were not exactly favourable to me. He mellowed a little later on in life and I felt very relieved when, as he was slowly moving ‘over the hill’, he said, ‘Sorry I had the little tiff with you in London. There is one thing that I must say—I always knew where you stood. But I can’t say the same about a couple of the other blokes.’ It was about the same time that I asked the ailing giant why he had read the newspaper on the field during the 1921 Oval Test. ‘I wanted to see who we were playing against,’ he grimaced. As a great personality Warwick Armstrong was entertaining and profoundly interesting, even if at times cantankerous.

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He would have been a greater captain had he shown the toleration and sympathetic understanding that he developed later in his life. Now to Herby Collins. Herby was an enigma, a paradox, a riddle, a parcel of sharp contrasts, a model of inconsistency, a collection of discords, which harmonised and made an interesting and likeable character. At heart Collins was a gambler. His hunting grounds were the racecourse, the dog-track, Monte Carlo, ‘The Den of Thieves’ (near the Strand in 1921–26), a baccarat joint at King’s Cross, a ‘two-up’ school in the Flanders trenches in World War I and anywhere a quiet game of poker was in operation. ‘Mauldy’ Collins gambled anywhere except on the cricket field, and on anything but cricket. As a batsman Collins was a miser; as a left-arm bowler, like Charles Macartney and Wilfred Rhodes, he was an even greater miser. To save the Fourth Test match in 1921 at Old Trafford, he batted from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. for forty runs—probably the most valuable innings he had ever played. It was this performance which illustrated his self-control and shrewdness on the field. Runs were of no value, time being the dominating factor, and Collins seldom attempted to score. Often he would play a very loose ball towards the outfield and stroll casually to the other wicket. After the match I asked Collins why he hadn’t tried to hit boundaries off the loose balls. ‘Solomon’ Collins replied: ‘After lunch the fieldsmen, realising that I wasn’t going for runs, didn’t hurry after the ball, merely trotted. This meant

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10 for 66 and All That that there were fewer overs bowled during the day, which on the law of averages gave me a better chance of staying in, in addition to which I reserved my strength and concentration by not hurrying down the crease. The reason why I didn’t try to hit boundaries was to waste time by allowing the fieldsman to dawdle almost to the boundary to recover the ball—and then again he was in no hurry to get the ball back to the bowler. If I’d hit a boundary, the spectators would have thrown the ball back like a shot and saved the time I was doing my best to lose!’ How different from the tactics shown in the Lord’s Test in 1953 . . . Trevor Bailey’s valiant effort was in danger of being spoilt on at least three occasions when he was nearly run out trying to sneak a short single. Yet England’s position was on a par with ours at Old Trafford in 1921. Runs were valueless and it was just a matter of how time should be dissipated. Herby Collins’ astute captaincy may have been a legacy from Alf Noble under whom he played most of his matches in his youth. As a captain his greatest achievement was undoubtedly the moulding of the famous AIF into one of the strongest teams in the history of Australian cricket. After an early squabble which terminated with the disposal of a wellknown player, Collins, a corporal, took the helm and steered the team through a most successful tour in South Africa and Australia (where, in addition to other victories, a meaty New South Wales side was well trounced). The ‘Little Corporal’ and his team of non-commissioned and high-ranking officers ploughed the profits of the tour back into the AIF Amenities Fund. The value of the services of this AIF team to Australian

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cricket generally is very difficult to estimate. Its fighting spirit and amazing cameraderie gave our cricket a badly needed shot in the arm and I feel that much of the success of Armstrong’s 1920–21 side was due to the presence of Corporal Collins, Jack Gregory, Johnny Taylor, Bert Oldfield and ‘Nip’ Pellew. Of the remaining members of the AIF team, Carl Willis, Charles Winning, Cyril Docker, Bill Trennery, Jack Murray, Allie Lampard, Eric Bull, Bill Stirling and Ted Long gave great support to their states. And while we are on the subject, let’s pay due credit to that great H.L. Collins worker in the cause of cricket, ‘Plum’ Warner, for his untiring efforts to organise Empire cricket during the war and particularly the AIF team of the First World War. It was no wonder that when the massive Warwick Armstrong shambled out of cricket after the 1921 tour, the ‘Little Corporal’ should take his place. I was given an insight into Collins’ shrewd cricket brain when we served together on State Selection Committees. I soon realised how the original AIF players had been welded into such a match-winning team. In picking a team Collins was relentless. He strove for combination above all things, not for a collection of spare parts. Once we dropped a player who had

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10 for 66 and All That scored a double century in the previous State match. Collins wouldn’t have him. ‘With Gregory in the side,’ he said, ‘we need another slip. Tom isn’t a good “slipper”. We have all the batsmen we want and we’ve got to build our team around two bowlers, you and Gregory. If Tom comes in, then a very essential part of the team’s mechanism must be taken out.’ Result: England, who had beaten Western Australia, South Australia and Victoria to a frazzle with wickets and runs to spare, met their ‘Waterloo’ at Sydney. In Melbourne at a later date England were in a favourable position at tea. Frank Woolley had tasted blood and threatened to annihilate the tired Australian attack before stumps that day. Collins took the ball and bowled yards outside Frank’s stumps until close of play for very few runs. Next morning we came on fresh again. At the first interval people were pouring into the ground expecting to see an interesting day’s play. At the same time the players were pouring out of the exit turnstiles with the match over. Collins was right again. The caterer on the ground could have killed me—but it was really my captain’s fault. It was his brain as much as my bowling that had schemed England out. England never won a Test match on, that tour. Collins was one of the most undemonstrative yet one of the richest characters in Australian cricket, during my playing career at any rate. His faults to me were virtues. His so-called weaknesses faded away or were set in true perspective for me by the richness and fine quality of his nature. Herby never complained, never moaned. His philosophy

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seemed to provide an antidote for bad luck. Indeed, frowning fortune to this little possum-eyed Australian was just another incident that would be of no account when a new day dawned. Arthur Gilligan’s team needed only twenty-seven runs to win the Adelaide Test with two wickets in hand. Taylor, Collins and Mailey shared a flat from which they could see the scoreboard at the Oval (usually an unpleasant sight for Mailey). Gilligan had shepherded his team to bed rather early but Collins, being a ‘night owl’, decided to carry on. We put on gramophone records and had supper in the middle of which dawn broke, and we peered at the scoreboard. ‘You and Gregory open up tomorrow, Arthur.’ ‘Today, you mean, Herby.’ ‘Please don’t be funny. I’m tired.’ I protested, ‘I’m sure to send down a couple of full tosses and they’ve half their runs. Why not open with Kelleway? He’ll at least keep the runs down.’ ‘Don’t talk back to your captain. You’re to go on first. It’s a case of “all duck or no dinner” tomorrow—er—I mean, today.’ Before we left for the ground, a fabulous-looking racecourse man, who could have been a model for Tom Webster’s bookmaker, except that he only smoked one cigar at a time, called to see the captain. They had a talk in the hall. Collins left him and came over to me. ‘This fellow says it’s worth a hundred quid if we lose the match. Let’s throw him downstairs.’ I looked at the fellow’s displacement and thought we had a chance of losing both matches if we tried to throw him downstairs.

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10 for 66 and All That ‘I’d better ring the hall porter then,’ Collins said. The big fellow must have overheard the conversation. He quickly disappeared. Certainly there were times when Collins the gambler found gambling repulsive. We strolled down to the Oval and after changing into flannels I picked up a bottle of soda water and began to open it. The dressing-room flunkey called out: ‘Hey, don’t open that bottle. It’s dangerous. They’re bursting today.’ I handed him the bottle and two minutes later he was taken to the hospital with a badly gashed hand. England lost the deciding Test by thirteen runs.

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7. Men at the other end found that the most difficult batsmen to bowl to were Vic Trumper, Charles Macartney, Bill Ponsford, Jack Hobbs, Frank Woolley and Herbert Sutcliffe. I couldn’t blame anybody who might suggest that only a madman could leave Don Bradman out of the above list; consequently such an omission demands some explanation. Without apologies I must repeat that it was this group which gave me a number of headaches, not before I had reached or passed my zenith, but in the early 1920s. Of course Victor Trumper had passed on four or five years earlier, but I feel that when I met him I was bowling as well as ever I did later on. I had retired when I met Bradman in the 1930 Ryder Testimonial Match at Melbourne and Don had just returned from his record-breaking tour of England. He might have been feeling the strain of too much cricket and become a little carefree on this occasion. At any rate from his batting in this match I suspected that he had a flaw somewhere in his armour when facing top-spinning leg-breaks. This will immediately evoke the question, ‘What about Clarrie Grimmett? Don gave him plenty of “stick”.’ That may

I

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10 for 66 and All That be so. But Grimmett and Mailey were not, as most people thought, identical. It is true that both bowled leg-breaks and ‘wrong ’uns’; but there the similarity ended. Mailey’s best legbreak was a top-spinner while Grimmett’s leg-break spun half laterally and half horizontally. Clarrie’s round-arm delivery was mainly responsible for the amount of side-spin he put on the ball and it was also the secret of his immaculate length. Had he bowled his leg-break like Peebles, Fleetwood-Smith and myself the result would have been seen in the flight of the ball, with a possibility of a less fastidious length. While the side-spinning leg-break usually has the virtue of good length, as in Warwick Armstrong’s case, it also lacks the confusing trajectory of the top-spinner. The latter being more sensitive to air resistance is often more annoying to the bowler than the batsman—but when everything does go according to plan, the result is as pleasing to the bowler as a nugget to the fossicker of gold. Bradman got a good one which scattered his stumps; further back Patsy Hendren succumbed to one at Sydney when well set, and in 1926 Herby Sutcliffe failed to make contact with a top-spinner at the fag-end of the day’s play. The fact that I can only remember three victims of this vicious leg-spinner is a reflection on my control of length rather than on the effectiveness of this particular ball. I had bowled a number at Don and noticed that, when the length was disciplined, he wasn’t too sure of his ground. That in itself boosted my morale almost to a point of vanity. While that clashing of swords provided plenty of evidence of Don’s amazing talent, it also revealed in his batting a vulnerability which might have been exploited by a similar

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type of bowler to me but whose control of length was superior to mine. One swallow doesn’t make a summer, perhaps, but in this case it provided food for thought. That particular ball of mine had no terrors for Ponsford and the dynamic Macartney, and the regal Woolley simply sailed down the pitch and turned it into a half-volley or, when in playful mood, into a full toss. I must judge batsmen as I found them without referring to records for performance. If Clarrie Grimmett, who bowled in an era almost parallel with mine, were asked the same question, he would probably name an entirely different group of tormentors. As far as I know he never bowled against Trumper but he had experience of the other batsmen in my list. Grimmett’s list probably would include Wally Hammond and Bradman, and very likely Patsy Hendren and Stan McCabe. My own choice is not influenced by the number of runs scored against me. I dare say other batsmen have had more success and gained better averages than those mentioned when opposed to me. For instance, I feared Woolley as much as I did Macartney—and I was more afraid of him than I was of Jack Hobbs. Often when Frank threatened to annihilate me, something happened at the other end and the danger passed. Woolley’s reach and Macartney’s footwork were always too much for me; because I adopted defensive measures or ‘withdrew according to plan’ they made me feel rather cowardly. For this reason I would couple them as being the most physically and mentally exhausting batsmen I ever met. In appearance they made a complete contrast. Macartney was short, thickset, with Napoleonic features, tremendously

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Frank Woolley

thick wrists, curly brown hair when young but baldish in middle age, brown sharp eyes and a strong determined chin. Woolley was over six feet, willowy and slight, somewhat ungainly and awkward because of a tendency to be knock-kneed, supple wrists, a face which depicted benevolence rather than hostility, curved eyes which invariably wrinkled in a kind of cynical smile, and, as a final contrast, he batted left-handed and Macartney right. Both bowled left-hand leg-spinners like misers. But off the field they might have been the Bedser twins as far as habits were concerned. I could imagine both taking the 8.15 train to town as regularly as clockwork. Each would carry a copy of The Times and a small leather lunch-case. Each would occupy the same seat every day with a curt nod to other regular travellers who had hoped to discuss cricket before senile decay set in. Each would hang his coat on the same peg in the office

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and don an alpaca jacket with frayed elbows. Tea at 10.30 sharp. Charley beats Frank by a short neck and adding a little water grabs a second cup. On the way home (on the seven minutes past five train) they ignore the evening paper boy and finish the morning paper. At the end of the week they can be seen coming home carrying something for the garden or a small tin of paint. A round of golf or a set of tennis would provide sufficient dissipation for the weekend—but there would be a strict understanding that their companions should keep off cricket. Actually Macartney did possess amazing skill at golf and tennis and might have gone far in these sports had cricket not been his first love. Incidentally, something else he shared with Woolley was abstemiousness. Mac had never tasted strong drink in his life, though like Freddy Brown and Sir James Barrie, he was an inveterate pipe-smoker. As a batsman Charles Macartney was arrogantly hostile. Brimful of confidence, he would boast of his capacity to knock a bowler right off his length. Often I have seen him padded up impatiently waiting for his chance to give the offending bowler some ‘hurry up’. Playing in Toronto, Canada, on one occasion I was batting hopelessly against a good left-arm spinner, Bob Wookey, on a sticky wicket. After back-cutting a ‘french cut’ to fine leg I scrambled away from the batting crease. Mac was at the other end and as we crossed he said: ‘You seem to be having a bit of trouble with Bob Wookey. You’d better leave him to me.’ That was the end of Mr Wookey. He was belted to smithereens on one of the worst pitches I have ever seen.

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‘You’d better leave Bob Wookey to me,’ said Macartney This was always Macartney’s attitude to menacing bowling and whether he overcame it or fell a victim to it he continued to adopt these tactics. Like Woolley he seldom resorted to defence and would rather go out with his bat high in the air than with his nose close to the ground. Like all artists Charles Macartney was occasionally subject to nervous tension. This brilliant batsman, who scored runs on any class of pitch on most grounds in the world, invariably found the Melbourne Cricket Ground at least uncooperative. I thought it became an obsession later and even the sight of the ground seemed to upset his nerves. Consequently Victorians have never assessed correctly the quality of Mac’s batting. Naturally modest and unassuming, Charley Mac, like Vic Trumper, never questioned an umpire’s ruling nor showed the least sign of resentment when the victim of a doubtful decision.

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It was very difficult to bowl a good-length ball at either Woolley or Macartney. I can still see the great Kent left-hander moving down the pitch to convert such a ball of mine into a simple half-volley. Unlike George Gunn, who walked down, and Trumper, with his tigerish spring, Woolley seemed to amble. Frank gave me a merciless hiding at Sydney and hit so hard that after delivering the ball I was compelled to spring back and take refuge behind the umpire. That was the finest driving I have ever seen and I wasn’t the only sufferer. I don’t know what Frank Woolley’s batting average is and I don’t care. I tremble to think what would happen to some of the present-day purveyors of slow leg-break half-volleys if Woolley were still in circulation. With all due modesty I can say that I felt capable of keeping Jack Hobbs quiet—for short periods, at any rate. But Woolley was another proposition, and it was because of him that I took a course in ballistics, a science that taught me something about the effects of air resistance. I always found, and still find, a congenial pal in Ian Peebles on this subject, and yet I could never understand why one so far up in technical knowledge of flight variation could lose his leg-break, particularly in the thirties when England were looking for a good slow bowler. Although I was an enemy in England’s camp then, I shall never forgive Ian for that lapse.* John Berry Hobbs, another member of the group which made my life less happy than it might have been, was to me the perfect batsman. By that I mean that he possessed all * When rebuked by the manager of the 1930 Australian team for giving Ian Peebles advice during the Manchester Test, Mailey answered: ‘Please understand that slow bowling is an art, Mr Kelly, and art is international.’

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10 for 66 and All That the qualifications necessary—in addition to run-getting. We have all known batsmen who, although prolific scorers, were a ‘pain in the neck’ both to their comrades and their opponents. Some were selfish, some bad runners between the wickets, some opportunists at the expense of other players, some bad fieldsmen. Hobbs had none of these faults and whatever tactics he adopted, whether batting or fielding, were right, although at times, perhaps, unsuccessful. When England came to Australia in 1921 many of the Australian players had never played against Hobbs. When they saw him lazily mooching around the covers they came to the conclusion that a shot in Hobbs’ direction meant an easy run. He ran so many batsmen out and gave so many a shock that halfway through the season the Australians held a caucus meeting in the dressing-room and adopted the slogan: ‘No runs when the ball goes to Jack Hobbs.’ The Press, of course, said the batsmen were attempting a foolish single when they were run out. How untrue. After all, the ball before had probably been played similarly and an easy run was had. But Hobbs like many other great fieldsmen, particularly cover men, had worked the batsmen into a false sense of security, as it were. Hobbs was the best I have seen in that position, but I think Davidson, with a little more experience and given latitude by his skipper, might rise to Hobbs’ standard. And Neil Harvey comes very close to his mark. I mention latitude with regard to Davidson because one of the things we noticed about Hobbs was that, no matter who was bowling, he was never moved in the field by his captain, Johnny Douglas: Jack had a roving commission and, like a

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wicket-keeper, was allowed to operate where he decided he could be of most use. We quickly found batsman Hobbs to be our early stumbling block. He appeared unintentionally to get most of the strike, allowing Jack Russell, Harry Makepeace and others to remain at the bowler’s end until they got their bearings. Another caucus meeting was called, with the result that, without any instruction from our captain or getting out of position obviously, every Australian fielder was working it so that the weaker batsman got most of the strike. I don’t doubt that Jack himself knew what was going on but I don’t think the Press or the public did. Certainly we were criticised for allowing Hobbs to score some ‘cheap’ singles every now and again. As a batsman pure and simple I found Jack Hobbs one of the most interesting I had bowled against. I knew after my first over to him that he was going to be a great source of annoyance as well as of interest. I was never quite sure whether he could pick the ‘wrong ’un’; but I knew, as when bowling against Trumper, that Jack’s great talent would not allow him to be fooled too often. My experience against him taught me a good deal about the finer science of slow bowling. We all recognised it as a feat to have Hobbs out before lunch and accepted it as putting us on the road to victory. During the next Australian tour, 1924–25, we found him even more difficult to handle because he had the tenacious Herby Sutcliffe for an opening partner. We had many discussions and conferences between matches in which we tried to find ways and means of liquidating Jack. Warwick Armstrong, of whom we saw little off the field, seldom discussed tactics with us. He belonged to the older school and

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10 for 66 and All That appeared to treat the newcomers to Test cricket as being rather beneath his notice. So the sinister quorum usually consisted of Collins, Oldfield, Gregory and myself. It may be noticed that the latter trio invariably took a hand in Hobbs’ dismissal. Often he was caught by Gregory in the slips or stumped by Oldfield. In fact I would probably never have held my place in the Test team without the assistance of the mercurial Jack Gregory and the dapper Bertie Oldfield. On one of those occasions when Hobbs threatened to spend the weekend with us, I entered into a pact with Jack Gregory during the lunch interval. The idea was that my first ball to Jack in the second over was to be an obvious ‘wrong ’un’ pitched, if possible, on the middle or leg stump. The moment this ball was bowled Gregory was to spring round the back of Oldfield and wait at leg-slip for Hobbs to snick an easy catch. Gregory remembered the scheme but I forgot it, and instead of the planned ball being a ‘wrong ’un’ it was a perfect leg-break on the off stump. When I saw Gregory dashing behind the wicket I realised the blunder I had made. But Gregory, keeping his eye on the ball in flight, saw it spinning the opposite way to what he had expected, hurtled back to the slips, and was just in time to grab the ball almost off Jack’s bat. Gregory wasn’t particularly pleased about the incident. He said that I was trying to make a fool of him. That night I asked Jack Hobbs if he knew what had happened. ‘Not quite,’ he said. ‘But I heard a devil of a scramble going on behind the stumps.’

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On another occasion I bowled a top-spinning ‘wrong ’un’ on the leg stump which broke towards fine-leg. I was rather surprised to see Hobbs position himself to back-cut the ball: he was fully a yard on the off side of the ball when it passed him. Oldfield appeared equally surprised but nothing was said until after the over when we met. ‘Do you know what I think?’ said Bertie. ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘Jack can’t pick the “wrong ’un”.’ This one blemish on the batsman’s part had given away a most important secret. Up to that time I used to bowl the off-break (‘wrong ’un’) on the off side, and the leg-break on the leg—or as near as I could. But in that match we came to the conclusion that Hobbs identified the breaks according to where the ball pitched. Later in the day I bowled a halfvolley leg-break outside the off stump and Jack, reaching forward to play what he apparently thought was an off-break, snicked the ball and was caught in the slips. That happened early in the tour but afterwards I always tried to bowl both leg- and off-break in line with the off stump, unless of course I was trying to convey a wrong impression to the batsman at my own end (the bowler’s end) who had just arrived at the wicket. By changing my tactics against Jack Hobbs it did not mean that I felt more optimistic about getting his wicket—I was quite conscious of the fact that his superb footwork could get him out of trouble even if he was unable to distinguish the ‘wrong ’un’ from the leg-break. I believe he did overcome the trouble before the tour ended, when my only chance of confusing him in the slightest was by flight variation caused by spin and not, as many people thought, by pace.

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10 for 66 and All That Seldom do we find a batsman so rich in natural ability as Billy Ponsford, nor one so easily affected by adverse criticism. In the latter respect he was like Warren Bardsley, another great Australian batsman. When England came over to us in 1932 it was suggested in print that ‘Ponny’ was backing away from Larwood. I am not convinced that this criticism was well founded, but certainly ‘Ponny’ was obliged to adopt somewhat unorthodox tactics—as was Bradman—to combat the Nottinghamshire speed-merchant. When on one occasion he was bowled behind his legs he used that rather disastrous shot to prove that he did not always back away from the fastest bowling. Ponsford was one of the greatest, if not the greatest, batsmen Victoria has produced. He was almost the pioneer of colossal scores. He was a glutton for runs and never quite knew when he had enough. It might be said with a measure of truth that I aided and abetted him in many a run-getting orgy; but at least, having been so often on the receiving end of his batting skill, I can testify to his greatness. Off the field this character was extremely modest, undemonstrative and congenial company, but on the field, particularly with his rather heavy bat in hand, he was tough and relentless to the point of being vindictive. I don’t think it was his run-getting ‘Ponny’ enjoyed so much as the bowlers’ discomfort, especially when those bowlers came from New South Wales. Yet this grim batsman never liked the spotlight and, as I have said, was tremendously shy and sensitive. Once on shipboard he promised his team-mates that he would join in the fun of a fancy-dress ball, but his endeavour to make himself quite unrecognisable cost him a whole day in the bathtub: disguising

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himself as an Australian Aboriginal he had blackened himself all over with charcoal—a disguise that was almost as permanent as it was perfect. I have always thought that Ponsford’s premature retirement was due to his over-sensitivity to criticism. The doggedness, tenacity and vengeance which he showed when in combat with a bowler seemed to vanish the moment he walked out of the ground in mufti. This complex character, like many another great cricketer I have known, harboured what seems to most of us an unwarranted suspicion that the Press were his mortal enemies. Lala Amarnath, the Indian captain, had similar suspicions—in his case it was some unseen villain trying to destroy him. Both lads were sterling, conscientious characters but this attitude of theirs stifled much of the pleasure they might have got out of the game. A word about Billy Ponsford’s bat. It always seemed to be a couple of inches more than regulation width, probably because of its weight and draught. When we suggested measuring it after Victoria had scored over eleven hundred runs against New South Wales, ‘Ponny’ wouldn’t hear of it. He scowled and locked his bat away. ‘It’s all the better for me if you blokes think my bat is too wide,’ he said. Then, turning to me with a smirk on his face, he said, ‘You’ve been looking at it for a couple of days—you should know its width.’ It must have been a strange sight to a handful of people loitering on Brighton Pier one night in 1936 when three men dressed in dinner jackets disembarked from a small fishing smack. These three had been collected during a banquet at Harry Preston’s hotel earlier in the evening with a guarantee

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10 for 66 and All That that they would get bags of fish—with rod and line, it was implied. After fishing for about three hours one of them turned to the skipper of the smack. ‘Hey, Skip—what about all these fish we were going to catch?’ Up to then the catch had been two umbrellas and an old boot. ‘Pull up lines,’ said the skipper, with admirable promptitude. He dropped the nets and as a result the dinner-jacketed crew hauled in three dozen sole, which were proudly taken back to the hotel and cooked for breakfast. The ‘fishermen’ were congratulated by their mates and the bet paid over. Who were these scoundrels? Bill Ponsford, ‘Chuck’ Fleetwood-Smith and the author. Divulging this story will not, I am afraid, improve ‘Ponny’s’ opinion of pressmen. Whatever the debonair Herbert Sutcliffe, the sixth on my list of belligerent batsmen, lacked as regards the technical skill possessed by his companions, he made up for in mental demeanour which gave him psychological or nuisance value. When a bowler is lucky enough to ‘shivver’ the stump of a batsman he is aware of a certain amount of confusion in that batsman’s mind; but there was no such reward when a bowler got one past Herbert Sutcliffe’s bat. Mr Sutcliffe merely accepted this as an occurrence quite beneath his notice and showed his complete disdain for it by passing his hand slowly over his glistening, well-oiled black hair and saying, as he turned to the ’keeper, ‘By jove, Bertie, the ground is filling up’ or ‘I met a charming friend of yours last night’ or perhaps if he happened to be in a gay and reckless mood, ‘Are you going to the party at Bill Heyward’s place tonight, Bert?’

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Never could I draw Sutcliffe into conversation about our duel out there in the middle. ‘You didn’t know much about the third ball in the last over, Herbie.’ ‘H’m, the third ball . . . H’m, what really happened, Arthur? Did the ball hit a pebble or something? Sorry, but I can’t recollect the incident.’ This evasive answer was usually accompanied by a series of gentle off-drives at an imaginary ball. Behind this veneer of casualness, however, lay a tremendous power of determination and concentration which made him one of the most difficult batsmen I have ever met. I will repeat that if a bowler completely beats a batsman on more than one occasion the batsman generally shows some sign of embarrassment and may adopt tactics foreign to his natural style to overcome the situation. It was not so with Herbert Sutcliffe. During my last Test, which was at the Oval in 1926, I saw quite a lot of Sutcliffe. He scored 76 and 161. In the previous Tests I had adopted my usual tactics of mixing off- and leg-breaks as the situation warranted. In the final Test I decided to concentrate on top-spinning off-breaks (‘wrong ’uns’) and top-spinners without very much turn from either side. I will admit this scheme was aimed at Sutcliffe and, in a lesser degree, at Woolley—particularly when the Kent man was at the bowler’s end. Although Sutcliffe stayed till the last over of the day he never seemed comfortable but to be waiting for the big legbreak and I felt for the first time during our many battles that the great Yorkshireman was mentally floundering. Toward

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10 for 66 and All That close of play he actually admitted to me that he was tired mentally and physically and would be glad when the last ball of the day was bowled. I agreed and confessed that I was in a similar condition and could hardly get my arm over. As it happened Sutcliffe had to play the last over out and I kept thinking of Herbie’s self-confessed mental exhaustion. As I casually lumbered up to the bowling crease I don’t suppose anybody on the ground (including Herbie) knew that I was hatching a diabolical plot to liquidate the Yorkshire menace. I decided to bowl a faster leg-break with all the spin I could possibly command. I put the whole Mailey family for generations into this effort and when the ball left me I was conscious that so far everything was going according to plan. Herbert Sutcliffe lunged languidly forward but never quite realised what had happened till he heard the ‘death rattle’. I had bowled hundreds of overs at my old enemy but this was the first time I had really beaten him in the way I wanted to. Nearly thirty years later, at a party at Lord Grimthorpe’s house at Malden in Yorkshire, Herbert Sutcliffe leant across the table, stroked his greying hair gently back, and said: ‘Oh, by the way, you old scoundrel—what was that ball you skittled me with at the Oval?’

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8. The party in the shack ince Bradman’s amazing performances rocked the cricket world in the early thirties a great controversy has arisen over his skill as compared with the ‘incomparable’ Victor Trumper’s. If we accept averages alone as evidence the verdict overwhelmingly favours Sir Donald. In fact, on paper Trumper’s performances rate him as a batsman much lower than many who have played since the ‘golden era’. Feeling that cricket would lose much of its charm and controversial value if figures or averages were deciding factors in judging the quality of a player, some prefer to argue that, within limits, artistry and grace must take first place; and even the most rabid pro-averagist is prepared to admit—subjectively, at any rate—that a beautiful square-cut from Ranji is a precious memory even if it didn’t reach the boundary, whereas a typical Mailey or Duckworth ‘french cut’, which meanders to the fence at fine-leg, remains in the mind as a horrible nightmare despite its numerical superiority. One may regard this exaggeration in the light of caricature but it still proves the entertainment value of beauty. An artist or composer gives much more to the world than he who amasses

S

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10 for 66 and All That a million pounds. At his death the rich man’s wealth seems to dissolve into thin air whilst the creations of the artists are timeless and can be enjoyed by pauper and prince alike. Again, he who amasses big scores is not always a match-winner. Many times I have seen during a tour of England a double century which turned what might have been a certain win into a drawn game. On the other hand a stubborn and prolonged innings may be the means of averting defeat, in which case the batsman deserves more credit than his fellow who endangers his innings in a reckless fashion for runs which are of no value. In other words, the batsman who can adapt himself to prevailing circumstances and conditions is greater than the one who lacks judgement. One might find difficulty in separating Trumper and Bradman on such an issue, and even if one or the other did overplay his innings I would not be prepared to suggest that personal gain was the incentive. That makes the task of judging the comparative talent of both great batsmen more difficult but, with thanks to Allah, less embarrassing. Thinking over this matter one night as the tranquil waters of Burraneer Bay softly rocked me to sleep on my boat Sea Gypsy, I dreamt of a Van Loon party to which I invited Victor Trumper and Sir Donald Bradman. This dream may convey to the reader something beyond batting averages and give a more personal observation on this much discussed pair. I intended that the function should be held on the Gypsy but, knowing how allergic both are to the sea, thought it better that the party should take place in an old shack among the gum trees. There was a strong similarity in the early lives of Trumper

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and Bradman. Trumper received most of his somewhat negligible education at Crown Street School, situated in a thickly populated part of Sydney. It was here he met Alf Noble, also a pupil of course, who later became his captain in an Australian eleven. Noble, a hardworking, studious type, did not display the cricketing promise of his younger schoolmate, yet he became an established Test player before Trumper had played in international games. When Victor was chosen to join the 1899 team to tour England he hadn’t played in one Test in his own country. Although Trumper received a little home advice from his father, who was not a very capable player, he had little or no coaching, but he felt that by diligent practice he might, on the cricket field, make some progress regarding his future and thereby counteract the disadvantages of a very ordinary education. Although he did not play in a Test he first came into prominence against Stoddart’s team in 1895. Still in his teens, he was chosen for the 1899 team to tour England, scoring 0 in his first Test. Being inexperienced and regarded as a ‘gamble’ so far as gate money went, he was not entitled to the remuneration given to other players. But after a grand 300 against Sussex and a fine innings (135) in the Lord’s Test, it was decided to make him a fully paid member of the team. Bradman went to an ordinary State school at Bowral, a farming district about eighty miles from Sydney. He had a natural aptitude for learning but his first love was really cricket. He did not have the facilities for practice enjoyed by Trumper but, like Trumper, he was given some very sensible advice by his father and uncle, both of whom had played cricket in the bush.

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10 for 66 and All That In one competition match Don made 300 and his uncle 227; this match was a decider which took over five weeks to finish, played of course on Saturday afternoons only. Don finished the season with a batting average of 101. This performance caught the eyes of New South Wales Cricket Association officials who brought the eighteen-year-old lad to Sydney for a trial practice. In the following season he was chosen to play Sheffield Shield cricket for New South Wales. It seems that Bradman’s struggle for supremacy was more commendable than Trumper’s if only because of the difference between the control of cricket in the 1890s and the 1920s. I am not suggesting that the New South Wales Cricket Association put difficulties in Bradman’s way—on the contrary the Association was quick to realise the Bowral boy’s potentialities—but it should be remembered that cricket control in Trumper’s time was somewhat different from that which operated thirty years later. The selection of the Australian eleven about the turn of the century was almost a family affair and it wasn’t necessary to be a prolific scorer to gain recognition. Men like Noble, Trumper and Darling, in common with Test players of that generation, knew a good player when they saw one regardless of current performances, and although Trumper was not mothered or jockeyed into the Australian eleven, it was quite evident that he had the confidence and support of an influential band of leading players. The result was that he never altered nor moderated his style to impress selectors, and the reason why Trumper was less inclined to amass colossal scores than Bradman was simply because the conservative control of his era was far more resilient and sympathetic than the more democratic control of the Australian Board of Control.

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Much the same may be said of the MCC and England’s Board of Cricket Control. This bred in Bradman greater tenacity, determination— and perhaps suspicion. From that point of view one might compare a tiger with a gazelle and there is no doubt that these characteristics showed up in the batting of each player. But back to the party. (Or had you forgotten it?) I had remembered reading about Vic’s magnificent performances on ‘stickies’, particularly in Melbourne when he played a lone hand and scored a glorious 74 out of a total of 122, but knowing Victor’s reaction to any reference to his triumphs, especially when supported with figures, I subsequently refrained from joining the conversation when it turned to sticky wickets. There were many people who had seen Trumper at his best under all conditions who no doubt would have come halfway across the world to join this little Van Loon affair . . . Sir Pelham Warner, Reggie Spooner, Walter Brearley, Jack Crawford, Sir F.S. Jackson, Archie MacLaren, Sydney Barnes, ‘Ranji’, Wilfred Rhodes, Tom Hayward, Sir John Hobbs, Alf Noble, Warwick Armstrong, Clem Hill, Vernon Ransford, ‘Tibby’ Cotter, and a host of others whom I had met. But I felt that a big crowd might have affected my guests who were sensitive to crowds and, may I say, to discord even in its most harmless form. I could imagine Walter Brearley, the fast bowler from Lancashire who often boasted that he exerted a hoodoo over Trumper—this man who seldom walked out of the player’s gate if he could hop the fence from any other part of the ground where he happened to be sitting when it was his turn

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10 for 66 and All That to bat—might cause a ripple or two. In fact, I was pretty sure that the party would have ended in a brawl if Walter Brearley had said anything derogatory to Trumper’s batting in the presence of Clem Hill or ‘Tibby’ Cotter. At a selection committee meeting in Sydney, Clem, one of the selectors, punched another selector—Peter McAlister—on the nose when the latter suggested that Charley Macartney should be left out of the Test team just before the First World War. I could have asked Jack Ellis, the Australian ’keeper in 1926, who jumped over the fence in Adelaide and ‘jobbed’ a barracker who had been annoying him throughout the day—or Jack Crawford, who threatened to pull the nose of a coloured batsman in Harlem, New York, when he argued with the umpire in 1913. I could find no place for these men of action even though they possessed the moral courage to uphold their sense of justice. Nor would I have the dominating Alf Noble who, without trying, would have focused attention on himself. Here was the strongest personality I had met in cricket. Noble had a magnetism which made other people puppets in his company. He had, and with good reason, tremendous faith in his own judgement, he was a fearless speaker, and despite his Napoleonic strength of character, always had a sympathetic word for young players providing they were possessed of some respect and modesty. This man, with his small receding forehead, longish nose, knock-knees and large feet commanded respect, loyalty and obedience with the easy grace of a king. When T.J. Andrews, J.M. Taylor, H.L. Collins and myself played our first match under the captaincy of Alf Noble it was, ‘Very well, Mr Noble.’ Now it’s ‘Okay, Ian’ or ‘Righto, Peter’.

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Sir Pelham might have been an acquisition because of his diplomacy and his desire at least to listen to the other fellow’s ideas. But whilst ‘Plum’ appreciated Bradman’s skill to the full, I think he would have been too pro-Trumper to enjoy himself at the gathering. It would, I assumed, take more than Don’s colossal scores to shake ‘Plum’s’ loyalty to Vic, his brilliant contemporary. Those two idealists, Vernon Ransford and Reggie Spooner, would act as one man. Similar in their consistency, whether on or off the field, both have an easy charm, and I was not sure they could combat the rollicking breeziness of Crawford, Cotter and Hill. One might as well try to match a pair of jew’s-harpists with an orchestra of drums. The regal ‘Ranji’ would have been worth his weight in gold—as he was in 1926 when, during the Manchester Test, he invited a group of cricket nondescripts to a banquet to which he had brought his family gold plate and servants from India and from his estate in Ireland. Van Loon himself could not have thought of such a variety as that which the Prince of Batsmen brought together. This Manchester party ended at dawn with the twenty-three-stone actor Oscar Asche giving an exhibition of Australian ’keeper Blackham at his best to the bowling of an apple by Tom Webster and Neville Cardus at the other end. This huge mountain of perspiring flesh made a dramatic exit when it flowed down the steps at the Midland and was cunningly diverted by the hall porter into a taxi where, after a few ripples and groans, it settled down. Webster pointed to the glistening mass and said to the taxi driver: ‘London’—despite the fact that the great actor was due to play Chu Chin Chow in Edinburgh on the following night.

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Oscar Asche leaves for London

I could have sent invitations to all the actors in this tragiccomedy from ‘Ranji’ to his nephew Duleep, but any attempt to recapture the rich spontaneity and fun of that Manchester ‘do’ would surely have resulted in my own party being a complete flop. And there was of course the point that I had little room in the shack for more than three people. I had thought of asking Charley Macartney and Frank Woolley but knew they would have spent most of the evening in the kitchen drinking tea and discussing delphiniums. It was a glorious night early in December. The boronia was in full bloom, the Christmas trees were beginning to blush, the golden sprays of wattle over the porch seemed to shine like a million lights of welcome. Having dined with both Trumper and Bradman on so many occasions I did not have to look up references as to their particular tastes in food. I also knew that while Vic was fond of the music-hall brand of music (he played the piano but had no voice for song), Don could play the classics very well on the

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piano and without music. Vic was allergic to certain sounds: he hated people strumming their fingers on the table or beating their feet to music; a rattling train window or a flapping blind irritated him beyond measure—yet he found the tick-tocking of a grandfather clock restful. Perhaps the latter mixed in with the rhythm of his own batting. Although equally sensitive, from a personal point of view Don’s purposefulness or objective concentration was too strong to be side-tracked. Vic avoided distractions: Don, if it suited him, made an issue of them. I had some old records that I had brought back from England in 1921 and 1926—the music of such vintage shows as The Gypsy and Dollar Princess and The Maid of the Mountains— which might amuse the guests, and on the wall a self-portrait sketch by Caruso, a drawing by David Low, Bairnsfather and Norman Lindsay originals, a couple of etchings by Bill Dyson and a water-colour by Bill Longstaff, though I didn’t really think either man would be entertained by things of this description. I collected a few oysters from the rocks and I had caught a couple of nice bream off the verandah—these, with a mixed grill which I knew both liked better than chicken, would complete the meal, providing we had biscuits and cheese (not gorgonzola) for Trumper and strawberries and cream for the Boy from Bowral . . . There was no clock in the shack. Therefore, I had to depend on ‘Jacky’, my faithful one-legged kookaburra, to burst into his usual sunset song to give warning that my illustrious guests were due. Presently, from the tall gum tree outside the shack came a low hesitant cackle: ‘Jacky’, like the fiddler, was trying his vocal chords. It developed into a rich crescendo of laughter so violent

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10 for 66 and All That and robust that a stranger would have thought it was the echo of a hundred bush mates. Then, owing to sheer exhaustion or perhaps to the flash of a strange light down the track, ‘Jacky’s’ laughter died down to its original self-satisfied chuckle. The golden tips of the gum trees were now a greyish-blue silhouette. The sun had set. A smart limousine pulled up at the shack at 7.30 to the tick. Don was always punctual and expected others to be, as a rule. Over his flannels he wore a blue-grey gabardine overcoat, rather too big and with sleeves which almost hid his hands. This garment was obviously a ‘gimme’ which had been presented by a smart London business man. Don looked around the room. ‘No cricket pictures? No trophies, Arthur?’ ‘Well, I have a couple in another room—pictures, that is. One of Vic and one of Archie Jackson,’ I replied. ‘I’ve never seen Vic but Archie and I practically began our big cricket together. What a great cricketer he was! Remember him at the Oval Test in 1930 when Harold Larwood tried out his bumper on a pitch somewhat affected by rain—Archie stood up like a Briton and took all the knocks without grumbling. Trumper must have been a great player but looking over his performances I noticed that his average wasn’t particularly high.’ I was about to take evasive action but a soft step on the shelly path outside saved the situation. Victor Trumper stood in the doorway. ‘Sorry, I’m a bit late, slogger’—a pet name used by Trumper for most of the younger contemporary players—‘I strolled down from the station and couldn’t resist tarrying here

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and there to get a good whiff of boronia. It’s the loveliest perfume of all wild flowers. The bush looks a picture at the moment. In colour and perfume it reminds me of a beautifully groomed woman dressed for a ball at the Savoy.’ I introduced the great batsmen. They held hands for a considerable time but neither spoke. It was as though each was overawed or mesmerised by the other’s presence. Although I had toured with and played with and against both men I hadn’t realised the vast contrast until now, seeing them together. Vic was a lissom, well-proportioned athlete without showing any sign of great strength. Don was squarely built with arms and torso much too short in proportion to his legs. Both had thick, solid-looking wrists. Don’s limbs and body might have been fashioned and assembled by a carpenter: Trumper’s ensemble was the work of an artist—clean-cut features, sensual well-shaped mouth, oval face with ‘Kitchener’ eyes of grey-blue—as a matter of fact, not unlike Bradman’s, though the latter’s were keener and more searching. Trumper’s flannels were beautifully creamed and of West of England texture; they hung loosely but were immaculately tailored with a casual neatness about them. Bradman’s togs were just as well made but lacked the easy, nonchalant appearance of Trumper’s. Bradman’s rather high-pitched voice was harsh to the ears after the soft vibrant tones of his companion. Bradman, concise and mentally alert, would have swept the floor with Trumper in an argument. Don had at his command an abundance of logic while Vic depended on instinct— characteristics which were so apparent in their batting. Bradman’s eyes and the curl of his lips gave no indication of what he was really thinking. He might have been facing

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10 for 66 and All That a Larwood on a lively pitch, a gang of cricket reporters—or contemplating the ups and downs of the Stock Exchange. Trumper’s face, on the other hand, fully illustrated his thoughts. The dinner seemed to be going off a little better than I had expected. And this, I decided, was due to Bradman’s ability to handle almost any situation with a good deal of diplomacy and strategy. As a matter of fact, Don was the first person, to my knowledge, who got Trumper to talk about his own cricket. He achieved this not so much by asking Trumper questions as by edging in a little provocation. ‘This business of sticky wickets, Vic. I believe no batsman can learn to bat on stickies. It seems to be born in a man. I’ve tried hard but in my first-class career didn’t seem to make much progress.’ Trumper looked across the table rather suspiciously. ‘H’m . . . how hard did you try, Don?’ ‘Well, when I went out to bat on a sticky I altered my natural game and instead of playing forward to a good-length ball, I played back.’ ‘Yes. And what happened?’ ‘I usually poked the ball up to silly point or short leg, and that was that.’ ‘You’ll never learn to bat on a sticky by playing on it, Don. How did you learn to bat in the first place?’ ‘Oh, I used to practise a lot in the backyard—and later in the nets at the Sydney Cricket Ground.’ ‘Were the practice wickets good?’ ‘Marvellous, Vic . . . fast and true as can be. Were they fast in your day?’

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‘Yes, until I did a bit of cheating.’ ‘Cheating? What do you mean, Vic?’ ‘I got the curator, Bill Jennings, to water the end pitch before the boys came out to practice.’ ‘Ah, now I know why you were so good on wet wickets . . . you practised on them.’ ‘Correct, slogger. And I had a longer practice than the other chaps because nobody wanted to bat on a sticky, particularly when the selectors were watching.’ ‘And what about the bowlers, Vic?’ ‘They all wanted to bowl on a sticky to impress the selectors . . . I shouldn’t have told you that but I’m afraid you egged me on, you young vagabond.’ Since Vic seemed to be enjoying talking cricket Don shrewdly decided to make hay while the sun shone. ‘Did you have much trouble with the wrong ’un when Bosanquet brought it to this country?’ ‘Ask this rascal, Don’—pointing at me—‘the first time he ever bowled at me he beat me with a googly.’ ‘Was it a good one?’ asked Bradman. ‘Too good for me.’ ‘But what happened in the second innings?’ ‘It’s so long ago,’ said Trumper, ‘that I’ve completely forgotten.’ ‘I’ll answer that one, Don,’ I said. ‘He did what you did in the Ryder Testimonial Match after I bowled you in the first innings—knocked the cover off me.’ ‘Did you ever go on tour with the scoundrel?’ said Trumper reflectively. Bradman nodded.

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10 for 66 and All That ‘I toured Canada and the States with him on his last playing tour.’ ‘And I,’ said Trumper, ‘went with him through New Zealand with Arthur Sime’s team on his first . . .’ ‘Picked for his singing probably, Vic.’ ‘Couldn’t have been. I heard him sing.’ As Vic was speaking Don got up and went over to an old German piano and started to strum tunes from music-hall jingles to light opera. He played remarkably well and rather amazed me with his skill in running from one melody into another. I had heard him play in Melbourne on his first Sheffield Shield tour, but on that occasion his repertoire was limited, probably owing to the fact that he had only come from a bush town where milk was more appreciated than music. During my travels with Trumper I never heard him play any music nor did I hear him join in a chorus when his teammates, led by Alf Noble with his fine baritone voice, plunged into community singing. But that moment Don was asking Vic if he played at all, and to my surprise Vic answered: ‘I used to play a little . . . but it’s years since I even touched a piano. Still, I’ll try . . . just to be sociable!’ Directly he struck the chords it was obvious that he had an extraordinary talent. He played light opera, one or two little classics that were well over my head, and finished with a fine rendering of the Rachmaninoff Prelude. As the last note died away Bradman stepped right out of character and clapped and cheered excitedly. The natural consequence was a duet. It was then I noticed the thick wrists and strong fingers of both men. With a voice which luckily for the residents was drowned by the piano I joined them in ‘Happy days are here again’, a theme song

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which Norman Seagram, a Canadian cricketer, taught me years ago. On that occasion, too, my voice was drowned because another fine baritone, J.N. Crawford, was in the party. I find it pleasing that three of Australia’s greatest batsmen, Victor Trumper, Don Bradman and Charles Macartney, were very fine pianists. What a trio this would have been on the cricket field! I asked Vic if he intended to walk home. ‘Not tonight, slogger,’ he said. ‘I’m going with Don. I’m beginning to like this young scoundrel.’ That was indeed a compliment. Vic was fastidious in his likes and dislikes. And the same may be said about Donald George Bradman. We may never see their like again.

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9. Bosanquet’s disciples t is almost unbelievable that Australia has produced only three great slow spin bowlers since the First World War. Call it what you wish—vanity, conceit, egoism, pride or any form of self-aggrandisement—I feel obliged to add my name to those of Clarrie Grimmett and ‘Chuck’ Fleetwood-Smith. Two other bowlers of the kind, Doug Ring and Colin McCool, and a third in the less experienced Richie Benaud, have visited England with the Australian team, but their value as batsmen was responsible to a great degree for their selection in Tests. On the other hand, Fleetwood-Smith as a batsman was a rank outsider, Mailey wasn’t much better and Clarrie, the ‘Scarlet Pimpernel’, although the best of the three, never rose as a batsman to the heights he himself thought commensurate with his skill. Consequently, with all due respect to the standard of Clarrie’s batting, I still think that had these three somewhat nondescript characters not been useful bowlers their fame with the bat would not have extended beyond the boundary of the village green. And what has England offered in the way of slow righthand spinners? ‘Tich’ Freeman, Percy Fender, Ian Peebles,

I

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Freddy Brown and Walter Robins. Of this group Fender and Peebles could have been successful on English and Australian pitches. ‘Tich’ Freeman was not very happy in Australia during the 1924–25 tour, although his form in county cricket was fantastic. Unfortunately for ‘Tich’, when he arrived in Australia with Arthur Gilligan’s team he was pounced upon by an army of young and aggressive batsmen who had been brought up on slow spinners, most of whom could make the ball buzz in the air. Freeman could not impart this amount of spin to the ball and the result was that the flight of the ball was more or less regular and orthodox. Had he possessed the skill to adapt himself to Australian conditions there is no doubt that he would have ranked high amongst the slow spinners of all time. Freddy Brown really flirted with slow bowling. He seemed to be the victim of two obsessions. He could bowl a good slow spinner, then increase his pace to that of Bill O’Reilly or Doug

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10 for 66 and All That Wright. Again without spin, he might hurl down a seam swinger—a method of bowling completely unworthy of Freddy’s mental approach to life generally. A man of his independence, of his desire for the unorthodox, of his somewhat vague appreciation of security should not have messed about with such bores as medium-paced swingers. This strange companionship of spin and swing might have developed during his period as prisoner-of-war. It seemed to me that this unpleasant experience had left its mark on Freddy’s character. And as with Lindsay Hassett, Jack Cheetham, Lala Amarnath, Dudley Nourse and Norman Yardley, the position of Test captain seemed to have a sobering effect on Brown’s resilient make-up. Security and defence crept in and cased him in a veneer from which he emerged more like a bronze statue than a free-thinking and free-acting human being. Freddy seemed to be more successful as a bowler, at least as far as figures go, when he came to Australia after the War than when he came out in ’32 with Douglas Jardine’s team. To me that did not show any evidence of improvement. A robot might one day paint more pictures than Rembrandt. In prewar days there was no limit to Freddy Brown’s potentialities, but being caught in the wheels of Jardine’s ’32 machine he never had the opportunity to express himself. Like Maurice Tate and George Duckworth of the same side he wasn’t needed and automatically became a ‘spare part’. Circumstances prevented us from seeing the best of the congenial Freddy Brown. While England’s slow bowlers on the whole might not possess the skill of those from Australia, they appear to be far more amusing and mentally stimulating. I am prepared on all

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occasions, even at the cost of my own suffering, to give marks for entertainment value to batsmen as well as bowlers. Walter Robins always amuses me, although he has given me to understand repeatedly that it is not his intention. A victim of an unreliable length, this bowler usually fails to carry out fully many forms of strategy designed to destroy batsmen. Here again we have a bowler whose deliveries are sensitive to air resistance. After a bad day at Lord’s, ‘Robbie’ said he should have taken up fast bowling. ‘It’s impossible to bowl a bad length if you can bowl fast enough. Anything between a short bumper and a yorker is dangerous.’ Belonging to the orthodox school of slow spinners, ‘Robbie’s’ field-placing was a most necessary adjunct to his attack. He knew far more about placing a slow bowler’s field than many established Test captains. Too many slow bowlers have been ruined (I have said this elsewhere in my book but I cannot stress it enough) because captains, taking advantage of the powers invested in leadership, are not sufficiently humble to accept suggestions from a bowler, particularly if the latter is making his debut in Test cricket. I believe that Benaud, for instance, would develop more rapidly under Walter Robins’ captaincy than under such Australian captains as Woodfull, Hassett or Bradman, all of whom invariably placed a ‘long straightish leg’ to slow legbreak bowlers, a position which went out with Scotton. It seems to me that Robins, in his first-class playing career, was more interested in the scientific side of slow bowling than in the reaping of a rich harvest of wickets. Even if he found more opposition on the field than in the laboratory the knowledge

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10 for 66 and All That gained would certainly be of great value to slow spin bowlers generally. In this respect, but with limited opportunities in both spheres, commentator John Arlott appears to be one of the few amongst cricket enthusiasts who is a keen debater on the question of ballistics applied to the flight of a cricket ball. Why should an off-break swerve in through the air in one direction and break to the opposite way after touching the ground? This consistency of break after flight applies to leg-breaks also. We have argued this problem in a bush shack outside Wagga Wagga and continued it in a fabulous London hotel, but the result is the same. The presence of Peebles and ‘Robbie’ might have lent some assistance, but we doubt it. My predecessors tell me that Carr, whom they met during the triangular contests in 1912, was a very fine ‘bosie’ bowler. I never saw him but, again, contemporary Englishmen said he was more reliable than the great Bosanquet. Of the bowlers mentioned earlier in this chapter I would say that Percy Fender was the most provocative. This shrewd allrounder, unlike most slow bowlers, knew his limitations and refused to allow anything in the shape of restless imagination to lure him off the beaten track. He had a good ‘wrong ’un’ but rarely used it in good company. He preferred to bowl a topspinning leg-break which had a confusing trajectory and was very similar in action to the off-break with the leg-break action. Had ‘Percy George’ been born in Australia and developed his bowling in that country I feel sure that he would have been ranked among the greatest. Australian conditions would have forced him to exploit variation of flight to a greater degree, an acquisition which would also have strengthened his attack in England.

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A bowler of Fender’s type needs specialists in the field. During Fender’s participation in Test cricket he lacked adequate assistance. With Jack Gregory in the slips, Oldfield behind, Macartney, Andrews, Pellew and Taylor in the covers, the latter pair on the boundary, I had foolproof henchmen that the Surrey captain never had. As I have remarked before, we Australians never wanted Percy to captain England; nor were we, as opponents, very happy about taking his bowling. I thought Peebles would remain England’s premier slow bowler for a longer period than he did. He had all the requirements, a knowledge of ballistics, keen observation, plenty of spin both ways, and an excellent temperament. Ian, I thought, was far ahead of his contemporaries on both sides. But a thought lurking in the back of my mind reminds me that Ponsford and Bradman strutted the stage in those days. ‘Ponny’, relentless perhaps to a greater degree than ‘Braddles’, seemed to save up all his bitterness for slow bowlers, and I’ll swear that it was him who made my exit from first-class cricket come earlier than it should have done. Ian Peebles, too, might have suffered the impact of this uncompromising pair. I have always felt that Eric Hollies and Tommy Mitchell lacked that tenacious stubbornness which should be characteristic of bowlers of their school. Percy Fender had these essentials and ‘Robbie’ was almost as belligerent. Hollies’ nervousness and Mitchell’s clowning were liabilities rather than assets in the hurly-burly of Test cricket. We sat one night sipping tea in a pub lounge on the north New South Wales coast. Eric Hollies looked very white around the gills. He was rubbing his stomach. I enquired about his health.

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10 for 66 and All That ‘Oh, not bad,’ he answered, ‘—but I’m not feeling at my best.’ A few minutes later England’s manager came along to ask me if I could find a seat in my car and drive Eric to Brisbane where the next match was being played. Eric confided to me on the way up that he hated planes and that even the thought of travelling by air made him sick. Even during the drive I felt he was nervous as he huddled in the back seat. His back-seat ‘braking’ nearly forced me through the windscreen several times. What a contrast to his Australian counterpart, Fleetwood-Smith, who completely ignored the Australian Board of Control’s ruling by floating over the hills at Heathersage, Derby in a glider one Sunday morning. Mitchell wanted in concentration as well as in tenacity. A good slow bowler but out of his class when the heat was on. Douglas Wright, on the other hand, loved a fight. Although somewhat temperamental, he was a better bowler when atmospheric conditions were available—when the breeze came from fine-leg or third man. Unfortunately, he had a touch of the ‘south wind’ hostility about him. The more he was attacked the harder he blew, the longer and faster he ran. A most likeable and mellow character off the field. I cannot put into the category of great bowlers one who lacks adaptability. This applies mainly to slow spinners. A really fast bowler who depends on sheer pace and ignores the subtlety of flight can still be successful on any pitch. Whatever progress may have been made in the development of slow spin was stemmed by the introduction of that crazy law which allowed a new ball after fifty overs. Not only did this law slow up cricket but it produced a crop of second-class,

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medium-paced swing bowlers who bobbed in and out of Test cricket and were completely forgotten when it was thankfully abolished. Neither country developed a spinner of note during that period and the repercussions are still being felt in more ways than one. Batsmanship suffered since there was no need to use the feet against an army of medium-pacers whose stock-in-trade was salvo after salvo of deliveries just short of a length, too fast to move out to and drive, and too fast to play an attacking shot off the back foot. Two batsmen who refused to wear shackles were Don Bradman and Denis Compton. Many nudged suspiciously at half-volleys as though they were embarking on a search for booby-traps when facing this army of industrious but not very talented medium-pacers. Later a number of other batsmen followed the example of Bradman and Compton. When in form and not under direction, Arthur Morris, Neil Harvey, Peter May, Tom Graveney, David Sheppard, Colin Cowdrey, Alan Davidson and Richie Benaud could make the medium-pacers’ good-length ball as harmless as if delivered by the hand of a child. Benaud illustrated this at Scarborough in 1953 when he gave Alec Bedser the drubbing of his life—though the Surrey man took nine wickets in the match. And Alec wasn’t an easy bowler to hit. When a law is passed giving concessions to medium or fast bowlers, the reaction is unfavourable to slow spinners. Time after time we have seen Australian and English Test captains, irrespective of the possibility of an early success by slow bowlers, almost praying for the time when sufficient overs had been bowled for them to requisition the new ball.

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10 for 66 and All That How different from the days of Turner and Ferris when the new ball was rubbed on the ground so that the spinners could gain a grip. Bowlers with the skill of S.F. Barnes or Bill O’Reilly need no concessions or alteration of rules to reinforce their attack. Spin-variation of flight and seam and spin swerve are their natural attributes, but I am still under the impression that so potent was the drug of the new ball that some modern captains would have laid both Barnes and O’Reilly aside when the new ‘pill’ was due to leave the umpire’s pocket. I sigh for the times when the old ball was carried into the third century if necessary and hope so very much for a return to the state of things when a pace bowler depends solely on his speed and is in direct competition with those who can spin and whose success depends on spin alone. I might say at this point that a slow bowler who has flight variation depends on variable spin to get that effect. It is not merely a matter of letting the ball leave the hand with more or less impetus. I still believe that an army of spin bowlers will come back into the game sooner or later who will be just as efficient as that possessed by South Africa before the First World War. This surely must have been the best spin attack that one team has ever boasted; in fact, the South Africans had almost too many spinners—results suffered from an embarrassment of riches. And when these spinners do arrive in our midst, we should once again see batsmen using their nimble feet—to be stumped yards down the pitch, perhaps, but at least cut off in the prime of their attack instead of suffering the miserable death of the miser who is afraid to leave his doorstep.

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Aside: ‘What an awful stroke. Why didn’t the blighter play back to that ball, George?’ ‘Because a tremendous amount of top-spin caused the ball to drop two yards shorter than he expected, and the poor fellow was left stranded.’ The two greatest exploiters of that particular ball were Sid Emery, who came to England with Sid Gregory’s 1912 Australian team, and the irresponsible ‘Chuck’ FleetwoodSmith, who toured England under Woodfull some twenty years later. It is sad that during the greater part of their careers both these spinners, who knew so little about the general technique of spin bowling in relation to field placing, should be captained by two men who could be of scant assistance to them in this respect. I have made this assertion in an earlier chapter but must say again that I feel that the ordinary captain, and I use the word ‘ordinary’ with some apprehension, cannot be expected to be exceptionally well versed in the science of high-class spin bowling. It follows that, in my opinion, except where fast bowling is the spearhead of the attack, every Test captain should be a bowler of the more subtle type. But this is asking a great deal. With all due regard for the fallibility of averages as proof of a bowler’s or batsman’s efficiency, a comparison between two eras thirty years apart brings fairly conclusive evidence of the decline in slow spin bowling. (Unfortunately, one must transgress the bounds of ordinary modesty to introduce this point, a departure, I hope, from the general trend of this book. Being fully conscious of

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10 for 66 and All That that human tendency which causes a person to reflect himself in the best possible light, I have no desire to mimic the radio storyteller who, for economy reasons, takes the part of the villain, the hero, and other characters necessary to the drama. His own natural voice is invariably reserved for the hero while he emits unpleasant gutteral sounds and squeaks for the ‘bad’ people in the show.) Away back in 1920–21 Mailey, playing for Australia against England, created two bowling records in Tests. He took 36 wickets in the four Tests in which he bowled, an Australian record at the time. During a Test in Melbourne he took nine wickets in one innings for 120 odd. During the season he took over 80 first-class wickets, against MCC and the Sheffield Shield states, which also may be very close to another record. At the end of that series the Australians joined Johnny Douglas’s team and travelled with them to England. Mailey was dropped from the team for the First Test at Nottingham, Australia relying on three regular bowlers, Warwick Armstrong (slow), Jack Gregory and Ted McDonald (fast). Australia won by ten wickets. Mailey played in the Second and Third Tests and took ten wickets. He was dropped for the Fourth Test at Manchester. In all matches during that tour he collected 150 wickets. Turning over the pages to recent times we find that slow leg-break or ‘bosie’ spinners are practically non-existent. During their 1953 tour of England, Australia had two right-hand slow spinners in Richie Benaud and Doug Ring. In Tests Benaud took two wickets for 174 runs and was dropped for the final Test, while his companion Ring played only in the Lord’s Test. Benaud, still regarded as the best bowler of his class

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in Australia—and I believe he is—was later chosen to tour England as the only recognised slow right-hand spin bowler in the team. Proof enough of the deterioration in slow bowling? And what has England got in this respect? Not one such bowler of class. Since the First World War we have seen Percy Fender, ‘Tick’ Freeman, Ian Peebles, Doug Wright and Walter Robins. It would not be so tragic if somebody with the inventive genius of Bosanquet thought up another style of bowling, however freakish, but for dull unimaginative medium-pacers to be the mainspring of first-class cricket strategy hardly bears thinking upon. Unless he can reach the heights of Maurice Tate or Alec Bedser there should be no place for the medium-pace bowler in big cricket. If, as in the case of Archer (Australia) or Bailey (England), or going back further, Kelleway and Arthur Gilligan, he has some pretensions to batting, then he may vindicate his Test selection. Anybody with reasonable physique could fill the role of medium-pace bowler in a couple of weeks if given the new ball in England. The assignment would be a little more difficult in Australia. That is why Australia, to my mind, has never produced a good non-spinning medium-pacer with sufficient skill to warrant his inclusion in a Test side by his bowling alone. Australia’s strongest teams have depended for their attack on extreme pace on the one hand and spin on the other. Her weakest sides have possessed a battery of medium-pacers. At the danger of introducing a more provocative note I would say—as indeed I have already hinted—that the mentality of the medium-pace bowler as a general rule does not rate up to

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10 for 66 and All That that of the more subtle type of bowler. With very few exceptions the great spin bowlers of cricket were personalities and men of character—not always pleasant but invariably interesting. They may have lacked the charm and friendliness of most of their faster confederates; they may have been more temperamental and less self-disciplined; but there seemed to be an absence of orthodoxy about them and they were able to meander through life as individuals not as civil servants. This decline in slow spin bowling has not only put interesting bowlers out of the game but threatens to deprive us of the richer sporting characters. Bosanquet, a rich personality in himself, has been followed by disciples who, without knowing or meeting the man, have assumed certain personal qualities; which cannot be said of that far-off character, whoever be might be, who dumped his futile medium-pace deliveries on the cricketing world. The closest offspring of the English maestro in Australia was Doctor ‘Ranji’ Hordern, a dental student who visited England with a Philadelphian team from the University of Pennsylvania in 1907 and collected 115 wickets for an average of 9.00 in sixteen games. In 1908 he again toured England and with the great Barton King formed one of the most hostile bowling combinations seen in England from an overseas team. Hordern came back to Australia to become our first ‘googly’ bowler. After a successful series of Tests at home he gave up cricket and dentistry and disappeared into the bush on the South Coast and wrote a fine book called Googlies. This studious and most interesting fellow, somewhat nomadic in his habits, used to massage his fingers to give them strength and flexibility for bowling even when he was

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walking down the street or fighting his way through the South Coast jungle. The next in order came S.H. ‘Mad Mick’ Emery, a wild relentless fellow with the strength of Hercules. He claims that he bowled Sir Pelham Warner with a full-pitcher after that batsman had made two strokes at the ball. Sir Pelham still remembers that particular delivery (it was at Lord’s in 1912, P.F.W.’s last Test). Sid Emery, now almost blind, says that when Reggie Spooner was nearly bowled by a similar ball a couple of minutes previously ‘Plum’ roared out: ‘A simple full toss, Reggie—you should have hit it for six!’ When, in a Sydney club match, Sid Emery made an unsuccessful appeal against the light, he asked the umpire for a match, lit it, and placed it gently on the bails. He was that kind of bloke. And when Alf Noble told him he would be a great bowler if he could control his ‘googly’, Emery answered, ‘I’d be a great man if I could control myself.’ In Canada in 1913 he was fined five dollars because he came ten minutes late for the match. He grabbed his bat, sold it to a spectator, and paid our manager, R.B. Benjamin, the five dollars. After Bosanquet, Hordern and Emery came the gentle, unobtrusive Clarence Victor Grimmett, a little man with plenty of imagination. A striking contrast to ‘Mad Mick’ Emery, Clarrie was responsible, self-disciplined, considerate and studious. This man thought a full toss was the worst form of cricket vandalism and the long hop a legacy from prehistoric days when barbarians rolled boulders towards the enemy. Collecting a wicket was a mere incident in the game for Clarrie. Immediately after the incident he would pluck a tuft of grass

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10 for 66 and All That with delicate fingers, place it to his mouth, glance sideways at the scoreboard to see whether that alteration on the board was opposite the name with two ‘m’s’ instead of one, smirk silently to himself and take up the attack once more. One of the gentlest of bowlers ever to lift a ball, he walked gently, picked up a cup of tea gently, arranged his tie with whispering fingers. His cap was set as though with a spirit level—none of this Yorkshire tilt for the fastidious Mr Grimmett. Clarrie might have come on the Test scene five years earlier had not the author of this book scented virile opposition and bowled with both arms to keep this friendly enemy out. When Grimmett did creep into Australia’s Test side during the 1924–25 series and took five good English wickets for 45 runs, I began to feel his hot breath on the back of my neck. My retirement gave Clarrie a chance of bowling against the

Clarrie Grimmett

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wind almost permanently, a concession a slow bowler prays for, and in this case was richly earned. Then another ‘irresponsible’—‘Chuck’ Fleetwood-Smith, a left-hand ‘googly’ bowler and probably the best of his class seen in cricket—barges in. A man who could spin the leather off the ball if he wished. As far as relative spin is concerned, by ‘Chuck’s’ standards modern bowlers merely allow the ball to slip from their fingers. He was the only man I have known who applauded a hit for six off his bowling. Of course other bowlers have done it but as a benevolent gesture rather than one of genuine appreciation. A good-natured man both on and off the field and often to his personal disadvantage, he was, possibly, of all Australian bowlers over the years, the one least helped by captaincy. Admitting his length was unreliable, few captains knew how to place a protective field for this unpredictable spinner. One who gave most satisfaction was perhaps Vic Richardson. ‘Chuck’ drifted out of the game in his prime and his absence made a dent in the Australian attack which still remains. His last Test figures (Kennington Oval, 1938)—one wicket for 298. Bill O’Reilly hardly comes under the heading of slow spin bowling but the fact that he spun leg-breaks and ‘googlies’ even though with greater speed squeezes him in. As a personality on the field O’Reilly, in my opinion, tops the lot. When bowling he completely dominated the situation. He roared at umpires and scowled at batsmen. There was no sign of veneer or camouflage when he appealed, nor were there any apologies or beg pardons when the umpire indicated that the batsmen’s leg’s were yards out of line with the stumps. Personally, I always felt that an

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10 for 66 and All That apologetic or somewhat patronising appeal brought better results in the long run, but in the eyes of other bowlers it might have been a sign of chicanery. Certainly such tactics would have been out of character as far as ‘Big Bill’ was concerned. It is these differing whims, moods and fancies which make slow bowlers more colourful as a group than the ‘mediums’. As with me, Bill O’Reilly’s last Test was at the Oval, his bowling figures 3–178: Hutton had caught up with the last of the great Australian spinners. Mailey had gone out ten years before at Melbourne, against Victoria, otherwise his farewell to big cricket (4–364) might not have been so complimentary. While figures are not always a true reflection of strength it is interesting and helpful to produce them in this instance to illustrate Australia’s dependence on slow spin bowling between 1920 and Bill 1948, a period when the new-ball O’Reilly concession was introduced. The four leading Australian spin bowlers were Mailey, Grimmett, O’Reilly and Fleetwood-Smith. Over this period the quartet claimed 327 Test wickets against England compared with 209 taken by the leading Australian fast bowlers, Gregory, McDonald, Lindwall and Miller. In first-class cricket in England the four slow bowlers collected 1157 wickets while the speed merchants took 515, less than half the number.

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There seems little or no doubt that Australia’s present fall from grace is due mainly to the weakness of the spin attack. Moreover, while the Australian selectors pack the team with medium-fast bowlers at the cost of slow bowlers, even with prospects only, it may be a long time before Australia will be able to muster a well-balanced Test team to match England’s or that of any other country. Having suffered defeat by England in the last two Test series and near-defeat by a finely balanced, immensely capable South African side it is nearly time that Australia gave more encouragement to slow bowlers. Sometimes, I think that some measure of efficiency would be restored if a captain from the most slow-bowling-conscious state—New South Wales—was pressed into service. It is thirty years since the last Australian Test skipper (H.L. Collins) came from New South Wales. My knowledge of bowlers is based on my personal experience on the field and also through conversation helped by recorded averages and performances. For instance, I could not discuss Tom Richardson or George Lohmann, nor Turner and Ferris, but I have a better assessment of Hugh Trumble whom I saw bowl in the nets and who gave me some very good advice from a psychological angle early in my career. In fact, I think I learnt more about cricket from this Australian giant than from people who had set themselves up as coaches. The best natural spin bowlers I have ever seen are Sid Emery and Fleetwood-Smith—I discussed their bowling and characteristics at some length earlier on. The two greatest swing or swerve bowlers of this century, in my opinion, are

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10 for 66 and All That Barton King of Philadelphia and Maurice Tate of Sussex. Best left-arm bowlers: Jack Massie, chosen to tour South Africa in 1914 and wounded in the shoulder in the First World War, Neville Quinn, of South Africa, and Bob Wookey of Toronto, Canada. Off-breakers: Alf Noble (Australia), Percy Clarke (Philadelphia) and Jim Laker (England). Fast bowlers: ‘Tibby’ Cotter, McDonald, Gregory and Lindwall (Australia); Larwood (England); Constantine (West Indies). Medium-spinners: Bill O’Reilly (Australia) and Sydney Barnes (England). As to slow spinners, I would say that Clarrie Grimmett, because of his perfect length, was on a par with ‘Ranji’ Hordern. ‘Tich’ Freeman’s amazing performances in English county cricket possibly entitle him to some recognition here, but his relative failure on Australian pitches during the 1924–25 tour weakens his claims. However, it must be remembered that during this era the Australian batsmen had been having some good practice in state games against such slow bowlers as Grimmett and Williams (South Australia), Oxenham (Queensland), Chilvers (New South Wales) and Hartkopf (Victoria)—and Mailey; and when poor ‘Tich’ arrived here, he ‘copped the lot’. Never before or since has there been such a battery of slow bowlers in Australia. Again in terms of comparison, while Freeman did not seem able to adapt himself to Australian conditions, Grimmett and Mailey were reasonably successful on the slowish, easy-paced pitches of England as well as on the faster Australian wickets. The inclusion of Barton King and Percy Clarke of Philadelphia, and Bob Wookey of Canada, may cause some eyebrows to be lifted. I have grouped King with the other cricket ‘foreigners’ to soften the blow of a further shock. I would say that

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Barton King, the tall, beautifully built, American Adonis, who broke into the world of big cricket in 1893, was one of the best bowlers of his type in the world. At the end of twenty years he had obtained 42 per cent of the wickets gained by his countrymen in first-class cricket at home and abroad. Just to remind Australians particularly that we did not monopolise the bowling creases in what was considered the ‘golden era’, it was generally accepted by the best judges that Bart King’s bowling performances against English counties in 1903 were better than those of any of the Australian team of 1921. In about half the number of matches played by the Australians, King took 93 wickets at an average of 14.00. During a later tour (1907) he captured 87 wickets at an average of 11.00—or almost twice as many as our own great spin bowler, ‘Ranji’ Hordern, who, as a member of the Philadelphia side, got 47 wickets, average 20.00. Like Sydney Barnes, Maurice Tate, Alec Bedser and other great medium-fast swerve bowlers, King had that distinctive quality of being able to adjust his technique to suit the prevailing conditions. Although I cannot go back to the nineteenth century, I feel certain that the Philadelphian must have been the supreme bowler of his class. His first-class cricket began against Blackham’s Australians in 1893 and ended in 1913 against Sid Gregory’s team at Philadelphia. The following story is a tribute to his uncanny skill. King’s club, Belmont, were playing a match against Trenton, whose captain arrived at the ground just in time to see King take his ninth wicket. Hurrying onto the field, the Trenton

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10 for 66 and All That captain muttered, in King’s hearing, that if the train hadn’t been late this collapse would never have happened. Like Queen Victoria, Bart was not amused. He immediately sent all his fieldsmen off the field except one, whom he asked to stand over the boundary at fine leg. The batsman at King’s end enquired, ‘For heaven’s sake, if you don’t need a wicket-keeper, what on earth is that man doing there?’ ‘He’s not a wicket-keeper,’ said Bart, ‘he’s not even a fieldsman.’ And with that he bowled at the Trenton captain. The ball tickled the leg stump and rolled into the hands of the man at fine leg. ‘Now,’ said Bart to the batsman at his end, ‘you know why I left him there.’

‘Now you know why I left that man there,’ said King 112

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Had I not met Barton King toward the end of his career, in Philadelphia in 1913, I might have hesitated to place him on so high a pedestal. It was then I was convinced of his amazing mastery of curve and swerve. He was one of the few pace bowlers I have ever met who knew why the ball swerved in the air and could explain it better than any expert on ballistics. Bear in mind that in his bowling he had the support of cricketers only from one city, not from a whole country; although after playing in Philadelphia myself I know that the Philadelphians’ fielding was as good as any Test cricketers’ and, if anything, less demonstrative and fussy. King’s team-mate, Percy Clarke, capitalised on off-spin to such an extent that he was able to vary the length of swerve or dictate at which point in its flight the ball would begin to change its course. The only other bowler in my personal experience who had the same discipline over the ball was Alf Noble, another tantalising off-breaker. The nearest approach to either of them in modern cricket are Ian Johnson and Jim Laker, whose varying flight is caused by spin rather than pace from the hand. These technicalities may be boring to some, but I assure you that no spin bowler has ever reached the top flight who was not conversant with the effect of air resistance against a spinning ball, whether it be at golf, tennis, baseball or any other game which allows the sphere to be airborne. Nobody was more disappointed than I when during our tour of Canada and the USA in 1932 no match was arranged in Philadelphia, the headquarters of American cricket since the beginning of the Civil War in 1861. Had their game progressed with the consistency and at the standard of the turn of the

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10 for 66 and All That century I do not doubt that instead of England v. Australia being the highlight of world cricket it would have been: AMERICA V THE BRITISH EMPIRE My friends in Philadelphia would probably say, why America?

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10.

How great is Jim Laker? ow great is Jim Laker? Were his fantastic Test figures against Australia in 1956 a true indication of his skill? As a rule I discount the value of figures regarding the skill of players unless I am aware of the conditions under which the figures were achieved, and even then figures might lie. The state of the pitch did, of course, favour Laker during the 1956 Tests in England and I doubt whether any bowler in the world could have made better use of this advantage. In addition the Australian batting was, on the whole, pathetic, and in saying this I do not mean to detract from Laker’s talent. He might have taken six wickets for 20 at Old Trafford in the Fourth Test, instead of nine for 37 and ten for 53 and still gain my appreciation. But I am prepared to be regarded as a complete outsider by Jim and the Australians when I say that no village team in England could have given the Surrey bowler better figures than were presented to him by my own countrymen. Jim Laker is not a great bowler but he certainly ranks with the best off-breakers of all time. A right-arm off-break bowler has limitations. He does not possess the variety or amount of

H

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10 for 66 and All That spin of which the ‘bosie’ leg-breaker is capable—consequently he cannot reach the same heights. The best off-breakers I have met and played against are Ray McNamee, Alf Noble (New South Wales), Don Blackie and Ian Johnson (Victoria) and Ron Oxenham (Queensland). Their English counterparts are J.C. Clay (Glamorgan), Tom Goddard of Gloucestershire, Cecil Parkin, who in his time played for three counties—Durham, Yorkshire and Lancashire—and V.W.C. Jupp of Northamptonshire. I met C.B.T. Turner (New South Wales) just before his death in 1944 and was amazed at his mental alertness, particularly with regard to bowling tactics. Over eighty years of age even then, he gripped an orange to illustrate for me his method of spin. His thumb and first three fingers almost met at the core. This man must have been a very great off-spinner. A South African who ranks high as a world-class offbreaker is Hugh Tayfield, who put up a fine performance a few years ago in Melbourne, taking thirteen very good wickets in the Second Test. On this occasion he found, as Jim Laker did three years later, that the average Australian batsman has lost the art of driving the half-volley. Jack White of Somerset also exploited this Australian weakness in 1928 and Hedley Verity in ’32. In this Test, Tayfield—at the instigation of Jack McGlew, I presume—placed a ‘gate’ of four fieldsmen halfway down the pitch, two on each side, and invited the batsmen to drive. Some tried and failed; others, unwilling to meet the fate of their comrades, humbly surrendered. These incidents stick in one’s mind and the memory of the battle and the tactics employed remains green although the figures on the board fade into the record-books. That performance was not staged on a gluepot at

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Manchester but on a perfect batsman’s pitch at Melbourne. And, believe me, those of us who have bowled at Melbourne shed no tears when the ground was ravaged for the benefit of discus and javelin throwers and the like in the 1956 Olympics. Every batsman’s dream should be a day with off-break bowlers. In a club match on one famous occasion Vic Trumper said to his batting partner who had just hit an off-breaker for two fours, ‘Hey, go steady, Stan, or they’ll take this fellow off.’ Because of the treatment meted out to this type of bowler by the average Australian batsman of long ago, who thrived on half-volleys, he was seldom considered by selectors when representative teams were chosen.

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10 for 66 and All That In over fifty years of Australian cricket only three recognised off-break bowlers have been chosen for an English tour: ‘Jerry’ Hazlett (1912), Arthur Richardson (1926) and Ian Johnson (1948 and 1956). All three were regarded as all-rounders, otherwise I am doubtful whether one would have been chosen for his bowling alone. The inability—or, let me be generous, the refusal—of the average modern batsman to crash the off-breaker’s half-volley to the boundary has given this type of bowler a fictitious valuation and has turned the lamb into a wolf. It requires little or no talent physically or mentally to bowl an off-break. It is the natural spinner schoolboys allow to fall out of their hands without knowing it. I began as an off-break bowler in days when to opponents he was as welcome as an uncle from Fiji. (People who have uncles in Fiji receive regular consignments of bananas.) But I soon realised that there was no future for me in big cricket with this kind of ball and turned to the less disciplined but more amusing ‘wrong ’un’. At the same time when captaining a side in club matches I fell back on the ordinary off-break when the pitch had been affected by rain and managed to pick up wickets without very much trouble because I was taught by Hugh Trumble always to aim at the bat on a sticky pitch. I was never given a bowl on a ‘sticky’ in a Test match, mainly because nobody, not even the captain, dared to take the ball off slow left-hander Charley Macartney. While I am loath to give anybody credit because he is able to bowl off-breaks (I am speaking of right-handers, not those of the Fleetwood-Smith, Johnny Wardle, George Tribe pattern) I do give a measure of credit to those who are able to add

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hostility because of their knowledge of flight, spin and break variation. But again, since the delivery is natural and easy and does not require the bowler to be a contortionist, it is fairly simple for the off-breaker to control the flight of the ball. A ‘wrong ’un’ off-breaker develops muscles in the bowling arm which have been out of action since the days of ape men. This must all be very annoying to right-hand off-spinners, coming from a deserter who found something more subtle, more elusive, and far more satisfying in the great Bosanquet’s creation. But not until I see Jim Laker cause havoc against aggressive batsmen on a good Australian pitch shall I regard him as a truly great bowler. The glorious uncertainty of cricket is well illustrated by the Surrey bowler’s contrasting experience in successive Test series. Almost before the glistening beads of perspiration had dropped from his brow after capturing nineteen wickets for 90 runs against Australia at Manchester, he finds himself coming out of the campaign against South Africa with eleven wickets for well over 300 runs in the Tests there. This is either a sad reflection on Australian batting or proof that Jim Laker is not a dangerous bowler when conditions favour the batsmen. I suggest it is a little of both. Further to the relative usefulness of bowlers under all conditions, I feel that medium-pacers who depend on the advantages provided by the use of the new ball lack the skill one has a right to expect from international bowlers. Again, swinging or swerving the new ball is even more simple than bowling right-hand off-breaks. The skill comes when the medium-pacer has to off-spin or leg-cut the ball in order to make it alter its direction in flight. Maurice Tate was a master

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10 for 66 and All That of these tactics, and Alec Bedser’s in-swinger when the ball was worn was testimony to his real talent. As far as I know, Australia has not produced a pacey bowler who could seam-swerve and spin-swerve with such accuracy and consistency. Ray Lindwall, Keith Miller, Bill Johnston and Alan Davidson bend the ball considerably after the seams are flattened, but they lack the precision of England’s fast bowlers and depend more on sheer speed. Atmospheric conditions in Australia are not as helpful to the cultivation of swerve as those in England. Bowlers (and English counties reek of them) who lose their fire when the ball becomes worn and resort to extreme off- or leg-theory to save their skins are greater ‘impostors’ than batting stonewallers without purpose or design. For the sake of the future of cricket I would suggest St Helena for such men.

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11.

Rebels of cricket ince the Mailey–Taylor Testimonial Match I have been asked many times why the decision to put my name on the list of beneficiaries was delayed so long. Why was I not given a match before Vic Richardson, Clarrie Grimmett, Jack Gregory, Tommy Andrews, Alan Kippax, Bill Woodfull, Bill Ponsford, Sir Donald Bradman, Lindsay Hassett and other players over whom I may have claimed priority as far as length of service went? I can think of only one reason. I took up journalism as a profession in the early twenties and as a result was eyed with a certain amount of suspicion by legislators whose judgement I often criticised publicly. Certain members of the controlling bodies lacked the worldly sophistication to appreciate constructive criticism and undoubtedly resented me. My lampooning of cricketer’s foibles through the medium of cartoons, jovial as it seemed to me, was even less acceptable and it was only a matter of time before retaliatory action was taken. The New South Wales Cricket Association struck a mortal blow to whatever intentions I had of continuing in firstclass cricket when it rendered me ineligible for selection for

S

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10 for 66 and All That first-class matches because I had written an ordinary account of a match in Brisbane without having received official permission. It was my own fault. I disobeyed the law and despite the fact that I was attached to a newspaper at the time, the Association had acted within its rights. And I might have made my exit from big cricket with less grace. After all, the selectors could have dropped me after that tragic match in Melbourne when the local lads belted me to the extent of 364 runs in one innings, a record which I regret to say still stands and will be used as evidence against me till Doomsday, perhaps. It was strange that the NSWCA, which had given me my first fee for an article to boost the game after the First World War, should be the body to sack me eight or ten Lindsay years later for performing a Hassett similar duty. I felt no remorse, nor was I resentful of this treatment. At the time I was anxious to make a living independent of the few pounds I may have received through cricket, a futile activity which tied my hands and would have stifled my journalistic progress. Two or three years later Sir Donald at the height of his career committed a similar ‘crime’ for which the Board of Control fined him fifty pounds.

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Don was a tremendous drawcard at the time and it was very sensible of the Board to fine rather than banish him. After that little clash Don told some of his friends that he would get that fifty pounds back and I have every reason to believe that he succeeded. Brisbane, where I lost the number of my mess, was never a happy hunting-ground for me. Wickets were as difficult to get as ordinary courtesies from the Queensland Cricket Association. And in this respect I was no better off than the ex-captain of England who had to speak to his friends through the barbedwire entanglement which separates the Members’ Stand from the public section of the ground. (He was not allowed in the Members’ Stand.) In further parenthesis I do hope that for the sake of the prestige of Queensland cricket that the QCA will try to act in a spirit more consistent with the state it represents and show more kindness to visitors, particularly those from England. This reminds me that on one occasion English cricketwriter Charles Bray and I sent a telegram from the press-box to the English manager sitting beyond the entanglements some twenty or thirty yards away, asking why a certain player had just left the field. Within three minutes the boy brought back the answer. ‘Natural causes. (Signed) Howard.’ It is pretty difficult to live down the reputation of being a rebel. When Hutton’s team was in Brisbane a few years back a most prominent member of the legal profession is said to have told a group of friends at a leading club in the city that Mailey is sour with the QCA because he is not allowed to barge into the players’ dressing-room.

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10 for 66 and All That The truth is that Mailey is not sour. He has no desire to invade the players’ sanctuary and the last dressing-room he barged into was at the Oval in 1926, and then he didn’t barge, he crept in with all the humility expected of a tail-ender who had failed to score the 290-odd runs necessary to win the final Test. I have come to the conclusion that a rebel is a person who disagrees with a committee, particularly if that committee has the power to suspend the culprit. Over the years I have gone out of my way to meet the so-called rebels of cricket and in almost every case I have met people whose fanatical idealism towards cricket has been greatly misunderstood. After almost every tour there is at least one player who has the reputation of being difficult to handle and in consequence becomes suspect. Of course, there are cranky and sour people in cricket as well, but these unfortunate souls are, as a rule, cranky with life itself and cannot be classed with that rich, wholesome player whose provocations are the result of what he feels are actions that harm the game. There is no doubt that on occasions the rebel’s summing-up is wrong and he may be a victim of his own apprehensions, but even then this person should be treated sympathetically and not with intolerance and misunderstanding. One of cricket’s greatest idealists was Frank Laver, a medium-pace off-break bowler who managed the 1905 and 1909 Australians to England before the Australian Board of Control was set up. Apart from being a most capable manager, his bowling figures on the first tour were 115 wickets for an average of 18, and on the second he topped the averages with

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70 wickets for 14 apiece. This big, six-foot-five Australian (who had the most perfect set of teeth I have even seen) fell foul of the newly formed Board, a disagreement which culminated in the refusal of six of Australia’s greatest cricketers—Trumper, Hill, Cotter, Carter, Ransford and Armstrong—to tour England with another manager. Whatever may be said in favour of democratising the control of cricket this change-over certainly set Australian cricket back for a number of years. Determined to send a team without these players, the Board chose a nondescript band under the captaincy of Sid Gregory, a lovable but amazingly weak character, and within a few months this roving band disintegrated into at least three sections and finished up a rabble. Fortunately, the repercussions of this tragedy, which had almost wrecked the social side of Australian cricket, were softened five or six years later by the birth of the famous AIF team which brought Australia’s cricket prestige to perhaps its greatest peak of all time. In this direction, cricketers must never forget the wonderful service rendered by ‘Plum’ Warner who was mainly responsible for the inception of this gallant team during the First World War. I don’t think any team, from Test to tin-can standard, has ever played cricket more unselfishly than Collins’ famous AIF eleven. War certainly had its compensations as far as Australian cricket was concerned and I have said that the stimulus of the AIF may have been responsible for the 1921 team’s success on and off the field. Frank Laver, however, was too generous and loyal to gloat over the misery of the ill-chosen and weakly led 1912 Triangular Contest team and was not unsympathetic to the body which had passed him over and had made such a mess of its early attempt to organise first-class cricket teams.

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10 for 66 and All That The shy, retiring and modest Frank, although concerned about the rumours of his own alleged mismanagement, was never bitter but, as with Trumper, Hill, Ransford, Noble and other grand members of pre-Australian Board teams, a rebellious germ was planted in his heart. Long before I met these great men I had heard stories about their recalcitrance which, in my innocence, I had believed. But when I toured with them in New Zealand during the early part of 1914 I never once heard them utter a word of criticism against the controllers of Australian cricket. It was then, I believe, that a mild rebellious germ was sown in my own mind. If these men were rebels, they were also gentlemen. And if there was a fault, I doubted that it was on their side. Warwick Armstrong’s rebelliousness was prompted more by instinct than by reason; consequently he found himself very often at loggerheads with authority when a little more tolerance might have created a better understanding. On the 1921 tour Warwick would not accept certain English umpires—one in particular had cheated some years before, he maintained. Always sceptical about adverse opinions of umpires I, with other members of the team, thought the ‘Big Ship’ was nursing one of his many grudges; and when matters appertaining to the tour were discussed in caucus the vote invariably went against our captain. At the same time Warwick was a fighter and a more than useful man to have on the side. Another rebellious spirit in Australian cricket was Charles Kelleway. He was left out of the AIF team in its infancy and later refused to tour with Australia because he was not chosen in the first group of players. A stubborn dogged player whose objections, I am sure, were based on a form of idealism.

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Douglas Jardine sacrificed his cricket future because he stuck to his guns during the ‘bodyline’ trouble. But when the smoke and heat of the encounter had drifted away and values became more elastic, Jardine lost another battle—with his real self. He wasn’t really tough or relentless at heart. He merely rebelled against opposition to what is regarded as being sensible and necessary tactics. It is natural for man, animal or beast to develop a veneer or shield that may serve for protection against attack. In this regard, Douglas Jardine, apart from facial accomplishments, resembles an oyster. The brittle exterior which grew around him in ’32 got tougher and tougher as opposition mounted, but I always felt that behind the shell was a somewhat delicate softness, the taste of which must be acquired. Since finding milder waters and less opposition the shell has become less impregnable and his friends are conscious of more humour at the cost of the old cynicism. Cricket can be in the blood of provocative people as well as in the blood of the tranquil and those of obvious charm, and while these opposed types seek to destroy each other occasionally, the game over which they disagree seldom comes to grief. Captain Jardine’s associates in the ‘bodyline’ fray, Bill Voce and Harold Larwood, although necessarily part of the machinery in this well-directed attack, lacked their skipper’s independHarold Larwood ence and were hardly deserving

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10 for 66 and All That of any disciplinary action. Neither earned the subjection which was their lot. Both will always be great cricketers and travelling companions as far as I personally am concerned. Many stories have been written about Freddie Trueman and more probably have been told. Now I always found a refreshing frankness about this Yorkshireman. His alleged boastfulness may be regarded as an anticipatory gesture rather than praise of his own past deeds. ‘If I’m picked to play against your fellows,’ he told me at the beginning of the last Australian tour, when I met him at an outlandish village match in north-east Yorkshire, ‘I’ll bowl like hell. If I hit them it will be too bad, but while I’m supposed to be a fast bowler I’m going to try to bowl fast. You can tell that to your papers out in Australia.’ I found nothing wrong in that. In fact, there were times when Freddie appeared to be almost patronising and overgentle. This so-called fiery character is really sensitive and far more likely to respond to reasonable advice than to hard discipline. There may be no antidote suitable to counteract the venom in some players but in this case if the lash is spared I don’t think it will spoil the child. I cannot think of many more problem children in English cricket but I have no need to rack my brain to find a score of them in other parts of the world. There is a dark sultry figure in India who approaches the bowling crease in easy, leisurely fashion, as though conjuring up all sinister forms of destruction, and who then suddenly skips and bowls off the wrong leg. Lala Amarnath is a rebel of the richest vintage but withal a very fine player. One requires more than ordinary skill and an abundance of diplomacy to captain an

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all-India side. I might add that it requires a certain degree of courage to travel with an Indian rebel. I was honoured to tour Australia with Amarnath’s side, managed by the wide-awake Peter Gupta, just after the Second World War and I haven’t quite recovered from a dish of curry Amarnath and Co. made in my little bush shack at Cronulla on the South Pacific coast near Sydney. My guests found their own herbs in the bush and put everything into the cauldron but curry. Plants I always thought were poisonous weeds went in with goanna tails, geebungs, kookaburra eggs, scorpions and trapdoor spiders. Amarnath, head chef, sent foraging parties out into the jungle at ten in the morning and those who were not bushed returned with an assortment, some items of which would have puzzled our Forestry, Agricultural and Flora and Fauna Departments. Cooking began at midday and the curry was served at quarter past five. I had one spoonful and immediately rang the fire brigade. Amarnath and Co. struck again at eight o’clock with some home-made coffee, but by that time I was past caring. What was left of the serial meal was thrown into the bush. Next morning at daybreak I visited the scene of the feast and discovered four goannas, two snakes and nine crows stiff and cold in the soft morning light. The Indians? They played their best cricket of the tour on the following day. I know that Amarnath was not particularly happy with the controllers of cricket in his country and on one occasion was sent home from England as a disciplinary measure. From my own knowledge of this fighting captain I feel that he was treated rather harshly and without due appreciation of his great love of the game.

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10 for 66 and All That Professionalism stunts the growth of rebelliousness in England. Unlike countries where cricket is played for pleasure and is not a matter of necessity, England has a solid background of employed players who conform with accepted rules and regulations. The control, too, in England is more elastic and sympathetic than in other countries where latitude and selfexpression are not welcomed. The most spectacular rebel Australia has had in years is Sidney Barnes, who first came into prominence as a turnstile hurdler. This great player, who, it is said, was tutored in the art of self-advertising by his bosom friend, golfer Von Nida, could have been a tremendous influence in Australian cricket had his case been treated by cricketers instead of by lawyers. Sid Barnes like the rest of us had his faults, but no greater lover of cricket ever lived. And nobody I ever met showed a greater appreciation of fitness than this amusing and embarrassing rebel. It should not be forgotten that the mercurial Keith Miller and even the great Don himself were rapped over the knuckles by those in control, some of whom had laid their haloes aside at different periods. Two other real cricket idealists, Ian Cromb of New Zealand and Eric Rowan of South Africa, both rich characters, were not without tendencies that were regarded with some distrust by the controllers. Eric, I think, was more versatile than Ian. Not only did he cross swords with the controlling bodies but he counterattacked me because I criticised his captaincy at Jo’burg on one occasion in 1950. I still wince with pain, not because his criticism hurt me but because as a literary effort it made my contribution in the Star look as weak as an infant’s ABC.

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Cricket would lose much of its adventure and robustness without the rich blood of the rebel. We have seen the result of its anaemic tendencies over the years and while, as in other walks of life, organised rebellion may cause much inconvenience, a solitary rebel here and there in cricket, to me anyhow, is like champagne after lemonade.

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12.

Tinkering with the rules he love of cricket nowadays seems to be confined to those who watch it or read about it. Too many first-class players find it a terrible bore and are most relieved when rain stops play or the umpires pluck the bails from the stumps. Touring players become homesick and count the days for their return home. ‘Sacco’ Mayne, who toured with Sid Gregory’s ill-fated side in 1912, and with Warwick Armstrong’s ’21 team, a quiet uncomplaining man as a rule, roared his head off when he heard other players yearning for home or pleading for a rest. ‘You fellows,’ he shouted across the dressing-room at the Oval one time, ‘should never have played cricket if you hate it so much! If I were Sid Smith’—the manager—‘I’d bundle you moaning cows off home straight away.’ That forthright man Edgar Mayne was equally turbulent when anybody suggested changing the rules. ‘The trouble is, the rules are too good for you blokes who know so little about the spirit of the game.’ His remark still applies. There is nothing more wrong with the rules of cricket than there is with the rules of shove

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ha’penny or marriage or any other game where chance plays a part but adaptability and spiritual reaction play bigger ones. There has already been sufficient fiddling with the rules— the Laws of Cricket if we are to be proper—to create a battalion of rebels, and I, a peaceful and meek citizen, am proud to be numbered among them. During my Test career things were pretty tough for bowlers of my ilk. There was no offside l.b.w. concession. Dozens of times Herby Sutcliffe pushed his pads out to a ‘wrong ’un’ spinning towards the middle stump. There was no appeal because the ball pitched a fraction outside the off stump. Herby used to grin because he knew that if I pitched in line with the stumps the spin would take the ball past the leg stump, in which case he would have no difficulty in dragging it to the leg boundary without risk. The ball was larger than it is now and consequently more difficult to grip unless you had a hand like David Nourse or an Australian woodchopper. Again, the stumps were smaller and set closer together than they are today. I accepted these standardised rules because I had come into cricket with them, but when the crazy idea of disallowing the bowlers to use resin to allow a better grip of the ball—and a law forbidding the lifting of the seam with the fingernail—blew in, I bade goodbye to this form of freedom and became a rebel. Although it was against the law, I must break down and confess that I always carried powdered resin in my pocket and when the umpire wasn’t looking lifted the seam for Jack Gregory and Ted McDonald. And I am still as unashamed as a Yorkshireman who appeals for l.b.w. off a ball which pitched two feet outside the leg stump.

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10 for 66 and All That Anyhow, I was in pretty good company. One day in Sydney, Johnny Douglas, the England captain, asked me to show him my hand. He held it for a while and then said, ‘Arthur, you’ve been using resin. I’ll report you to the umpire.’ I asked him to show me his right hand, and looking at the thumbnail I noticed it was worn to the flesh on the outside. ‘You’ve been lifting the seam, Johnny,’ I said. My co-rebel grinned and the matter was dropped. On the following day I read in the paper: ‘Douglas and Mailey appear to be good friends again. They were shaking hands out in the middle yesterday.’ This prohibition against resin was the more unreasonable in that wicket-keepers were still allowed to use bird-lime on

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their gloves. Whenever I ran out of resin I used to spend a good part of the day shaking hands with Bert Oldfield, our ’keeper. When, after dropping a catch in the slips, I asked Herby Collins to move me into the covers, Herby, the shrewdest of all captains, advised me to stay put. ‘You’ve got a better chance of lifting the seams for Jack Gregory and “Stork” Hendry there.’ I allowed myself to break this law without compunction because in lifting the seam I was keeping the ball in its original shape. The stitches on a brand-new ball are perceptibly raised, a peculiarity which allows the new ball to swerve more than an old one on which the stitches have been battered flat. Today, fast and medium bowlers rub the ball on their trousers but this has little or no effect compared with lifting the seam, though of course it is more lawful. Nevertheless, I know one Australian pace bowler who still lifts the seam. The question of whether or not the seam should be lifted or resin used should be left to the umpire to decide. If his inspection of the ball reveals no damage, what right have the legislators to interfere? Seam-lifting and resin-dusting preserve but never destroy. From time to time tactics employed by first-class cricketers are looked upon with suspicion and, occasionally, apprehension. Probably the most famous case was the adoption of fast leg-theory by Douglas Jardine. I use the word ‘adoption’ because similar fields had been used previously in first-class cricket but these tactics had failed because certain batsmen took up the challenge, as did McCabe against Larwood in 1932, and they were not persevered with. Although the ‘bodyline’ rumpus has died down, it has left what might be described as a certain amount of nuclear dust in

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10 for 66 and All That the air which although not as devastating as that manufactured by the old firm of Jardine, Larwood & Co., is sufficiently tantalising to call for certain alteration of the rules regarding the number of fieldsmen allowed on the leg-side field. In English county cricket, of course, fielders on the leg are now limited to five, with not more than two behind the wicket. After Douglas Jardine’s 1932–33 tour I wrote in And Then Came Larwood that the alteration of rules would never stop fast leg-side bowling and it was ridiculous to allow a committee to make a hard-and-fast rule about something which could be handled quite satisfactorily by the players themselves. It has now arrived at the stage where because of negative leg-theory a handful of people are pressing for an antidote in the form of a change in the laws to stop it. Great players—and in this case great batsmen—do not need new laws to protect them from negative bowling or fieldplacing. They rely on their own skill, their own imagination, their own resourcefulness—and indeed, their own sense of humour—to counter it. We Australians heard that Wally Hammond was very weak on the leg side, that he was solely an off-side batsman. Very well, we bowled outside the leg to keep him quiet, or tease him into doing something desperate. Clarrie Grimmett, the arch conspirator, with sinister intent at Adelaide pegged away a foot or two outside Wally’s leg-stump waiting patiently for the great batsman to make a wild uncharacteristic swing and be caught in front of the Ladies’ Stand. Nothing happened. The ladies went on knitting or shelling peas for hubby’s dinner. Clarrie, with that fastidious judgement few bowlers possess, sent down a ball in line with the leg stump. Almost

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simultaneously the ball crashed into the cover fence under the scoreboard. The magnificent Wally Hammond scored a beautiful hundred that day. Not only did he off-drive balls pitched on the leg stump, but he stepped a full yard back on the leg side and played shots through the wellpacked off-side field as though he were operating against an off-side attack. I have described Australia’s batting against Jim Laker in England during the ’56 tour as Bob Wyatt pathetic. The stage was set for a Hammond or a Macartney or a McCabe or a Woolley or a Bradman or any other batsman who had enough sense to realise that a half-volley in any class of cricket is a gift from the gods. How many Australians on that tour left their crease to deal with the tantalising Laker? Benaud and Davidson were the only ones who approached half-volleys with any confidence. Yet Macartney or Woolley would have killed Laker. And without referring to my Wisden I could name twenty more batsmen who would have driven the good-looking off-breaker into the dust. And yet—surely to our deep shame—we are seeking lawful protection for present-day dodderers who claim that mediumpace bowling on or outside the leg or off stump is impossible to score off.

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10 for 66 and All That Some contend that cricket grounds should be smaller. In fact, again for English county cricket, the boundary has been regularised to 75 yards. But there was no mention of the necessity for smaller grounds when the aggressive-jawed Macartney slammed a century before lunch at Leeds in ’26. While the Oval and Trent Bridge are far too big for the comfort of spectators I would not make any alteration in the laws or in the size of grounds or the bat to suit those modern batsmen who have turned their backs on the true art of batsmanship and gone in for miserly crease-grubbing. What shall be done then to keep cricket an attractive game to watch as well as play? I repeat, cease making laws to tame rebels and the players with imagination and a sense of fun. Let their individuality and creativeness thrive. If the dodderers are unable to score runs against a sealed leg- or off-side field, the selectors should deal with them. And if selectors have any courage or humour, which I am beginning to doubt, they will also deal with dull trundlers who continually bowl wide of the wicket. Right through the periods when committees huddle to make laws to protect the batting and bowling loafers, we still find the Comptons, Harveys, Sheppards, Bradmans, Weekes, Worrells, McLeans who are prepared to leave home for a luscious half-volley or to back-cut a ball to save the umpire the trouble of calling ‘Wide’. If these men are able to survive the miserly tactics of bowlers, surely selectors could find other batsmen who will do likewise. I have never forgiven the Australian selectors for choosing the very likeable Ken Mackay to play for Australia and the derisive roar of laughter which greeted his famous goalkeeper shot against Laker still burns in in my ears.

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Mackay v Laker I never dreamed that an English crowd would find comedy in Australian batting. When that happened I staggered away to a sanctuary where they park old rollers, mowers, rakes and brooms to forget it all. A figure was huddled on a box in the corner, head in hands. It was Neville Cardus. ‘Did you see it?’ I asked faintly. ‘Yes,’ he gasped, ‘and I heard it.’ I haven’t seen N.C. since. He probably spent the winter among the rollers. Unforgivable blunders have been made by selectors over the years, but since each one seems sworn to secrecy the individuals responsible are never identified. I have advocated more

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10 for 66 and All That than once that each selector should be required to publicise his personal choice. This would end that old parrot-cry: ‘Don’t blame me, old chap—I’m only one of three selectors.’ Being loyal to one’s colleagues is all very noble but it is not so praiseworthy when the good selector has to share the blame for the others’ mistakes. Should a panel of selectors object to divulging their personal selections, then I would certainly favour the institution of a sole selector. In these committee and conference conscious times a one-man panel would immediately ring of a dictatorship, but it might be remembered that New South Wales was at the top of its strength when M.A. Noble was sole selector.

I saw my old friend Neville under the stand

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Noble was an uncompromising disciplinarian, had tremendous faith in his own judgement and the courage of his convictions. It would be difficult to find a man with similar qualifications today, I grant you, and even if he were found I doubt whether governing bodies would invest him with the power that Monty Noble enjoyed and used so judiciously. New South Wales has a selection committee of five at the moment, presumably in the belief that if a committee of three is better than a committee of one, then five must be more satisfactory than three. If we believe in this principle there is no limit to the numerical strength we might eventually attain. Five hundred would be too unwieldy. Exactly. That is why many good judges believe that five is relatively unwieldy and the reason why New South Wales, which state early in this century had a Test team, is now an ordinary Sheffield Shield side. It might be argued that in 1921 New South Wales, with three selectors, still had a Test team. But then two of the selectors were dead wood and the third, H.L. Collins, was a dictator. I happen to know because I was fifty per cent of the dead wood. I repeat that selectors have the remedy for dull cricket in their own hands if only they will have the courage to use it. Altering the rules will have no effect on the player who, instead of playing for his county or his state or his country, plays for himself. We would be humbugs if we were to try to gloss over the tendency on the part of many modern batsmen to play solely for the improvement of their average, and we might also cast a suspicious eye on many bowlers who show unmistakable signs of ‘jadedness’ when Compton or Harvey is in form, but who show tremendous recuperative powers when

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10 for 66 and All That they see a bunch of tail-enders and a new ball in the offing. And, believe me, in many cases they are aided and abetted by un-Noblelike captains. Have I not seen a captain jeopardise his country’s prospects to allow a batsman to get his century or a bowler his fiftieth wicket for the tour? This is all very well in village cricket, where generous reciprocity is an unwritten law, but in international cricket a player should be made to fight for everything he gets on the field in gratitude for all the things he gets for nothing off the field. Oh, for more Emmott Robinsons in this noble game. What I like about Yorkshire is that it is a county which mocks with disdain any attempt on the part of law revisers to tinker with the laws even when a change would benefit its own dodderers. Yorkshire has introduced a richness into what, in the south of England, is called negative play. A wealth of character and personality seems to ooze from whatever tactics these Yorkshire lads adopt. It is instinctive. They never lose it. Sharing a bottle of champagne with S.F. Barnes, Sir Jack Hobbs, Bert Oldfield and Wilf Rhodes in the lunch tent at the Old Trafford Test in 1956, we heard the dull sound of the ball hitting the bat. ‘That was a nice shot,’ said the sightless Wilfred. ‘It was played off the back foot.’ Nobody dared to question this observation, not even Sydney Barnes, the Lancastrian.

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13.

Cricket–its joy and its future here are two time-worn questions relating to first-class cricket: Are international tours too strenuous? And should players take their wives on tour? To some people everything is strenuous. To some men wives are an unmitigated nuisance. Fortunately, I have had more experience with tired players than with touring wives and while a solution may be found for the latter problem, the former is one for psychologists rather than cricket legislators. To me there is nothing more pleasant than a cricket tour, whether it be with internationals or with the Somerset Stragglers. Perhaps being a ‘dead-end kid’ with about as much chance of breaking away from the circumscribed life in the slums as a platypus has of getting away from the zoo, brought me to the early conclusion that everything is relative and that whatever fields I found myself in during my life must be far more congenial than those of my boyhood. The contrast between the civilian life of the ordinary Australian cricketer and his existence as a touring Test player is fantastic. I cannot think of one of my contemporaries who was fabulous enough to live at a decent hotel or travel a hundred

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10 for 66 and All That miles in luxury, and there are very few first-class cricketers I have travelled with since those days who are much better off financially. Consequently, I cannot see why the law of relativity should not apply to them as it does to me. Elsewhere in this book I have written of washing my flannels every Friday night and ironing them on Saturday morning ready for the day’s play and enjoying the chore. I was prepared to do that for the rest of my life so long as I could play cricket in the back lane or on the village green. It was far beyond my imagination (and I always possessed a fair measure of it) that one day a manservant would collect six sets of my flannels and bring them back fastidiously laundered next morning. Every time this happened my mind went back to a leaking tub in a Waterloo backyard, and this one thought seemed to be a basis for every other set of comparative circumstances in my Test career. Did I find Test tours too strenuous? The very question is sacrilegious. I suppose if people had the opportunity of coming back from Heaven some would do so, if only to compare their present with their past condition. Let us then make comparisons between a tour of England, which to me is the nearest thing to Heaven, and the humdrum life of the average Australian—comparisons as far as physical strain is concerned. The Australians are playing an English county. The match begins on Saturday, the Australian captain wins the toss and his side bat all day, a situation which allows perhaps two or three bowlers to rest until after lunch on Monday. Possibly these bowlers will exert themselves to the extent of ten to twelve overs during the afternoon. At lunch next day the county innings closes and the Australian bowler goes back into smoke for another full day, and so on.

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At the end of the week should he play in two matches he will have spent about ten or twelve hours on the field. Not on a hard road with a pick and shovel or driving a bulldozer over rocky ground, but on the soft green turf of an English ground with a soft cool breeze blowing through his flannels. If this particular player is not as competent as he was expected to be, then he may have plenty of time on his hands between matches. Whatever physical or mental strain this player endures it is self-inflicted and cannot be attributed to cricket. Indeed, it usually happens that those who play least do most of the complaining about the strain of being on tour and flop about the dressing-room like marathon runners drained of their last tincture of energy. But let somebody suggest a game of golf and those immobile sufferers suddenly take a new lease of life and within half an hour they are expending enough energy to sustain them for a whole cricket tour.

Barrie invites Macartney and myself who were in England as pressmen to play with his team at Kirriemuir (Thrums) on the occasion of his receiving the freedom of that city

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10 for 66 and All That No doubt some players do suffer mental strain, but that too can be avoided if they are sensible enough to take themselves back, in imagination, to the little humble shack in Wagga Wagga or Waterloo and realise how lucky they are to be enjoying a privilege which millions of other young Australians would give ten years of their lives to enjoy. Every international cricketer, whether he tours Australia, South Africa, Britain, India, New Zealand, West Indies, America or any other country, should with all humility and gratitude sink on his knees and thank the gods and the selectors for their blessings. And so, my young friends, if touring with cricket teams is too exhausting and mentally wearisome, leave it to one of the large company of lads who dream of such heaven-sent miracles but seldom attain them. Since the war more than a million migrants have taken up residence in Australia, and approximately half that number are foreigners. Of the non-British new arrivals I would suggest that less than one per cent know anything about cricket and I am including a few Dutchmen who might have taken a passing interest in the game in their own country. Whether cricket will survive the shock of this invasion until the children of the new settlers from foreign countries absorb the game during their schooldays is a big question. In addition to the possible setback caused by immigration, interest among Australians themselves has lessened and while millions may listen to Test broadcasts, the attendances at cricket matches shows a serious falling off. One might say that Test Matches will always draw crowds, but considering the great increase in population since the First World War, we Australians have lost a lot of ground. New Zealanders are much more cricket-conscious than

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Australians at this moment, although they modestly admit that football and not cricket is their game. It is worth mentioning at this point that the crowd at Christchurch in a Test against England, led by Hutton, was greater than that at Sydney for the Australia v England Test in the same season. When the New South Wales section of Ian Johnson’s team left Mascot in 1956, not more than a dozen people saw the tourists off, yet a few yards away thousands of teenagers and adults were tearing one another to pieces just to catch a glimpse of Johnny Ray. I cannot believe that the greatest sporting character in Australian history, the Test cricketer, is destined to play second fiddle to this crying crooner—or even to a Greek wrestler—but recent happenings do point to a complete change-over, for the present at least, as far as public idols go. It is being said that cricket is far too slow for young Australians. That was given as a reason why Americans have not taken up cricket seriously, but it was skilfully countered in an article in A Century of Philadelphia Cricket, edited by J.A. Lester—one of the most entertaining cricket books I have read. In answer to the question, ‘Why the decline of cricket in America?’ Lester writes: The usual reply is that it isn’t suitable to the American temperament. But one must ask how this American temperament is to be identified, where it may characteristically be seen. In Salem, Massachusetts, or in Jefferson City, Missouri? In the bleachers at Ebbet’s Field when the Giants are playing the Dodgers or at the Merion Cricket Club when the Australians are playing the United States for the Davis Cup? Whatever it may be, the American

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10 for 66 and All That temperament takes colour from its environment like the chameleon. It may be urged that the traditional characteristics of the American Temperament are an intense love of personal liberty, a resentment against any infringement on it, and a profound confidence in the powers of the unfettered individual. But these are precisely the characteristics that marked the birth and growth of Young America, the first great cricket club in Philadelphia. If these are the typical characteristics, then the Wisters and Newhalls (American cricket pioneers) personified the American temperament. In any case the love of liberty was not a sentiment that distinguished the American from the Englishman. As Edmund Burke remarked, ‘It was in the blood and in the ancestry of the colonists.’ And there would seem to be no difference between the ‘temperament’ of the inhabitants of the United States and of Australia marked enough to account for the decline of cricket in one and its continued growth in the other. The facet of the ‘American temperament’ which Professor Cornelius Seygandt fixes upon as intolerant of cricket is impatience. What then has produced the succession of American winners and runners-up at Wimbledon; the Olympic champions in hurdling, high jumping, pole vaulting and swimming—all of them sports in which the highest proficiency can never be achieved except through long hours of labour and patience? It is a rare professional in England who devotes the same labour and patience to perfect his skill in cricket as the professional league player habitually expends in his training for football.

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One of the reasons most frequently given for the decline of cricket is that the match takes too long to play. And indeed a three-day game would seem to be an anomaly in times of restless and irrational movement. Yet the English who have held speed records in land, water and in the air have found it good to preserve a sport which is unhurried. Lester then quotes the following poem from Punch: ‘Cricket is slow because that’s what they want it to be’ ‘Cricket’s too slow’; And beret-crowned, bright-shirted in his car The film-like youth spoke thus and sped afar, And left me to September sunset glow, To summer ghosts that tarried at the game, A gentle-dying yet eternal flame. Cricket is slow, Thank God for that, when fever drives the mind Through burning miles we leave more miles behind, To build new hells and let the beauty go. Let’s hold this picture, though the seasons pass— The sunlit field, the shadows on the grass, And keep it slow, With brief swift moods—the catch, the stolen run— The whole tranquil pageant in the sun, A gracious game, with fickle ebb and flow, That breeds good fellows, kind and quiet-faced, Not bound upon the chariot wheels of haste.

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10 for 66 and All That As far as American cricket is concerned, the Australian Board of Control must take some blame for its decline. Every Australian team that has visited America (and Canada) has been privately sponsored and the financing of these tours has been a difficult undertaking. England has been far more generous in this respect, and even if financial aid was not granted the tourists, at least they received official blessing. Australia, which has grown rich at the expense of touring sides, should take a broader viewpoint and try to assist the game in countries where the coffers of the cricket associations are almost bare. When I hear leading administrators at banquets and receptions talking glibly about ‘the good old British game which binds the Empire with “silken cords”, etc., a game which should be taken up by foreigners for the sake of international amity’ I always feel like roaring out, ‘What are you doing about it?’ Having staggered through the radio period and come to the point of holding the interest of millions over the air, cricket now faces that mighty problem called television, an innovation which proffers the charm and excitement of cricket to the armchair viewer who is showing every sign of preferring his armchair to an uncomfortable seat in the grandstand or on the ‘Hill’. With the introduction of televised matches, particularly where distance is such a great factor, it seems certain that attendances will show a further drop although the interest in big cricket may be greater. Heavy charges for the right to televise will of course make up for the loss in gate money, but if the charges are unreasonable it is quite possible that powerful television corporations will buy

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up Test teams lock, stock and barrel and ‘can’ the match distribution throughout cricket-loving countries. What Hollywood did with actors I suppose television can do with cricketers. One can paint a fantastic picture on the possibilities of Television v Cricket Boards wrangles of the future. If cricket associations had a strong grip of the Test grounds in Australia, television might strike some snags concerning their possession of those grounds, but since political influence is playing a big part in the control of state grounds, with the exception of West Australia, anything might happen! Now what of the social side of cricket? When I think of Australian cricket from this point of view, especially with regard to the administrators’ attitude to the public, I feel ashamed. And if I were an Englishman I would have no reason to be happier. It seems that in both countries the click of turnstiles is sweeter music than the strains of a dance band. To me it is a melancholy sight when the shutter is drawn over the scoreboard at the Sydney Cricket Ground at close of play. Cricket, a game about which more is written and more spoken than any other game in the world, should not be put to bed like a naughty child when the umpires pluck the bails and sunset comes. It seems an even greater tragedy that the cold announcement, ‘There will be no further play owing to the state of the pitch’ by some obscure official should turn people, still ripe in anticipation, into the streets, some to domestic duties they had hoped to escape for an hour or two, others to the local tavern earlier than is their wont.

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10 for 66 and All That The only sign of life on the ground during such eerie hours is in some barricaded musty room where Shylock is counting his shekels with little thought for the uncomplaining idealist who had booked reservations and, to use an Australianism, ‘done his dough in cold blood’. What do the grand people of Philadelphia think of this one-track trade with cricket-lovers? What is the reaction of the Canadians of Armour Heights, Toronto, or of the Singapore, Hong Kong and Bombay Cricket Clubs? Even the older members of the Wanderers Club, Johannesburg, probably winced when after the Railway Department had taken the old Wanderers club away and left nearly half a million pounds as a legacy to its memory, they built a fabulous country club with the spoils but lost the charm associated with the end of a day’s play. Even the social amenities at the ‘Valley of Peace’, Christchurch, New Zealand—the smallest cricket ground in the world—are accepted as a rich gesture by patrons when the game abruptly ends as the last of about fifteen balls is lost in an adjacent pasture. Those people whose nostalgic senses make the potency of whisky or vodka weak as water by comparison, stroll into the little log cabin and gaze with deep reverence on the pictures of Jack Hobbs, Herby Sutcliffe, Johnny Douglas, Percy Chapman and other ‘greats’ who stretched a somewhat elastic rule by playing in a private match on that miniature ground. I have played on all the grounds I have just mentioned and although I have forgotten who won the matches, and, to my great satisfaction, forgotten my own performance, I remember, as though it were yesterday, that we tarried long after the

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sun had set, particularly at Germantown and Manheim, Philadelphia, where, after a bath in a scented swimming pool, we dressed and met beautiful women with whom we danced in the club ballroom or sipped champagne on the terraces where another orchestra played music which harmonised with, and inspired the thoughts in, one’s brain as a diversion to the muscleurging influence of the dance band. Cricket in PhilaPercy Chapman delphia took me to far greater imaginative heights than nine Test wickets in Melbourne or ‘10 for 66’ against Gloucester in 1921. Armour Height, Toronto, at which club I stayed as honorary coach for four or five months in the later ’20s, gave me a similar appreciation of the lovely potentials of the summer game, and it is because of those memories that I shudder at the cold gloomy picture of Lord’s or the Melbourne ‘Bull Ring’ after play is ended. The man who wrote ‘The song is ended but the melody lingers on’ never, I’ll warrant, played cricket on either of these grounds. This is not to say that Lord’s lacks charm—it has a fragrant atmosphere of past glories which acts as padding, so to speak, to the more brittle surface that one is conscious of at Sydney or

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10 for 66 and All That Melbourne. The ghosts of the giants of other days stalk in the shadows of every Test match ground but they seem always to be less ethereal or abstract at Lord’s. One can almost see Archie MacLaren discussing the advantages of a straight bat with his contemporary shadows, while silhouetted against the dying sun can be seen Gerry Weigall, illustrating every stroke in cricket with an umbrella which I swear has never been opened. It was this extremely vocal but very likeable cricketer who made me appreciate the usefulness of the ordinary umbrella quite apart from its function as a weather shield. His umbrella was mainly used to give instructions on cricket, but for good measure he also used it for fencing, angling, showing us how Lindrum played his cushion cannons and how King Edward VII put the gun to his shoulder for partridge. In fact, so engrossed did he become on one occasion when demonstrating his versatility with the umbrella that he nearly missed his lift to the south of England in Charles Fry’s car. The shades of these great characters will never, I hope, vacate this favourite stamping-ground of cricketers, and much as I regret the absence of the sparkling blue swimming pool and the well-groomed women of Philadelphia and Toronto, I find much consolation in the ghosts at Lord’s—and even in those of more modern vintage in the press box. I had hopes once that Sydney, with its spacious rooms at the back of the Members’ Stands, might introduce some of the Philadelphian spirit into the social side of the game, but it seems to be drifting further away, due to political control. And I cannot believe that anything of a congenial or idealistic nature would find its roots in the political atmosphere as it stands in Australia at the present time. The Melbourne Cricket Ground,

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administered under a similar constitution, is friendly and fairly wholesome but I am afraid that as the years pass my bête noire, the clever little party politician, will find a sanctuary for himself and friends around the Trustees’ lunch table in Melbourne as in Sydney. Perhaps those of us who think cricket is more of a religion than a game resent the intrusion of politics into the administration in any form. Adelaide is in a more fortunate position for the fact that the South Australian Cricket Association has a mandate over the ground and even a change in government will not affect its supremacy. The West Australian Cricket Association is in an even better position; it owns the fine ground in that state. There is a strong feeling that Western Australia will have a Test match before many seasons have passed. No state in Australia is more deserving of this honour. Quite recently a body of farmers from a relatively obscure part of Western Australia donated some three or four thousand pounds to the building of a modern scoreboard on the Perth ground, a gesture which might well have had its origin in Philadelphia. I do not suppose that my concern for the future of Transvaal cricket will cause much interest in Johannesburg, except that it might inspire the unoriginal suggestion that I should mind my own business. When I was in South Africa in 1950 the fabulously rich Wanderers Club seemed to be enjoying a fantastic orgy of spending out of the sale of its old city property. A glamorous club-house, administrative dwellings, tennis courts, golf links, cricket grounds have been built. Now Test matches against international teams are to be played on that new ground instead of, as formerly, on a ground nearer the city controlled by football authorities. Their hope was realised but I am doubtful

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10 for 66 and All That whether there will be sufficient interest in cricket to entice people for long out to a suburban ground to watch big games. It seems to the casual observer that the Wanderers Club should have concentrated on the building of a Test cricket ground before embarking on the luxury of a glamorous country club. I may be wrong, but the glory and romance of the old Wanderers Club seems to have departed. Atmosphere is more difficult to move than grandstands.

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14.

Cricket dramatised f all the Australian cricket writers who covered Douglas Jardine’s controversial 1932–33 tour I was perhaps the most sympathetic towards so-called ‘bodyline’ tactics. While I appreciated the immediate dangers and subsequent reactions I could not help feeling that batsmen, particularly those who opened the innings for both countries since World War I, had brought the trouble on themselves. In every dressing-room we heard the warning given by captains to opening batsmen: ‘If you nibble at anything outside the off stump you’ll get a good kick in the pants when you come back—even if you score a century.’ Although the kicking was not administered in my presence, I was witness to the culprit being abused for his suicidal tendencies and treated like a man who had committed a crime. Occasionally he would have the courage to please himself about the shots he made: one of these was the venturesome Charles Macartney, a fanatical supporter of the Trumperian school, who thought the ball was bowled to be hit, not ignored. Fast or fast medium bowlers in Australia are not offered many privileges or concessions as far as the atmospheric or

O

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10 for 66 and All That ground conditions are concerned, and they found that sending down over after over pitched on or just outside the off stump and seeing batsmen draw a disdainful bat away added to their frustration. After all, the bowler was giving the batsman a chance to play shots without fear of physical injury. The batsman, on the other hand, waited like a Bombay vulture to pounce on his victim after the heat had deprived him of the necessary strength to fight back. A war of attrition. Very well then, Jardine decided to train his guns on the middle stump, and since most Test batsmen stand in line with the middle stump their bodies happened to be the target. Many of the cricket writers said that Larwood bowled outside the leg stump. He may have swung outside the leg stump but so far as I could see, and I watched Larwood from a position behind the stumps in every Test of that series, seldom was his bowling off

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the line. If he was bowling outside the leg stump why didn’t the batsman pull his bat away as he did when a fast bowler bowled outside the off stump? Anyhow, before that tour finished our boys were prepared to play shots a foot outside the off stump, feeling perhaps that beggars can’t be choosers. It was also said that Douglas Jardine had hatched his ‘bodyline plot’ on the voyage from England. I happened to be on the same ship and saw no signs of plot-hatching—regarding any particular form of attack, at any rate. I knew Jardine’s men were after Don’s scalp after this great run-getter had broken their hearts during the 1930 tour of England. But that was quite legitimate. In 1921 and during later Tests we Australians used to scheme far into the night on the track of a more or less legitimate way of liquidating Jack Hobbs and his suave, shiny-haired partner, Herby Sutcliffe. I remember in Australia during the 1924–25 Tests when Hobbs and Sutcliffe had batted all day and promised to keep us out there for the following day too. We sat in the Windsor Hotel until two in the morning evolving attacking schemes, drawing field placings, thinking of all manner of distractions such as loose bowling sleeves à la Ramadhin, bowlers wearing red caps designed like cricket balls; and even our captain Collins, a man with a rich appreciation of the manly old game, lowered his ideals to such a state that he suggested in all seriousness an ordinary, under-arm ‘grubber’. This goes to show how desperate one becomes in such hopeless circumstances. Next morning, with my brain bursting with all these brilliant ideas, I bowled the first ball, it slipped out of my hand, and lo! Jack was clean bowled by a common full-toss.

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10 for 66 and All That If Jardine on that out-voyage had even mentioned ‘bodyline’, with its leg-packed slip field, I should have thought it quite legitimate and, as far as I was concerned, futile because I had seen a similar field-placing years before by New South Wales in a Sheffield Shield match when the opposing batsmen pasted our bowlers to their hearts’ content. It might be said that the batsmen of the two periods differed in their mental approach to the game, that batsmen twelve or twenty years prior to the 1932–33 series pulled a short leg-side ball and did not try to glance it like their successors, especially when there were three men waiting for the catch. Actually, I think Larwood’s accuracy might have made ‘bodyline’ distinctly dangerous in any age of cricket. That dramatic tour did not do cricket much harm from a publicity angle and I feel sure that time would have eliminated any unpleasantness which might have occurred. What did most damage to cricket came from a most unexpected quarter. On the next England tour of Australia came an army of ‘incidentspotters’, just in case there were repercussions which were too newsy to be adequately handled by the ordinary cricket writer. This was a bright idea on the part of London editors. Men who were excellent journalists but who had never covered a cricket match before were thrown into the fray; and what made it worse was that the regular cricket scribes tried to compete with their slick fellow-workers and in most cases made an awful mess of the attempt. It was then we saw a blast of criticism about umpires’ decisions, about playing conditions, about the advisability of players having two or three eggs for breakfast and of fried liver being on the menu. We were supposed to get seriously concerned about whether the senior amateur was becoming engaged to a girl

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from Wagga Wagga or was it Woop Woop? These news morsels were more or less amusing but when one ‘cobbler’ left his ‘last’ and wrote that an umpire’s l.b.w. decision was putrid because, with his own eyes, he had seen the mark of the ball on the bat, some of us viewed the future of cricket journalism with a certain apprehension. It followed that some editors began to think that a controversy on umpires’ decisions or an interview with the lass from Wagga Wagga was far more important than a brilliant century or a fine and sustained session of slow bowling. I think the eager, bearded and imaginative Harold Dale led the field for England, and the only man we could find worthy of such opposition was the staccato Hugh Buggy, a seasoned thinker who had just covered his hundredth crime story and who, between overs, could show proof that he had assisted in solving the mystery and embalming of the famous ‘Pyjama Girl’. I will match H.B. with any man in the world as a walking encyclopaedia on cricket performance and I am not excluding the redoubtable Hon. R.G. Menzies. These ‘foreign correspondents’ have given cricket a new look. Although they may depend more on the scoreboard than the technique of the player for their analysis of the day’s play, they have nevertheless provided good entertainment for the radio fan in his literary moments, and maybe are not particularly repulsive to the connoisseur. Perhaps they are right, these new-look editors. After all, who wants to read: The captains walked on to the ground to spin the coin. It was obvious by the smile on Hutton’s face that his call

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10 for 66 and All That had been correct. It was a beautiful day. A slight wind coming from the north-east was hardly strong enough to straighten out the flags flying from the old Members’ Stand. The stands were filling quickly as the Australians walked on to the field followed by Hutton and Graveney who were to open for England. Australia’s captain elected to open the bowling with Lindwall, who after measuring a distance of twenty paces, approached the crease with a nice swinging action and sent down a shortish ball a few inches outside the off stump. It’s the modern version that gets the readers: A deafening roar split the air like the explosion of an atom bomb. England’s captain had won the toss again. Hutton was not the only happy person in that vast assemblage. Sitting in the enclosure reserved for friends of the players was a meek little woman dressed in black and clutching a score-card. It was Len’s Aunt Bolinda whose only expression of happiness was seen in a joyful tear which nestled on her withered cheek. ‘I thought he would win the toss,’ she murmured to a companion. ‘He’s been practising spinning the coin for two weeks.’ Swish! Lindwall’s first ball, pitched halfway, missed Hutton’s head by a fraction. It’s on again! Hutton turned a little pale. It was a narrow escape. The Australian fieldsmen crept closer, waiting for the kill.

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This looks like being the match of all matches. Lindwall with demoniacal fervour streaks towards the wicket again. The little old lady in black shudders. All signs of joy have left her wrinked face. Like her heroic nephew she too has turned pale. The crushed score-card falls to the ground. She sways. Ah, the poor lady has swooned. This ball of Lindwall’s is faster than the first. It catches Hutton in the stomach and down he goes. Another record created at Bramall Lane. Nephew and aunt out of action simultaneously. But now Hutton is up again. Lindwall marches back, etc., etc. Even if this is a slight exaggeration it does reflect the change in cricket reporting since those hilarious ‘bodyline’ days. I have no real objection to it. I treat it as I would an American film version of a famous battle, merely as a piece of unconscious burlesque. Writers like Jim Swanton, the delicate Robertson-Glasgow, the abstract Neville Cardus and the faithful Jim Kilburn are too well-established in style and manner, too naturally authoritative, to be influenced by their over-exuberant press-fellows. Swanton writes in a friendly way, as to a retired army colonel in Bombay; through Robertson-Glasgow’s nonsense one is conscious of a wealth of technical knowledge; while Cardus’s rich satire and balancing humour appeal greatly to the millions who care not whether his fellow Lancastrian was bowled by an off-break of the Naughty Nineties vintage or the more modern ‘bosie’. Jim Kilburn, another Northerner, between dozes, gives a sincere photographic impression which could be used for documentary purposes. Bill Bowes, too, is a shrewd chronicler.

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10 for 66 and All That We have no regular cricket writers in Australia who could be likened to this quartet, with the possible exception of Percy Beames, who is well qualified to act as locum to ‘Gentleman’ Jim. South Africa can produce one who, if he were less modest, might do the job of the whole four with a stanza Neville Cardus or two of jingle thrown in. He is the versatile Louis Duffus. The cricket writer I am really sorry for is the one, mostly found in England, who often sacrifices the reputation of being a useful correspondent for the sake of trying to assume the reputation of being a slick phrase merchant. Satire and humour must be spontaneous and it is a vein which is difficult to ad lib in a nerve-racking press box. These chaps find Wilde and Shaw pretty hard to keep up with. With the exception of the Famous Four, I think that on the whole Australian cricket writers are superior to those in England, if only because they are less biased and waste less time writing about umpire’s decisions. The Australian correspondent usually says, ‘Australia won the toss.’ The Englishman says, ‘We won the toss.’ With all my faults, failings and inconsistencies I have never, on the field or in print, condemned umpires. I have known umpires to make many mistakes, but few batsmen, bowlers or biased pressmen have much to say about the inefficiency of the

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umpire when the ‘mistakes’ are in their favour. In no country have I seen any sign of cheating by the umpire. I would say that the supervision of cricket is much fairer and less biased than that of any other form of sport—and this even applies to Brisbane umpiring. Let people hoot racecourse judges or assault football referees on foreign fields, insult the baseball umpire or put a lighted match to the pants of a chess adjudicator if they wish, but if it comes to publicly doubting the integrity of a cricket umpire, then we may as well pull up stumps for good.

Bill Bowes

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15.

A test and two policemen y last Test match, against England at the Oval in 1926, was a memorable one from many points of view. I had a feeling that this match would bring down the curtain as far as my international career went. But I had no regrets. I was very fortunate to have got so far, to have seen so many countries, to have been treated so generously by people in those countries I had visited, to have had the opportunity of satisfying a yearning for a better and more realistic education than was given me in the slums of South Sydney. These were glorious rewards for playing a game I loved, a game which in all conscience preserved what few virtues I had inherited from a humble but reasonably decent home life. From a more material aspect, the money I had received for playing, writing and sketching was a small fortune compared with what might have been my wages for some dull, labouring job. The Fifth Test match began and ended with a reprimand. In the first place manager Sydney Smith questioned in strong words the wisdom of arriving at the Oval in broad daylight in a dinner jacket.

M

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I will admit that circumstantial evidence pointed to a prolonged and rather boisterous evening, but it wasn’t anything near as exciting as that. I just happened to have dined with some people at East Grinstead and, owing to a little engine trouble when we were about to motor to London, we decided to go back to East Grinstead and stay the night there. The second admonition I received was on my return to the Hotel Cecil after the match. I simply drove the wrong way round Trafalgar Square—a rather conspicuous procedure—at about 7.30 p.m. ‘Pull over to the kerb, please,’ ordered the very respectful, red-cheeked policeman. ‘Sorry, constable,’ I said. ‘I’m a stranger in this country and I don’t know much about the traffic rules.’ ‘Listen,’ he said, ‘you blankety Americans are all the same. You come over here and mix up all our traffic and use the same old alibi—’ I objected rather heatedly that I was not an American. ‘What are you then?’ I told him. ‘An Australian? Oh, well, that’s different—you can get along. You’ve just lost the Ashes.’ ‘I know we’ve lost the Ashes,’ I said, ‘and it’s all my fault.’ ‘Your fault? What d’you mean, your fault?’ ‘Well, when I went in to bat we only needed 301 runs to win. And I didn’t get them.’ He gave me a long look. ‘Where are you making for?’ ‘The Cecil.’

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10 for 66 and All That ‘All right. Don’t worry about turning round. Cut across there’—he pointed to the Strand—‘and it’s a hundred yards up on the right.’ I have often wondered since whether the people in the dozens of cars that were banked up knew what this crazy dialogue was all about. In the match itself I tried a new scheme. Instead of following my usual course of bowling mostly leg-breaks and the occasional ‘wrong ’un’, I bowled mostly top-spinners and ‘wrong ’uns’. That gave me six wickets in England’s first innings. In their second innings Jack Hobbs scored a century but, according to the umpire, Frank Chester, Jack was plumb out l.b.w. before he had broken his duck—but I didn’t appeal. Frank might have been right. All I recollect is that I thought I had appealed too much during that match and was a bit tired of hearing my own voice crying in the wilderness. The third episode during that match was nothing if not dramatic. The scene was a flat near the corner of Piccadilly and Park Lane. Time: 2 a.m. Two men dressed in evening clothes were arguing. They were both in their middle thirties or early forties and sipped champagne throughout the long argument, although it must be said that neither showed any signs of having over-imbibed. The slightly younger-looking man wore black-rimmed, thickly lensed glasses: he was tall and aesthetic with a sallow complexion and a crop of black oily hair brushed severely back off his forehead. He illustrated every sentence he uttered with a dramatic gesture, although more often than not the gesture really had nothing to do with the context of his speech.

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His companion was more of a phlegmatic, undemonstrative concise nature. His leathery skin and sun-bleached nose suggested many days under a tropical sun. Although undoubtedly a colonial, his voice had a London flavour to it. It was he who said: ‘Well, it’s no use arguing here any longer. Let’s go out now and see who’s right.’ ‘That will do me,’ said the other man. ‘This is my first chance of proving that I am right and you are wrong. You’ll be sorry for this, my friend.’ They slipped out of the building into Park Lane and turned into Piccadilly. The discussion was continued and the bespectacled man became more illustrative. He threw one arm in the air and with his other hand covered his mouth to suppress a burst of sardonic laughter. A taxi driver caught the movement. ‘Keb, sir? Keb?’ The two men meandered slowly up Piccadilly followed by a fleet of cruising taxis. Then they reached Piccadilly Circus. The phlegmatic man said, ‘Are you prepared to go on with it?’ ‘Of course I am,’ the other replied. ‘It’s certainly time we settled it.’ The area was almost deserted. A few yards away stood a policeman and on the other side of the Circus a midnight trader, suspecting a profitable deal, hesitated, smiled and cocked his head. But there was no one else. ‘Are you ready?’ ‘Yes, let’s get this over quickly.’ The men stood back to back and then each took ten paces forward. They faced each other.

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10 for 66 and All That The policeman moved across quickly. ‘What’s going on here?’ ‘Stand back, constable,’ said the man with the tanned face grimly. ‘This is our affair.’ And before the policeman could act the man had dived his right hand into his hip pocket and produced an object. The other man crouched low and extended his arms. ‘Go!’ he shouted. The man near the bewildered policeman took two steps and bowled the finest ‘wrong ’un’ ever seen in England. The crouching man sprang two yards to his left, the ball broke two yards to the right and careered in the direction of Leicester Square. Like a flash the policeman, who by this time had entered into the spirit of the thing, sprinted after it and returned it to the mysterious pair of conspirators. Both autographed the ball and returned to the flat, where aesthetic one, rather sadly it is reported, produced a bottle of champagne. ‘Are you sure you can pick the “wrong ’un” now, Neville?’ ‘Yes, but not when the bally thing ricochets off a pebble, Arthur.’

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16.

The World v Mars ll these scientists and rocket technicians who are fiddling about with schemes for contacting Mars do not realise how much harm they will do cricket if they are successful; for it is very likely that cricket is not played on that distant planet and when we know this for sure we shall miss all the fun and excitement of choosing teams to play Mars. As a matter of fact, this is the only pastime which is keeping the British Commonwealth together. When picking a world team to play Mars it is diplomatic to have every country in this far-flung empire represented, and if it so happens that some of those selected died years ago it doesn’t really matter, because they are just as likely to play in the next thousand years as the current young men. We could help to keep the memory of our own Julius Caesar fresh by giving him a mention from time to time. If we find countries like, say, South Africa, India or Fiji on the brink of deserting the ‘Old Firm’, we could see that the disgruntled countries were well represented in our World XI even if England had to leave out Jack Hobbs or a Yorkshireman and choose instead Ratu Pope, the Fijian. But while we are

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10 for 66 and All That dilly-dallying with methods and reasons of selections we might be beaten to the post by the scientists who, with ashen faces and bloodshot eyes, reveal the horrifying news that the game the Martians play is not cricket. Consequently, I am going into a huddle before this happens. WORLD XI: M.A. Noble (Australia, capt.), V.T. Trumper (Australia) and J.B. Hobbs (England)—opening batsmen, C.G. Macartney (Australia), D.G. Bradman (Australia), F.E. Woolley (England), W.R. Hammond (England), L.N. Constantine (West Indies), J.B. King (USA), B.J.T. Bosanquet (England), H.B. Cameron (South Africa, wicket-keeper). Perhaps I should have chosen either Jack Gregory, McDonald or Larwood, but I feel that Barton King, the Philadelphian, was the greatest and most versatile pace bowler of all time. The mercurial Constantine stands alone, particularly as our opponents may introduce tactics which can only be countered by a freak player. Bosanquet may not have been the best googly bowler on this planet but he was the creator of this particular ball, and if anybody deserves a trip to Mars, he does. I admit bias: it was he who gave me the opportunity of having a dozen trips round the world. The most fastidious critic must agree that Trumper, Hobbs, Macartney and Bradman were pretty good batsmen, while ‘Mary Ann’ Noble would be in his element against a foe of unknown quantity. Choosing a World XI can create a lot of good and bad friends. Whenever I read that some playful fellow has picked one I am always impatient to see whether my name is in the list. Denzil Batchelor did me the great honour of putting me in one of his World teams. A very good judge of cricketers, Batchelor, and a very likeable fellow. His selection was tremendously

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popular with the cricket-loving public but I understand that Clarrie Grimmett thought the slow attack could have been improved. Seldom do we hear of amateur selectors picking a team of showmen. With the game almost in the doldrums some serious thought should be given to entertainment value—so here goes: W.G. Grace (England, capt.), Cecil Parkin (England), Sid Emery (Australia), Jack Gregory (Australia), Leary Constantine (West Indies), Keith Miller (Australia), Sid Barnes (Australia), Patsy Hendren (England), Gilbert Jessop (England), Jacky Jacky (boomerang thrower, Australian Aboriginal team), Jack Ellis (Australia) or George Duckworth (England) as the most vocal wicket-keepers. Manager: C.B. Cochran (England). It may be said that this side verges on comedy. Far from it. It is a team which if it were possible to group into a present-day Test side would probably beat any current international team. The fact that we can laugh at Hendren’s repartee, joke about W.G.’s beard, feel apprehensive about Sid Barnes’s next stunt, appreciate Cecil Parkin’s juggling, Jacky ‘Patsy’ Jacky’s boomerang twirling, Hendren the acrobatic fielding of Leary Constantine and Jack Gregory,

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10 for 66 and All That the unpredictable Miller and the terrifying, blood-curdling shrieks of ‘Ducky’ and Ellis doesn’t mean that entertaining is their main qualification. Entertainment as mentioned is the life-blood of cricket. Whether the entertainer be a clown or an artist doesn’t matter. From an international point of view the game cannot survive without its personalities, its actors, its heroes, its tragedians. This is probably why the most efficient sporting writers in the world are those who write on cricket, whether fictional or factual. This is no reflection on those scribes who write on football or polo, baseball, chess or hockey, or—if anybody has ever written about the game—shove ha’penny. What helps to keep up the standard of cricket writing is that people who read about the game are more fastidious and critical than the average reader of other sports—particularly horse racing. To take a brief example: At Randwick last Saturday was the scene of some brisk betting. A well-known patron of the Sport of Kings took two thousand to five hundred about Rubberneck for the big race. The bookmaker who laid this bet pencilled a further five thousand to one thousand about the same horse with a well-known Melbourne visitor. Imagine the reaction of, say, that great cricket reader Clifford Mollison or perhaps Ben Travers if this appeared in The Times: At Lord’s last Saturday, a well-known Test batsman scored a brilliant century against a fairly strong attack consisting

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of an ex-Australian spin bowler, who prefers to be anonymous, and three leading county bowlers . . . It is almost impossible to give a character sketch of a horse race or a period of play in, let us say, hockey or baseball. In what game other than cricket could one write a chapter of a book on character, such as Neville Cardus has done more than once. We remember a leading jockey because he rode a number of winners in 1921, or a footballer because he was the League top-scorer in 1933, but we have no substantial evidence of the richness or poorness of the characters themselves. When Neville Cardus or Robertson-Glasgow paints a portrait of a cricketer, blood and sinew are put into it so that the man might step off the canvas and strut the stage again, if not on the field, at least in our memories. That is why cricket itself will never die. It might rattle in its Test match coffin occasionally because of the lack of Cardus and ‘Crusoe’ models and the absence of that abstract quality called personality, but good writers and characterful players will appear again in very defiance of the alteration of the Laws of Cricket seemingly designed to stamp them out. In our attempts to popularise cricket for the benefit of paying guests it might be remembered that the size of the ground or the stumps or the ball or the leg-side ‘squad’ is not nearly so important as the ‘size’ of the player. Cricket needs all the publicity it can get and the less blatant and more subtle this is, the better for the game. Dog and horse racing draw crowds because of gambling concessions, but although bookmakers shouted the odds at Lord’s in Beauclerk’s time, there is no evidence to show that presidents

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10 for 66 and All That of the MCC are desirous of emulating their somewhat versatile predecessor. We don’t want too many ‘backs-to-the-wall’ Test innings. One every ten years provides an interesting contrast to bright cricket, a contrast which allows us to balance our sense of values. But heroic defence becomes rather boring when both sides adopt it, as in 1953 when England and Australia finished the Test series by throwing cream puffs at each other. A Woolley or a Macartney might have won some of those drawn Tests, just as the redoubtable Richie Benaud won the second Test at Lord’s in 1956. The World v Mars? We shall be waiting for you, Mars.

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Epilogue he first question in this book is, why did I take up cricket? Now I find myself asking, why did I write this book? The second question might also be asked by the reader and, assuming he has bought his copy, deserves some consideration. In the first place, unlike many of my cricket-writing friends I did not write the book because I wanted to put something back into the game. Cricket is far too big and independent to need my patronage. Indeed, the very thought smacks too much of my old friend Sir Harry Preston who, according to Tom Webster, ‘kept himself poor entertaining millionaires’. Over the years a number of Test cricketers have been favoured with knighthoods and other decorations. Apparently to relieve a certain amount of embarrassment it has been suggested that while it is a great honour to the recipients, it is a very worthy tribute or gesture to a noble game. With profound respect to the committee handling these selections I feel again that cricket does not need such patronage, particularly through the medium of players. Having loved all brands of cricket from backyard to Test, I owe a tremendous

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10 for 66 and All That debt to the game and that debt remains permanent: no honour that was conferred upon me would ease my conscience or my obligations. A bee is not expected to put honey back into the flower. But she must not harm the flower. If it were in my power I would gladly confer even a peerage upon the person who created or invented cricket, though it is perhaps a little late for this. The same applies to any person who has tried to nourish the growth of cricket in other lands. Why did I write this book? Perhaps I am really hoping that it will give strength and encouragement to those who feel that nothing can be gained without outside help; that the Test arena is a sanctuary for the privileged; that one must be nursed, schooled and coached in order to play in big cricket. It is possible, I understand, to obtain a passport to Heaven; but a passport to cricket is not to be had, and even if one were forged, the romance, the struggle, the adventure and the friendship would be missing. Some people have no desire to play Test cricket. I don’t blame them. It is far better that they enjoy a game in which a ‘pair’ is a personal affair and not a signal for national anguish. Test cricket for me was a huge roller which ironed out the ruts and entanglements in a jungle that I had thought impassable. There is perhaps a parallel in every walk of life if one possesses sufficient philosophy and humour to know the difference between walking in front of the roller or behind it. The road to big cricket is just as wide as the avenues leading to other more or less desirable goals. As a literary effort my book may fall short of a Shavian masterpiece, but for these shortcomings I offer no apologies,

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comforting myself with the thought that, great as he was, Shaw might have found it as difficult to get at Jack Hobbs as I did. The characters may be poorly portrayed and underdramatised but they, after all, are only the simple people you find drifting out of the theatre after the curtain falls on Aida or the magnificent Parsifal. To me Warwick Armstrong was as rich as Falstaff and the impassioned demands of George Duckworth were as real as the pleadings of the fair Desdemona. Why did I write this book? Some people find selfexpression by singing in the bathroom. I have no voice for singing—so I wrote a book. Perhaps it is as simple as that.

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About the Author Arthur Mailey was born in Waterloo, South Sydney, on 3 January 1888. When first picked to play for Australia he was working for the Water Board after a stint as a glass-blower. Mailey, a right-arm leg-spin bowler, played twenty-one Tests for Australia taking 99 wickets at 33.9 runs each between 1921 and 1926. He twice toured England, where he took 287 wickets for fewer than 20 runs apiece in Tests and county matches. In the 1920–21 season in Australia, bowling in four Tests, he took 36 wickets at 26.27 runs, a record for an England–Australia series that stood for 57 years. Mailey was also a talented cartoonist and journalist. In 1921 he joined the Sydney Sun as sporting cartoonist and cricket writer, later transferring to the Daily Telegraph. He covered the Bodyline tour of 1932–33 and wrote And Then Came Larwood. He died in 1967.

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