ED UCA TIN G THROU G H CRI CKET
MAGAZINE
OF Marylebone Cricket Club
SPRING 2010 / ISSUE 1
£3.50
Give
children
the
chance
to
shine
MCC is working with The Cricket Foundation’s Chance to
shine campaign to bring the MCC Spirit of Cricket message
to children in 4,000 state schools across the country
To mark Chance to shine’s fifth year, the charity is asking
the cricket-loving public to get involved in our 2010 public
fundraising appeal: Step up to the Crease!
MCC MAGAZINE
TO FIND OUT MORE OR DONATE VISIT
www.chancetoshine.org
SWINGING AWAY
Matthew Engel
PUSSYCATS TO
TIGERS
Vic Marks
BEFORE THE FALL
David Kynaston
Cricket book
awards
Christopher Martin-Jenkins
MCC Magazine issue 1
3
Contents.
5. Editorial Letter
6. Contributors
9. SWINGING AWAY
Matthew Engel introduces the new
MCC exhibition which explores
the connections between baseball
and cricket. Beth Hise highlights a
number of the key works on show
23. Working-Class Hero or
flawed Genius?
Christopher Martin-Jenkins
thinks the winner of the Cricket
Society/MCC Book of the Year
Award will be between two titles
25. Cricket photograph of
the Year
Wisden and MCC are looking for
the best cricketing photographs
14. A STICKY WICKET
Cricket is a sport that has given
many idioms to the language.
Michael Rundell goes into bat
1 6. Pussycats to tigers
Pakistan has produced some of the
finest cricketers in recent times.
Vic Marks, who has toured the
country, recalls his experiences
20. Birth of a Nation
The Ghaznavi Collection of sporting
photographs has added greatly to
MCC’s collection. Neil Robinson on
what the photographs reveal
Adam Chadwick introduces the
re-hang of the Lord’s Pavilion
9.
30. CRICKET MATTERED
David Kynaston’s talk: ‘Before
the Fall?’ looked at cricket in
England in the 1950s. We
publish an extract
Andrew Strauss at Lord’s
from Matthew Engel’s look
at the world’s of cricket and
baseball
34. MY LORD’S
The Duke of Richmond talks to
David Rayvern Allen about his
family’s long association with
cricket and MCC
Willie Watson occupying the crease during
his match-saving four-hour stand with Trevor
Bailey in the 1953 Lord’s Test. From David
Kynaston’s reflections on cricket in the 1950s
26.
John Chandos Reade playing
Trapball, one of the pictures
included in the Pavilion re-hang
ALL PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY MCC
30.
26. Continuing Tradition
MCC MAGAZINE
Editorial Letter
4
J. W. McKenzie
J. W.
McKenzie
Established for over 30 years
From the Curator
Established for over 30 years
Specialist
in
Cricket
Specialist
Cricket
Books,
Wisdens
Books,
Wisdens
and
all
cricket
memorabilia
and all cricket memorabilia
Catalogues
regularly
issued
Illustrated catalogues
regularly
issued
Visitors welcome at our shop
Visitors welcome at our shop premises
12 Stoneleigh Park Road, Ewell, Epsom
Surrey
12 Stoneleigh
ParkKT19
Road,0QT
Ewell, Epsom,
Telephone:
020
8393
7700
Surrey. KT19
0QT
E-mail:
[email protected]
Telephone:
020 8393 7700
Website: www.mckenzie-cricket.co.uk
E-mail:
[email protected]
Website: www.mckenzie-cricket.co.uk
J W McKenzie.indd 1
D.R. HARRIS & Co. Ltd.
Established 1790
CHEMISTS AND PERFUMERS
29 ST. JAMES’S STREET
LONDON SW1A 1HB
Tel: 020 7930 3915 Fax: 020 7925 2691
www.drharris.co.uk
Renowned for our wonderful, ever-widening range
of soaps, skincare (as on British Airways First Class)
and shaving products etc., hand-made in England;
serving discerning clients for over 200 years from
our traditional setting in St. James’s.
10% discount until end of June 2010. Use code ‘mcc’
online or visit the store and quote ‘mcc’
9/3/10 14:07:30
Editorial
Publishers
Jane Grylls 020 7300 5661
Kim Jenner 020 7300 5658
Editor Nick Tite
Designers
Cat Cartwright and Jessica Cash
Advertising
Emily Pierce and Janet Durbin
020 7300 5675
The MCC Arts and Library
Department
Curator
Adam Chadwick 020 7616 8655
Research Officer
Neil Robinson 020 7616 8559
Collections Officer
Charlotte Goodhew 020 7616 8526
Tours and Museum Manager
Antony Amos 020 7616 8596
Published on behalf of The Marylebone Cricket
Club by Royal Academy Enterprises Ltd. Colour
reproduction by adtec. Printed by Tradewinds
London. Published April 2010 © The Marylebone
Cricket Club 2010. Text © the authors 2010. The
opinions in this particular publication do not
necessarily reflect the views of The Marylebone
Cricket Club. All reasonable attempts have been
made to clear copyright before publication.
Cover Image
Francis William
Ralston, wicketkeeper
and right-handed
batsman. His first
class career spanned
1886-1897 when
he played for the
Gentlemen of
Philadelphia
It gives me enormous pleasure to welcome readers to this the first issue of MCC’s
magazine on the history and culture of cricket.
In my all too brief experience of the worlds of sport and culture I have been
dismayed that there is so little recognition of the one by the other. Only the government
it seems deigns to pair the two together; a bittersweet endorsement.
Yet sport is a reflection of its society and the history of sport, a vital gene in our
social make-up. As the world increasingly focuses on London for the Olympic Games,
there is no more fascinating and relevant time to examine how sport has changed our
culture from both inside and outside the UK.
MCC maintains a singular position; no sport is more naturally attached to the
British character than cricket and no Club so associated with a game’s development
over such diverse geography and lengthy chronology.
The national quality of the historic collections held at Lord’s is unquestionable and
yet, for all their richness, they are relatively uncharted. Despite plotting the role of the
Club in playing, codifying and recording the game over almost two hundred years, we
cannot be sure of the MCC’s founding date -1787- or the reason for the adoption of its
distinctive red and yellow colours. What exactly is the Ashes Urn and what is contained
within it?
At a time when MCC is defining a valuable new role in the game and a vision for
the future of Lord’s is coming into focus, it is all the more important to secure our
knowledge of the past. Our goal is to celebrate the bicentenary of Lord’s in 2014 with
a detailed catalogue, bibliography and archive of over 35,000 items available at the
touch of a button.
I hope that this magazine will convey by turns – every April and October - not only
the excitement of unearthing new discoveries but an invitation to its readers to be a part
of that achievement. This may be as a literary contributor to future issues, a subscriber
to our events, a donor or simply an enthusiastic reader with plenty of suggestions. The
department’s staff (details listed left) look forward to hearing from you.
This first edition has a topical flavour. With baseball technique at the heart of
Twenty20 cricket, Matthew Engel discusses the (dis)connection between the two games
to coincide with our new exhibition ‘Swinging Away’. Vic Marks celebrates Pakistan’s
cricketing culture as they play Australia at Lord’s in the first `neutral’ Test since 1912.
There are extracts from David Kynaston’s `Ashes’ lecture `Before the Fall…?’, shortlisted
book of the year reviews from Christopher Martin-Jenkins, an interview with the Duke
of Richmond and a wealth of images from the collections.
I would like to thank all of the contributors, advertisers and of course the many
others whose hard work has created what will, I hope, be the first of many issues to
come.
Adam Chadwick
Curator of Collections
Opening hours: Monday – Friday 8.30 am – 6.00 pm • Saturday 9.30 am – 5.00 pm
MCC MAGAZINE
MCC MAGAZINE
5
Contributors
7
Patrick Eagar ELECTED 1964
Christopher Martin-Jenkins
Patrick Eagar is a self-taught, awardwinning cricket photographer. In a
career that spans nearly 40 years, 18
of them for The Sunday Times, he has
photographed over 300 tests, 51 at
Lord’s, and has photographed over
40 overseas tours. He has published
numerous books, acted as chairman of
the Cricket Writer’s Club and captained
the Press Golfing Society. His contact
address is www.patrickeagar.com
ELECTED 1967
Matthew Engel nominated 27 June 2006
David Rayvern Allen ELECTED 1982
Matthew Engel is a columnist on The
Financial Times. He was editor of Wisden
from 1993 to 2000 and 2004 to 2007.
David Kynaston ELECTED 1970
His four-volume history of the City of
London was published between 1994
and 2001, while his three cricket books
include WG’s Birthday Party, of which a
new edition appears this spring. He is
currently engaged on a multi-volume
history of post-war Britain, with the first
two volumes being Austerity Britain 194551 (recently chosen by The Sunday Times
as its Book of the Decade) and Family
Britain 1951-57.
Vic Marks
Played for Oxford University (captain
1976/77), Somerset (captain 1988/89),
Western Australia and England (6 Tests,
34 ODIs). Since retiring as a player in
1989 has been cricket correspondent for
The Observer and a regular contributor
to Test Match Special. He is Chairman
of Cricket at Somerset County Cricket
Club.
MCC MAGAZINE
Ran out-matches at Cranleigh,
Charterhouse and Marlborough for
many years. Member of MCC and Arts
and Library Committees. Former cricket
correspondent of BBC, The Daily Telegraph
and The Times. Former editor of The
Cricketer. Author of numerous books on
cricket, his Top 100 Cricketers of All Time
appears in paperback later this year
(Corinthian Books £14.99).
David Rayvern Allen has won many
international awards as a producer at the
BBC, including theprestigious Prix Italia.
In that time, he has had his microphone
chewed by a tiger and was dismissed for
a golden duck by a nonagenarian in the
nets at the Hollywood Cricket Club. He
has written around 40 books on cricket
and other subjects and is the authorised
biographer of John Arlott.
Neil Robinson
Neil Robinson was born on Tyneside and
studied librarianship at Robert Gordon
University in Aberdeen. He has worked at
the MCC Library since 2006. He has also
written for Wisden Cricket Monthly, The
Journal of the Cricket Society and www.
abcofcricket.com. In 2007 he published
Long Promised Road, a book about a walk
across Europe.
Michael Rundell nominated 25 June 2007
Michael Rundell first saw live Test cricket at
Headingley in 1961 (aged 10): England beat
Australia. He’s been hooked ever since.
He is the author of the Wisden Dictionary of
Cricket. He is a professional lexicographer,
Editor-in-Chief of dictionaries at Macmillan,
and director of a company that runs
projects in reference publishing (www.
lexmasterclass.com).
patrick eagar courtesy philip brown/ vic marks courtesy the observer/ christopher martin-jenkins courtesy matt bright/ davio rayvern allen courtesy peter lane/ neil robinson courtesy matt BRIGHT
6
“The Cricket Society
encapsulates all that is
good and wholesome
about the game.
Watching cricket in
lovely places amongst
friends; absorbed
by its rich literature;
enjoying the Society’s
sociable atmosphere.”
j o h n b a r C l ay – p r e S i d e n T
JUST
£PA
19
Boundary
Books
Fine Cricket Books, Autographs and Memorabilia
We hold a huge stock of
antiquarian books on the
game, as well as a range of
antique decorative items.
Ceramics, engravings,
photographs, signed bats,
bronzes, match balls
and silverware
Catalogues issued
Large stock of old Wisdens
Showroom browsing by
appointment
The Haven | West Street | Childrey | OX12 9UL
01235 751021 [email protected]
www.boundarybooks.com
• Monthly meetings where well known cricketing
personalities talk about all aspects of the game.
• A twice-yearly Journal with original articles from
new and established writers
• A News Bulletin, eight times a year, including
•
•
•
•
Quarter.indd 1
information on the Society, members’ letters,
interesting and original statistical research, reports
on monthly meetings and much more
Dinners with speeches from known personalities
and awards presentations
A comprehensive Library from where books and
videos can be borrowed for free
The Society’s Wandering XI plays around 30
matches a year and is open to all members
Society merchandise, a Quiz Night, several annual
awards, an annual Cricketers Service.
We share your enthusiasm for the game – and
welcome newcomers of all ages who understand why
cricket, always has been, and remains, the greatest
game in the world. Annual
membership is just £19 or £15 if
you are over 60 or under 18.
To find out more about us as well
as current and future events, visit
www.cricket society.com or write
to The Cricket Society, PO Box
6024, Leighton Buzzard LU7 2ZS.
CHRISTOPHER
SAUNDERS
4/3/10 14:12:10
selling cricket books & memorabilia for over 20 years
www.cricket-books.com
see 9000 cricket items
e a s y to s e a r c h & b u y
regular catalogues issued < stands at over 25 bookfairs each year
Christopher Saunders Publishing
Limited editions on the byways of cricket history, for example:
First Cricket In… by Martin Wilson. £25 +p&p.
This gives references for the first printed mention of cricket
in all counties and most countries
kingston house, high street,
newnham on severn, glouce stershire gl14 1bb
telephone: 01594 516030 > [email protected]
de signed by jule s akel
MCC MAGAZINE
Swinging Away
Enjoy Clubhouses in London &
Edinburgh & around the world
MCC’s new exhibition explores the connections between baseball
and cricket. Matthew Engel reveals what makes the two games
so special while, overleaf, Beth Hise, the exhibition’s curator,
highlights key works from the show
Special joining fee discounts for
readers of MCC Magazine
The Royal Over-Seas League (ROSL) is a non profit making mutual society
with a long history of welcoming members from the UK and overseas to its
London and Edinburgh clubhouses and providing a network of reciprocal
clubs, branches or honorary representatives around the world.
The London clubhouse, comprising two period houses, is in a prime location
bordering Green Park and near the Ritz Hotel. Over-Seas House has a private
garden, al fresco dining, restaurant, buttery for light meals, bar, drawing room, 80
air-conditioned bedrooms and seven conference and private dining rooms. The
Edinburgh clubhouse is centrally situated at 100 Princes Street.
In addition to economical central London pricing*, the League offers a varied
events programme, inter-club younger members group, quarterly journal,
discounts on certain cruises and tours, in-house art exhibitions and concerts, and
short term access to over 90 other clubs around the world in Canada, Australia,
New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, South Africa,
Kenya, Gibraltar, Ireland, Spain, USA and elsewhere.
Specially discounted joining fees for readers of MCC Magazine range from £57.50
to £135 depending on place of residence. 2010 annual subscriptions range from
£109 to £270. The joining fee is waived for those aged 17-25.
For further information please contact the Membership Department, remembering
to quote MCC MAGAZINE.
Over-Seas House, Park Place, St James’s Street, London SW1A 1LR
Tel: 020 7408 0214 Fax: 020 7499 6738
(Enquiries: 9.00am-5.00pm Monday-Friday - exts. 214 and 216)
Website: www.rosl.org.uk E-mail: [email protected]
*London clubhouse: gin & tonic £4.50; pint of beer from £3.95; house wine from £3.65; bar food £4.85–£6.00; three course lunch/dinner in the
restaurant from £24.95; in the garden £22.75; scones, Devon cream and preserves with tea or coffee in the garden, buttery or drawing room £6.70;
evening events from £4.00; air-conditioned bedrooms £95 - £180; e-mail and computer facilities in Central Lounge, broadband internet connection
in bedrooms. Prices correct at time of design, February 2010.
Yu Darvish pitching in the Japan v Korea 2009 World Baseball Classic
finals at Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles.
T
here was a gilded generation that grew up in the
late 19th century, after the drains and before the
trenches. I belong to what I realise now was another
lot that struck lucky.
We came after national service and all that
respect and discipline stuff, but before tuition fees and the dismal
modern workplace. My father spent six years in uniform; I spent
my youthful summers reporting from the cricket grounds of
England - at a time when both the county game and journalism
were still fun. And in the gaps I could fly across the Atlantic when
Freddie Laker and his heirs reduced fares to rock bottom and
Andrew Strauss at Lord’s in the 2004 England v West Indies One Day
International. Strauss made 100 from 116 balls.
sterling rode high against the dollar. I travelled across America,
made friendships (which lasted) and had romances (which did
not). Except one: I fell in love with baseball.
It was not love at first sight. I was first taken to watch the
New York Mets and was bored and baffled. It took years before
it clicked: the father of a friend of mine was watching a game on
TV in Ohio and said something – I have no idea what – and at last
I understood. This game did have a wicket: it’s called the strike
zone and just happens to be invisible, that’s all. But the pitcher
is trying to hit it, and the batter is trying to hit the ball, hard, and
beyond the fielder’s grasp. In essence, the duel is identical with
MCC MAGAZINE
9
10
the same elements: strength, skill, technique, duplicity. And
the appeal is the same too. Cricket and baseball are (uniquely,
I think) both fundamentally individual contests within a team
framework. They both have long soporific periods of nothingmuch, broken by sudden, unpredictable climaxes. They both
offer bottomless strategic profundity. They both have revered
traditions, with a rich literature as well as endless statistics.
Perhaps above all, they are both sports of summer – in which a
magnificent game can become entwined in our minds with the
memory of a perfect day.
Of course, the methods and strategies are vastly different.
So is the ethos: cricketers traditionally never argued with the
umpire (until now); in baseball, it has always been part of the
fun, though, in contrast to cricket, the umpire retains the last
word. And there are fundamental differences on the field.
Cricket, it seems to me, has three huge advantages. Firstly, since
the ball normally bounces between the hand and the bat, the
terrain is crucial; in baseball, it is hardly relevant. Secondly,
cricket is a game of 360 degrees whereas baseball takes place
within a right angle. Any ball hit outside that arc (say from
wide mid-on to wide mid-off ) is in foul territory. Thus cricket
is more beautiful. It has its infinite, and ever-growing, variety
of shots; with the stick of rhubarb baseball players have to
use, it’s hard enough to make any kind of contact, never mind
doing so prettily and imaginatively. And thirdly, we have the
glorious concept of the draw, the third contestant in a proper
cricket match but unimaginable to an American (or an Indian
entrepreneur, come to that). Against that, baseball has not got
itself into cricket’s appalling structural mess.
Handkerchief – The Little Pocket Companion late 1700s
This handkerchief appears to be a companion to John
Newberry’s popular children’s book Little Pretty Pocket-Book,
Intended for the Instruction and Amusement of Little Master
Tommy and Pretty Miss Polly published in London in 1744,
with many subsequent versions. Both have illustrations and
short poems about a range of outdoor activities for children
including cricket, stoolball, trapball and, surprisingly,
baseball. While the fact that baseball originated as a
children’s game in England is now accepted, baseball
scholars continue to track down earlier references, seeking
ever more evidence of the origins of the game.
One day? Five days? Three days? Four?
Twenty overs? Forty overs? Fifty overs? More?
Baseball knows what it is. A game is a game: nine innings a
side, more if they are level, taking an average three to four hours.
Its rhythms are immutable. And in that Twenty20-ish span of
time, it can include a great deal of the complexity and depth that
Test cricket provides but one-day cricket does not.
I am not a traitor. Not merely is it possible to love both
cricket and baseball, I would say it was impossible for any
cricket-lover who manages to grasp baseball to dislike it. This
does not work in reverse: we must assume this is because
Americans can never summon the patience to grasp cricket.
But when I lived in the US, an array of British friends came
over and I took them up to my favourite seats on the top deck
behind home plate of the Orioles’ stadium in Baltimore. We
talked through the scene in front of us in cricketing terms and I
never had a single failure. My guests included David Acfield and
Alan Fordham from the ECB, both baseball-virgins: Accers was
contradicting me on the finer points of strategy in no time.
I’d be happy to extend the same invitation to any MCC
members (you’ll have to fly me back, though). Failing that, I
hope the forthcoming ‘Swinging Away’ exhibition will help the
process of understanding the connection – and the disconnect.
The exhibition will be in the MCC Museum from late April.
To book tickets or purchase a fully illustrated catalogue, please
visit www.lords.org or telephone 0207 616-8657 / 8595 / 8596.
MCC MAGAZINE
Young American Cricket Club 1868
When the first Philadelphian cricket clubs were set up in the 1850s,
they were organised by Americans not British residents. Young
friends and relatives of these players were denied membership
if they were under the age of 16. Incensed, they staged an
infamous ‘Apple Riot’, pelting the players on the field with apples.
In response, they organised the Young America Cricket Club on 19
November, 1855. These players were too young in 1861 to fight
in the American Civil War but kept cricket going in Philadelphia
during the war. Their spirit of independence infused a long
tradition of American amateur cricket in Philadelphia.
Page 9: courtesy Kevork Djansezian//Getty Images. courtesy MCC. pages 10 & 11: MCC/CC Morris Cricket Library, Haverford, PA, except top left: Courtesy MCC
Swinging Away
J Barton King
John Barton ‘Bart’ King is the most accomplished American cricketer of all time and
considered one of the best bowlers of his day, yet he is almost unheard of outside a small
circle of cricket historians. He played during the height of Philadelphian cricket (1897 – 1912)
and remains the only American to take all 10 wickets in a first class innings. King first played
baseball before joining Philadelphia’s Tioga Cricket Club as a teenager. Largely self trained,
his trademark was the ability to swing a cricket ball much like a curveball in baseball, a
delivery he called ‘anglers’. King was selected for every US-Canada fixture from 1892 to 1912
and the ‘fortunes of Philadelphia cricket so often rose or fell on the individual performances
of this star player’. He dismissed some of the finest batsmen of the ‘golden age’ and won the
admiration and friendship of many more.
Hollywood cricket club 1930s
C Aubrey Smith (seated in the
centre with cap, club blazer
and pipe), a former Sussex and
England captain, founded the
Hollywood Cricket Club in 1932.
He spearheaded a resurgence of
interest in cricket in California.
He chose the club colours - white,
green and magenta, the same
as the suffragettes - that he had
played under for the Actors XI in
London. Many Hollywood Cricket
Club members came from the
film industry and included such
famous names as Boris Karloff,
David Niven, PG Wodehouse and
Errol Flynn (seated far left, with
pipe). Smith, as president of the
club, insisted on player decorum
and punctuality, and as David
Niven later recalled, ‘when that
Grand Old Man asked you to play,
you played!’ The club secured a
ground at Griffith Park, named
the C Aubrey Smith Field, built an
impressive pavilion and seeded the
pitch with imported English grass.
Sadly neither still exist.
MCC MAGAZINE
11
12
Swinging Away
Babe Ruth cartoon 1935
Babe Ruth, the most
internationally recognised
New York Yankee, finished
his professional baseball
career not as Yankee but with
the Boston Braves in 1935.
Returning home from London
to speculation about his
baseball future, Ruth found
he was to be traded to the
struggling Boston Braves,
making his appearances in
London his last as a New York
Yankee. Ruth made the final
hit of his professional career
with this bat on May 25, 1935 in
the seventh inning of a game
against the Pittsburgh Pirates
at Pittsburgh. It was his third
home run of the game, and
incredibly long, clearing the
double-deck stands in right
field. It was said at the time
to be the longest drive ever
made at Pittsburgh’s Forbes
field. The Pirate’s pitcher Guy
Bush said, ‘I never saw a ball
hit so hard before or since. He
was fat and old, but he still
had that great swing … I can’t
forget that last [home run]. It’s
probably still going’.
Spalding tour poster 1888
This is the only surviving poster from Spalding’s advance publicity
push for his world baseball tour. Sent out ahead to encourage
public excitement about the games, this outstanding large
lithograph features the baseball cards of the players Spalding
contracted for the tour superimposed over a Chicago game in
progress and the S.S. Alameda, the ship that would take them
to Australia. The tour was initially advertised as ‘Spalding’s
Australian Base Ball Tour’ but was expanded early on to include
Sri Lanka, Egypt, parts of Europe and England, making it the first
truly global World Tour bringing baseball, and the America that it
embodied, to all corners of the earth. Two of Spalding’s biggest
signings, Mike ‘King’ Kelly and ‘Silent’ Mike Tiernan broke their
contracts and refused to go at the last minute although it was too
late to remove them from the poster.
Casey Stengel touring jersey 1924
In the 1924 off-season, the Chicago White Sox and New York Giants embarked on the
last major baseball tour to Europe. Casey Stengel, known for his on-field antics and
colourful way of talking, played as an outfielder for the New York Giants on this tour.
Newsreel footage shows Stengel meeting King George V during a game, and unlike
the other players, talking loquaciously all the while. Early in his major league career,
he acquired the nickname ‘Casey’, after his hometown Kansas City (K C). His playing
career was marked by solid batting interspersed with injuries and contract disputes.
When his playing days finished, he began managing, and after a slow start, enjoyed
glory days managing the New York Yankees in the 1950s with such superstars as
Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle. He followed this by managing the beloved New
York Mets in the 1960s, a bumbling new franchise, when he was already in his 70s.
Remembered as a colourful and charismatic figure, he retired in 1965 and was
elected to the Hall of Fame the following year.
MCC MAGAZINE
Courtesy Milo Stewart Jr/National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, Cooperstown, NY. right: Courtesy MCC
Barry Bonds’ maple wood bat, 2001
During the 2001 baseball season, Barry Bonds dramatically closed in on the
single-season home run record. He finally surpassed Mark McGwire’s existing
record of 70 home runs, set in the 1998 season, on October 5, 2001. He ended
the season with 73 homers, all achieved using a bat made from maple wood
rather than the traditional ash. Bonds was one of the first to use maple bats
and his success with this harder, more durable bat, set an example that other
players soon followed, This is the bat he used on June 7, 2001 to hit a massive
451-foot home run, setting the then distance record at Pacific Bell Park in San
Francisco. This was his 32nd homer for the season and 526th career home run.
Six years later, on August 7, 2007, Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s career home run
record when he hit his 756th homer at San Francisco, an achievement clouded
by allegations of steroid use.
Contemporary Cricket Balls
The oldest known cricket ball is remarkably similar to Test balls of today.
By contrast, the baseball has changed both the seam and the amount of
bouncy rubber at its core. Today baseball uses a single white ball, with a
figure-8 seam, while cricket has a red ball for Test cricket and a white ball
for One Day Internationals, and even a yellow ball specifically for indoor
cricket. Both baseball and cricket have tried to make the ball more visible
by experimenting with much brighter colours, like the pink ball seen here
that was officially trialed at Lord’s Cricket Ground on 21 April 2008. At that
match, between MCC and Scotland, this pink Duke&Son ball was used for
MCC’s innings.
Doubleday `Baseball’
The Doubleday ball, as fortune would have it, was discovered in 1934 just a
few years shy of the centenary of the “invention” of baseball in 1839. Caught
up in a powerful desire to verify the American origins of the game, this small
and obviously homemade ball went from long-lost plaything, forgotten in
an attic and probably never used as a baseball, to the ball used by Major
General Abner Doubleday to “invent” the game of baseball. As this was
meant to have taken place in the small picturesque village of Cooperstown,
New York, neighbouring village to the aforesaid attic, this soon became the
‘Doubleday ball’, the first ‘sacred relic’ of baseball. Long since exposed as a
myth – baseball’s English origins and Doubleday’s absence from Cooperstown
in 1839 now accepted - the ‘Doubleday ball’ nonetheless remains a special
treasure at the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, representing as
it does the importance of the game to American national identity.
MCC MAGAZINE
13
15
14
Left England did not have an answer to the
Australian fast bowlers Ray Lindwall and Keith
Miller. By the time Roy Ullyett drew this cartoon
in 1972, England could harness the hostility of
John Snow and Bob Willis but it was the West
Indian fast bowlers, particularly Michael Holding
and Andy Roberts, for whom the term ‘chin
music’ was later coined.
Below A video grab from ‘Youtube’ of Brian
Johnston’s hysterically funny commentary, which
shows Ian Botham failing to get his ‘leg over’.
A Sticky Wicket
Cricketing terms mystify the uninitiated but it’s a
sport that has given many idioms to the language.
Here Michael Rundell bowls the reader over
The nightwatchman is on strike and Swann
is bowling with a short leg, a silly point and
a man out on the pull.
Like most specialised languages,
this all makes perfect sense to insiders
but sounds like gobbledygook to anyone
else. Cricket does have its technical terms
(like googly and zooter) but most of its
vocabulary comes from ordinary English
words with special cricketing meanings
– just think of what walk and run mean
in cricket – and it’s this that mystifies the
uninitiated. Figuring out that third man
has nothing to do with Orson Welles and
post-war Vienna is only the half of it.
And as the game changes, the
language follows. Cricket has always had a
good line in inventive coinages: when the
West Indies fielded their great fast-bowling
quartets, we talked about chin music (often
followed by the dreaded death rattle as the
stumps imploded), and when Twenty20
rewrote the rules of batting, all those exotic
new shots had to be named, leading to
terms like the Dilscoop, the ramp, and the
uppercut. There’s rhyming slang too, with
the bunsen (a wicket that’s a turner) and
the wonderfully-named Michelle (the fivefor). As for the Corridor of Uncertainty, that
could have come straight from Pilgrim’s
Progress.
Some of the newer items come
from other sports. From football, we get
the sweeper (a fielder patrolling a large
boundary area), while the baseball lexicon
has been plundered for terms like pinchMCC MAGAZINE
hitter, switch-hitting (common in baseball,
but still rare – and controversial – in
cricket), and of course the usefully genderfree batter, which seems to be gaining in
popularity.
But above all, cricket likes its idioms.
In a recent admiring profile of Paul
Collingwood, Cricinfo’s Andrew Hughes
concluded that ‘cricket isn’t about coming
to the party, it’s about refusing to leave the
party, even when the other guests have
gone home, there is nothing left to drink
and the police are hammering on the
door’ (9th Jan. 2010).
A bit of a flight of fancy, perhaps,
but there are plenty of expressions from
other areas of life that regularly crop up
in cricket talk. Players like Collingwood
drop anchor and steady the ship – nautical
metaphors being common in our
seafaring nation. Others may farm the
‘
strike, do a bit of gardening, or whack the
ball to cow corner, and the agricultural
references reflect cricket’s distant past.
Cricket isn’t averse to borrowing from
other sports, either: one team may punch
above their weight, another may not get
the rub of the green, and (naming no
names) some of us think it’s time a certain
England player stepped up to the plate.
But it works the other way too.
Cricketing idioms crop up in all sorts of
places. If the Battle of Waterloo was won
on the playing fields of Eton, it was the
cricket field above all that was seen as
the breeding ground for England’s ruling
class – as Henry Newbolt’s famous poem
suggests (‘Play up, play up, and play the
game!’). This explains why cricket has
given many more idioms to the language
than more popular sports like football.
When cabinet minister Geoffrey Howe
Jeremy Paxman, who will delight
in putting them on the back foot by
bowling them a googly, or maybe a
bouncer. And if they aren’t ready with
a smart answer, they’re stumped
‘
resigned from Margaret Thatcher’s
government, he used an elaborate
cricketing metaphor to criticize his
erstwhile boss: he had gone out to bat in
some tricky EU negotiations, ‘only to find,
as the first balls were being bowled, that
his bat had been broken before the game
by the team captain’. Howe was on a sticky
wicket all right, an expression rarely used
now in its literal meaning (sticky wickets
more or less disappeared when covered
pitches came in), but still common in
non-cricketing contexts. The same is true
of off your own bat: in the early days of
cricket, when pitches were treacherous
and scores low, match reports would
emphasise how many runs a player got ‘off
his own bat’ (as opposed to those coming
from byes, wides or whatever). Nowadays,
the phrase appears only in the general
language, and most people probably don’t
even realise it’s a cricket expression. I
wonder, too, how many people know that
hat trick originated from an old tradition
of presenting a bowler with a new hat if
he took three wickets in succession. Hat
trick is now widely used, not only in other
sports, but more generally too: a band
might have a hat trick of hit singles, or a
politician a hat trick of election victories.
Most politicians aren’t always so lucky,
though: they face hostile questioning
from the likes of Jeremy Paxman, who
will delight in putting them on the back
foot by bowling them a googly, or maybe
a bouncer (the equivalent, in baseball
parlance, is throwing a curve ball). And
if they aren’t ready with a smart answer,
they’re stumped. We often use maiden to
describe the first time something happens
(‘maiden flight’, ‘maiden speech’), though
this meaning probably pre-dates its use in
cricket. But I read recently, in a profile of
Dennis Waterman, that ‘the young Dennis
broke his on-screen duck, aged 12, with
the crime drama “Snowball”’. Whether his
performance hit the critics for six is not
recorded.
Test Match Special has its own even
more esoteric lore – whether it’s the
obligatory –ers suffix on people’s names
(Aggers, Tuffers, and of course the great
original, Johnners), the famous leg over
incident, or the best put-down ever
delivered about a bowler: my granny could
have hit that with a stick of rhubarb. But we
won’t go into that. It’s just not cricket, is it?
MCC MAGAZINE
16
17
Pussycats to
Tigers
Despite the problems that face Pakistan, the country has produced some
of the greatest cricketers of recent times. Here Vic Marks, who has toured
the country as both player and correspondent, recalls his experiences.
Photographs by Patrick Eagar
I
t remains a minor miracle that
Pakistan’s cricket team, if not
in rude health, is still up and
running and competing with the
world’s best, even though it cannot
currently play any international cricket on
its own soil. This is some achievement but
not so much of a surprise.
Pakistan has produced some of the
greatest cricketers of the last four decades
often from a modest and haphazard base.
Over the years their players have learnt
how to survive without the benefit of a
long-established and financially stable
domestic structure. And many of them
have done much, much more than survive.
They have adorned the international stage.
Few cricketers anywhere in the globe
could match the majesty of Majid Khan,
the mystery of Abdul Qadir or the wristy,
voracious pursuit of runs by Zaheer
Abbas. No batsman was more streetwise
than Javed Miandad. By contrast, no one
was more imperious than Imran Khan
willing himself and his team, pussycats
one moment, tigers the next, to World Cup
glory in 1992.
Waqar Younis and Wasim Akram were
as potent an opening pair of fast bowlers
as any in history and arguably the most
exciting of all to watch; Mushtaq Ahmed
MCC MAGAZINE
became a worthy successor to Abdul,
while Inzamam-ul-Haq always enchanted.
Only Inzamam, Pakistan’s captain on
the eve of a Test in Faisalabad in 2005, the
day when those final, vital preparations
for the Test were being carried out, could
laze in his special wicker chair, which was
situated on the outfield, while the rest of
the world and his team buzzed around
him oh so purposefully. Then Inzamam
languidly rose for a moment to deliver
a wonderfully inconsequential press
conference to the assembled media.
Inzamam did not wish to give
anything away before the Test and he was
never confident about speaking in English
anyway, though I’m sure he understood
most things. So he conducted his press
conferences in his native tongue. ‘Much
Urdu about nothing’, we concluded on this
occasion.
The fragility of playing cricket in
Pakistan was highlighted on that tour. At
Faisalabad the game was meandering on
when a loud bang reverberated around the
ground. Immediately the game stopped;
immediately there was the assumption
that here was another sinister intrusion.
In a trice the tour must be in jeopardy;
mentally a few English players and
pressmen were already packing their
Opposite the majestic and balletic Imran Khan
in action in the 2nd Pakistan v England Test at
Lord’s in 1987 - the year he captained Pakistan
to their first series win in England.
Above Zaheer Abbas in full flow in the 3rd
Pakistan v England test at the Oval in 1974. In
1982/83 he became the first Pakistani to score
100 test centuries.
MCC MAGAZINE
18
‘
Pakistan
I don’t know what Marks
read at Oxford’, he wrote,
’but it certainly wasn’t
wrist spin.
‘
bags for home until the provenance of the
bang had been discovered: a Coca Cola
dispenser had exploded on the boundary’s
edge, nothing more than that. Sadly
since then the threats have been real and
devastating and Pakistan has become a
no-go area for international cricketers.
Faisalabad can never claim to be
the hub of Pakistan cricket - Karachi
and Lahore can argue over that - but I
remember it as vividly as any of the more
prestigious venues. On my first visit there
in the winter of 1983/4 we stayed at the
Chenab Club, an old, distinctly fading,
colonial outpost. It was decided that the
kitchens there were none too reliable so
the England management negotiated that
our evening meals would be transported
from the hotel we stayed at in Lahore. This
was a journey of four or five hours and
a wonderful gesture by our hosts, much
appreciated by the England touring party.
By this stage of the tour Ian Botham
had gone home with a back injury and
from his hospital bed in England, without
much aforethought (or malice, I’m sure),
he delivered his mother-in-law jibe that
Pakistan was the perfect place for a man
to send his mother-in-law for a month,
all expenses paid. It wasn’t very funny
in the first place and what he forgot was
that such a remark put in jeopardy our
coveted evening meals. It said much of
the generosity of spirit of our hosts that
after a little more delicate negotiation the
evening meals kept coming through from
Lahore.
I remember Faisalabad fondly, partly
because I finally managed to score some
Test runs there. Until then I had been
mesmerised by Abdul Qadir, the magical
wrist-spinner and a complete mystery to
me. I had padded up to his googly fatally at
MCC MAGAZINE
Headingley and been bemused by him in
Karachi to the point of utter humiliation.
As a batsman my confidence had been
smashed to smithereens.
In those days - before the internet
or mobile phones - the arrival of
English newspapers, several days after
publication, was a moment to treasure
just so that we could have an idea of what
was happening back home. Inevitably we
also turned avidly to the cricket reports. By
then any self-belief about my batting was
already disintegrating rapidly but when
I read a line in one of the papers - I think
it was written by Pat Gibson and in later
years I would have been rather proud of it
myself - my confidence hit an all time low.
‘I don’t know what Marks read at Oxford’,
he wrote, ‘but it certainly wasn’t wrist spin’.
I missed the 1987/8 tour and in a
macabre way I would like to have been in
Faisalabad on that fateful evening. Here
was the unprepossessing stage for the
Mike Gatting/Shakoor Rana confrontation,
which, in hindsight, may have had the
odd benefit to the game, though none was
evident at the time.
That ugly scene five minutes before
the close of play on the second day did
at least hasten what Pakistan, and Imran
Khan in particular, had been advocating
for years: the introduction of neutral
umpires for Test cricket, a move that
may not have transformed the standard
of international umpiring, but which
undoubtedly took the heat out of many
volatile situations.
That must have been a wretched
tour and it led to a hiatus. England did
not return to Pakistan until 2000 under
the more diplomatic leadership of
Nasser Hussain (I never thought I would
write that but it’s true). It was a far less
Waqar YOunis
Above Waqar Younis in the 1st
Pakistan v England Test at Lord’s
in 1996. His trademark delivery
was a fast inswinging yorker.
Left The hostile Wasim Akram
who inherited Imran’s mantle of
Pakistan’s leading all-rounder.
He formed a devastating new ball
partnership with Waqar.
Top Majid Khan, an attacking middle-order
batsman, who burst onto the scene as a 21
year old on Pakistan’s tour of England in 1967.
Here he is partnered by Mudassar Nazar.
Above Mike Gatting is accused by Shakoor
Rana of cheating on the second day of the Test
at Faisalabad in 1987. Both men required an
apology from the other. The Test and County
Cricket Board ordered Gatting to apologise and
play resumed though a day was lost.
acrimonious tour decided in England’s
favour in the dark of Karachi. Five years
later at Multan, Pakistan snatched an
equally unlikely victory after trailing by 144
runs from the first innings and England’s
Ashes winners were humbled 2-0.
Now Pakistan are destined to play their
‘home’ Test matches elsewhere. They must
depend upon their support from those
who have emigrated. The experiment of
Pakistan playing Australia in England this
summer is an enticing one. Crazy though
it may seem, Pakistan, as the notional
home side, may well be playing in front
of larger crowds at Lord’s or Headingley
than they would have done if these Tests
were taking place in Lahore, Karachi or
Faisalabad, where often games were quite
sparsely attended.
The matches should be a spectacle.
Pakistan will not lack support. No doubt
a number of England supporters will also
adopt them - they are, after all, playing
Australia. But we must hope against hope
that it won’t be too long before touring
teams are able to return to Pakistan.
Lahore, Karachi - and even Faisalabad
- remain Test venues with long, proud
traditions. Moreover Pakistan’s national
team, no matter how resilient, cannot
survive beyond its boundaries indefinitely.
Pakistan at Lord’s this summer. 1st
Pakistan v Australia Test, 13-17 July.
4th npower Test England v Pakistan,
26-30 August. 4th Nat West ODI England
v Pakistan floodlit, 20 September. Imran
Khan is to deliver the tenth MCC Spirit of
Cricket Cowdrey Lecture at Lord’s in July.
MCC MAGAZINE
19
21
20
Right Pakistan Cricket Team
in India, 1960-61. There
can be no greater rivalry on
the cricket field than that
between Pakistan and India,
nor many greater off it. After
the bloody chaos of partition,
relations remained strained,
with wars breaking out in
1947, 1965 and 1971. At the
time of the 1960-61 tour
tensions over Kashmir, the
cause of the 1947/48 war,
were still apparent and the
foreign ministers of both
governments appealed to the
Press to create ‘a positive
psychological atmosphere
among the peoples of the
two countries’.
Cricket between India
and Pakistan is often seen
as a bridge between the two
countries, and a blessed
moment of respite from off
the field tensions. But in
this series the cricket itself
seemed driven by those
tensions; national pride was
even more at stake than
usual and both teams were
obsessed by the desire to
give nothing away. Five turgid
draws resulted. The Indian
historian Ramachandra
Guha describes the feeling of
cricket fans at the end of the
series: ‘Thank the Lord, it’s
all over!’
Birth of a Nation
The Yahya Ghaznavi Collection of photographs reveals a country passionate about
cricket. Neil Robinson outlines the importance of the collection and explains why
every picture tells a story
of the rare nature of its subject matter. This is no simple selection
of images of anonymous cricketers putting bat to ball; it is the
story of the birth of a nation, from the days of the Raj to a time
when a young nation took its first steps on the world stage and
found cricket to be an ideal way of expressing its national identity
and pride. To have had the chance of examining the collection
has added greatly to our understanding of cricket during this
period, to be able to display and subsequently keep a small
number of prints has enhanced the scope of MCC’s collections.
MCC, with its worldwide Membership and global remit, is
better placed than many institutions to attract donations from
overseas, but often it is a matter of sheer chance that brings donor
and institution together. In this case the chain of circumstance,
from Yahya Ghaznavi’s chance meeting with Olympic athlete
Mirza Khan, the meeting which first stimulated his interest in
Pakistan’s sporting heritage, to Majid Khan’s contact with Adam
and the Museum team, was a long and fortunate one. Perhaps the
next happy chance will bring new artefacts from as far away as
New Zealand, or as nearby as New Malden.
A selection of photographs from the Ghaznavi Collection will be
on show outside the MCC Library until the Autumn.
Left An extraordinary group photographed in 1902, during
a match between teams representing Aligarh Muslim
University and Oxford University. It appears to be a picture
of imperial harmony, taken at a time when Britannia ruled
the waves and the world map was half pink with British
Dominions. But there are a couple of cats among the
pigeons.
Sitting at the centre of the front row is Shaukat Ali,
then a 29 year old civil servant and former captain of the
University team. Standing on the extreme right in a long
overcoat and a hat with turned-up brim is his brother,
the team scorer, Muhammad Ali Johar, then 24 and a
recent Oxford graduate in history who had also studied
at Aligarh. Four years later, these two brothers would be
founder members of the All India Muslim League. In 1919,
in protest at the British Government’s support of Mustafa
Kemal’s overthrow of the Ottoman Sultan, they helped
form the Khilafat Committee, which organised a series of
anti-government protests and boycotts.
The brothers remained politically active all their lives
and are remembered as heroes of Pakistan’s struggle for
independence, a struggle which neither would live to see
come to fruition.
MCC MAGAZINE
PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY Yahya Ghaznavi Collection
Donations are the backbone of many collections, not least those
of MCC. The MCC Library owes its pre-eminence to the 2,000 plus
volumes acquired from the Ford and Cahn collections, including
some of the rarest and most precious items in cricket’s vast
literature. The Club’s photographic collection was substantially
enhanced by the acquisition from the Sport & General agency
of several thousand prints showing matches at Lord’s during the
mid-twentieth century. But even these donations pale beside that
made by Lady Darnley in 1928: the famous Ashes urn.
Donations are particularly welcome when they fall into
one of two categories: either an item which is simply unique,
or something which fills a particular gap in the collection. A
good example of this comes from 2006 when, thanks to that
fine cricketer Majid Khan, we came into contact with Yahya
Ghaznavi, who had spent twenty years collecting photographs on
the sporting history of Pakistan, before and after partition from
India. The Indian subcontinent has had few serious collectors of
memorabilia, and consequently MCC’s own collection contained
little to reflect the rich heritage of Pakistani cricket.
The Ghaznavi collection is of particular value not just because
of its scope, a vast number of photographs covering all sport in
pre- and post-partition Pakistan from 1860-1960, but also because
Left The Captains of the Pakistan and West Indies teams
pictured before the start of the unofficial Test match at
Lahore in November 1948. This was the first match played
by a full representative Pakistan side since the country’s
independence, some four years before they made their official
Test debut. The two players in this photograph reveal an
interesting contrast: Mohammad Saeed, captain of a newly
formed nation, pictured proudly in the blazer of his country,
and John Goddard, captain of a loose affiliation of imperial
possessions yet to acknowledge the ‘winds of change’
sweeping across the Empire.
Goddard had made his Test debut earlier that year
against England in Barbados, in a West Indies team captained
by the great George Headley, the first man of colour to
captain West Indies. Headley’s captaincy lasted for just one
match. By the third Test of the series Goddard had taken
charge and the coloured majority of the West Indies would
have to wait until 1960 before one of their own, Frank Worrell,
took the helm again.
Sadly, Mohammad Saeed never played at full Test level.
But the honour of being the first Pakistani cricketer to captain
his national team remained.
Left The Captain of the Pakistan Cricket Team, Fazal Mahmood, is seen
shaking hands with the American President, Dwight D. Eisenhower
(wearing the blazer of the Pakistan cricket team), during a Test match
against Australia at Karachi in December 1959. Many young nations have
seen sports as a key way of developing their profile on the world stage,
while also recognising the sense of national pride and identity that such
sports engender. The pride felt by the Pakistan players and officials at
meeting their distinguished guest is plain to see.
Eisenhower, by now nearing the end of his second term as President,
was engaged in the foreign policy initiative known as the Eisenhower
Doctrine: a commitment to counter communist expansionism with military
force. Focusing mainly on the oil-rich Middle East, the doctrine was in
part a response to the decline of British and French influence following
the Suez crisis. Pakistan had joined the USA in the South East Asia
Treaty Organisation – a regional equivalent to NATO - in 1954. On arrival
in Pakistan, Eisenhower remarked that the two countries ‘ought to work
together for peace and mutual security, but from a position of strength’.
MCC MAGAZINE
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student of cricket knows, is an inspiring
human tale of the wiry little coal-miner
from Nuncargate in Nottinghamshire who
bowled at a ferocious pace, achieved high
fame under two very different captains
in Arthur Carr and Douglas Jardine and
whose career reached too early and
controversial an apogee in Australia in
1932/33. What followed was for a time
almost a personal tragedy but dust settled
at last and wounds healed.
A life lived, for the most part, amidst
an English society still riven by class
consciousness is told in vivid detail by an
outstanding writer. Hamilton’s prose is
unconsciously beautiful, with memorable
imagery on almost every page. He
describes ‘The ball rising like spitting fat
off the hot, hard pitches’ of Australia; or
Sutcliffe’s head dropping ‘like a cut flower’
when Hobbs looked like being given out
lbw at the Oval in 1926; of Larwood’s
toes, still raw, ‘as if each one had been
rubbed down by thick sand-paper’; and of
Larwood in League cricket ‘like a hawk in
a cornfield, contentedly swooping down
and devouring pliant batsmen’. And so on.
Any biographer or historian will
understand the hours of painstaking
work that must have gone into Hamilton’s
research, no matter how enjoyable the
labour of love, but the end product does
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MCC MAGAZINE
Judging the merits of one cricket book
against another is not much easier than
choosing between players for a crucial
game. Truly, I do not envy the selection
committee charged with adjudicating
this year’s Cricket Society and MCC Book
of the Year Award but two titles will have
been on everyone’s short-list and in the
end it will no doubt come down to a choice
between them.
Duncan Hamilton’s biography of
Harold Larwood, subtitled the authorised
biography of the world’s fastest bowler,
has already won an award as the William
Hill Sports Book of the Year and it is no
surprise. The Larwood story, as every
Left to right Harold Larwood
by Duncan Hamilton (Quercus)
and Of Didcot and the Demon by
Anthony Gibson (Fairfield Books)
are this year’s frontrunners.
MCC MAGAZINE
25
Book Awards
Cricket photograph of the year
Left two from the shortlist:
Golden Boy (Allen&Unwin)
and empire&cricket: the South
African Experience,1884-1914
(Unisa Press).
not seem laboured at all. On the contrary,
it proves the adage “hard writing, easy
reading.”
Whether or not the author proves
his premise, that Larwood was England’s
fastest bowler and, for a period, the fastest
that cricket has ever seen, is not important.
There is more than enough evidence to
suggest that he was the fastest seen until
his own high noon and indeed that he
would still seem like greased lightning
amongst the more powerfully built fast
bowlers of today. Darren Gough has been
perhaps the nearest English equivalent of
recent times. Let’s surmise that he bowled
roughly with the same menace as Steve
Harmison, with less steepling bounce but
faster and with much greater accuracy.
If England could have had Larwood to
bowl for them at his peak in Johannesburg
earlier this year they would have beaten
South Africa and if they could summon
him back in Australia next winter they
would return with the urn for sure.
Superb writing is the whole point of
the most likely challenger to the Larwood
biography, Of Didcot and the Demon.
Thanks to a happy liaison between
Anthony Gibson and the cricket writer
and publisher Stephen Chalke, the
unique reportage of Alan Gibson in The
Times, between 1967 and 1986, has been
celebrated in a handsome volume that
is, as the blurb for once truly claims, 300
MCC MAGAZINE
pages of joy for followers of cricket with
a love of good English and a sense of
humour.
Anthony, Alan’s son, writes a
dispassionate summary of a man of
rarefied intellect whose life was blighted
by alcoholism, and a short introduction
to each year of excerpts. I met Harold
Larwood and worked with Alan Gibson (as
I did with his son!), so perhaps I am biased
but I defy anyone not to enjoy these books.
Some of the other challengers may
have a more specialised appeal, but
several are nonetheless worthy. Christian
Ryan, for example, has written Golden
Boy, a punchy, passionate biography of
Kim Hughes, the curly-haired, cheeky,
fun-loving, almost dilettante captain of
Australia in what he calls ‘the bad old days
of Australian cricket.’
Hughes was born with wonderful
flair for batting but in the wrong era.
He was not quite ready for consistent
success at the highest level when Kerry
Packer’s agents began recruiting many
of the world’s best players and Packer
muscled his way into the televising of
cricket in Australia in 1977. Left out of the
circus he then had the unenviable job of
being asked to lead the gnarled veterans
of the team in the immediate aftermath
of the great schism. Ryan makes a strong
case that both the Chappell brothers and
Hughes’s fellow Western Australians,
In its millenium edition, Wisden invited
Patrick Eagar, the doyen of cricket
photography, to select a photograph
from each decade to define cricket
photography in the twentieth century.
The ten photographs that appeared in
Wisden 2000 gave an immediate and
fascinating glimpse into cricket history,
from George Beldam’s unforgettable
image of Victor Trumper to an
extraordinary salmon-leap of a catch by
Jonty Rhodes.
Wisden, in partnership with MCC,
is now launching an annual Cricket
Photograph of the Year competition.
The winning images will be chosen by
a panel of independent expert judges
appointed by Wisden and MCC. The
judges will draw up a shortlist from
which they will select a winner and two
runners-up. The chosen images will best
Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh, failed to give
him their unalloyed support.
Golden Boy will surprise anyone too
young to remember the turbulence created
by World Series Cricket but empire and
cricket, the South African Experience,
1884-1914, will enlighten an even wider
readership. Edited by Bruce Murray
and Goolam Vahed it offers much wellresearched evidence into the significance
of cricket in the social forces that led
eventually to racial segregation. As André
Odendaal writes in his foreword, cricket
was part of the political efforts to reconcile
British and Afrikaners after the AngloBoer Wars at the turn of the 20th century,
sadly at the expense of Africans and other
coloured races. At the time of going to press the short
list for the award was announced, the
five books are: Of Didcot and the Demon:
The cricketing times of Alan Gibson,
Anthony Gibson, Fairfield Books; Harold
Larwood, Duncan Hamilton, Quercus
Books; empire&cricket: The South African
Experience, 1884-1914, edited by Bruce
Murray and Goolam Vahed, Unisa Press;
Golden Boy: Kim Hughes and the bad old
days of Australian cricket, Christian Ryan,
Allen&Unwin; Imran Khan: The cricketer,
the celebrity, the politician, Christopher
Sandford, HarperCollins. The winner is
announced on 26 April.
Special Offers
Open to readers of MCC Magazine
on production of the magazine.
J W McKenzie has been a cricket book
and memorabilia specialist since 1971
and publishes regular catalogues. Place
an order in 2010 for over £25, quoting
ref MCC3 and receive a free copy of
Richard Bouwman’s Glorious Innings:
Treasures from the Melbourne Cricket
Club Collection, detailing many items of
cricketana. See advertisement, page 4
Sportspages welcomes the Pakistani
capture the joy, drama, spirit or essence
of cricket, wherever in the world it is
played, watched or experienced.
Each year, starting in the 2011
edition, the winning photographs will be
included in Wisden’s colour section. All
the shortlisted entries will be exhibited
at Lord’s and there will be prizes for the
winning photographers.
The competition is open to all
photographers, both amateur and
professional, throughout the world.
The only stipulation is that entries
must, in one way or another, have a
cricket theme, and have been taken
during 2010. Beyond that, there are no
restrictions: photographs may be from
anywhere - beach, village green, maidan,
street, stadium or snowfield.
Had such a competition existed for
the past 100 years, the range of images
built up within the pages of Wisden
would have formed a compelling archive
of the game’s ever-changing face. Those
editing Wisden 2111 should be lucky
enough to have just such an archive.
For full details, visit: www.lords.org/
photooftheyear
team on their 2010 UK tour. To
commemorate this event, Sportspages
is pleased to offer a £10 discount
on customers’ first orders with us.
(Code: MCC001. Offer open until 13th
July, 1st day of the Lord’s Test). See
advertisement, page 6
Franco’s restaurant on Jermyn Street
is offering a complementary glass
of Prosecco with dinner. Open for
breakfast, lunch and dinner, Monday to
Saturday. The Italian menu offers a wide
range of dishes from north and south
Italy. See advertisement, page 22
The Fox Club is offering a discounted
joining rate of £250 (standard
annual membership rate £350). See
advertisement, page 22
The Royal Overseas League on St
James’s Park, is offering discounted
joining fees, ranging from £57.50 to £135
(depending on place of residence). 2010
annual subscriptions range from £109 to
£270. See advertisement, page 8
DR Harris chemist and perfumers is
offering 10% discount until the end of
June. See advertisement, page 4
Geo F Trumper, one of the finest
traditional gentlemen’s barber/stylists
in London is offering a £10 product
voucher when spending over £100. See
advertisement, page 2
David Brown edges a four over the head of
Harry Bromfield. England v South Africa,
Lord’s, 1965.
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ClubColours.indd 1
4/3/10 16:22:53
MCC MAGAZINE
27
26
Collection News
pose which mirrors so many of the military and royal portraits
of the day.
The ‘cricketing’ portraits on display range from perhaps
the earliest known, a loan from the Priory Collection on the
South Stairs, opposite the World War 1 memorial board, to
those in the Old Library, such as the portraits of Brian Lara
and Inzamam-ul-Haq, commissioned within the last 5 years.
No detailed catalogue has been compiled for decades and
the frustrating lack of information begs far more detailed
research. However, this does have one great advantage of
encouraging visitors to look more closely at the images
themselves and the current re-hang seeks to underline certain
visual themes.
The generous loan of The Red Boy by John Opie will come to
an end this year but its comparison with Robert James’ Tossing
for Innings has proved a talking point. Both are regional English
artists (Opie from Cornwall and James from Nottingham) and
their paintings though compositionally quite different reflect
the growing interest in cricket between the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries. The visually striking Red Boy painted in
1793 presents cricket as a fashionable aristocratic pastime
whereas by the time James painted his picture of chimney
sweeps, the game had spread to all sections of society.
A study for Tossing for Innings in the adjacent group
continues to utilise childhood to highlight variations within
the game and its players. William Redmore Bigg’s portrait of
John Chandos Reade playing Trap Ball, an antecedent of cricket
highlighted in this year’s new exhibition, ( see page 9 and
contents page) shows young Reade surprised by the attention,
while the young Frederick Beauclerk, painted by William
Beechey, smiles sweetly at the viewer; scourge of MCC and
the church, he took to the cloth and reputedly preached from a
saddle in his pulpit on the rare occasion he was not gambling
away the Sabbath at Lord’s.
The central doorway to the Long Room bar is framed by
great figures from Anglo-Australian cricketing history and
provides a contrast in artistic styles from the 1950s to the
1990s: portraits of Donald Bradman, Keith Miller, Len Hutton
and Douglas Jardine hang alongside great figures from the
history of the club: Gubby Allen, Lord Harris, Pelham Warner
and Thomas Lord, whose benevolent visage belies his sharp
business practices that only now are coming to light through
the ordering and researching of the Eyre archive.
Continuing Tradition
The Pavilion at Lord’s has been re-hung. Adam Chadwick, Curator of
Collections, hopes the new arrangement will excite and fascinate
family hail from Leeds Castle in the great cricketing heartland
of Kent. The boy, while depicted as a young lord in a picture
that measures almost six feet tall, is not in any literal sense
‘buttoned up’ - his shirt is not properly tucked in and one of
his socks has slid down his leg. Cotes painted the picture for
the first Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in 1769 and was
making a specific statement with this image. The painting
personifies the ideas expressed by Jean Jacques Rousseau
that freedom through sport was how children would learn life’s
lessons. The slightly dishevelled dress is accentuated by the
Left Francis Cotes, Lewis Cage, The Young Cricketer, 1768, oil.
Above Archibald Stuart Wortley, W G Grace, 1890, oil. The heroic stance of
Lewis Cage has given way to the stylized pose of the amateur gentleman in
this portrait of the greatest cricketer of his age. ‘W G’ began his first-class
playing career in 1865 and played his last game in 1908, at the age of 60.
MCC MAGAZINE
all images courtesy mcc
The Pavilion with its intriguing variety of spaces over several
floors is the natural home to show the Club’s collection of oil
paintings. Since the refurbishmnet in 2004, various portraits,
including those of WG Grace and Sir Vivian Richards, have hung
in pride of place as one enters the north door. Now it’s the turn
of Francis Cotes’ portrait of Lewis Cage, the Club’s latest and
arguably finest art acquisition.
Once owned by Sir John Paul Getty, that great friend
and patron of the Club, this beautifully painted portrait, is an
appropriate painting to introduce the collections. Lewis Cage’s
This page (clockwise from top left) John Opie, The
Red Boy, portrait of master McDonough, holding a
cricket bat, 1793, oil. Private Collection, courtesy
Richard Green Gallery/Christie’s Images; Robert
James, Tossing for Innings, c1843, oil; English
School, Thomas Lord, c1810, oil; Brendan Kelly,
Inzamam-ul-Haq, 2009, oil; Justin Mortimer, Brian
Lara, 2005, oil; Edmund Nelson, C B Fry, 1950, oil;
Brendan Kelly, Sir Vivian Richards, 2006, oil; William
Beechey, Lord Frederick Beauclerk, c1789, oil.
MCC MAGAZINE
29
Collection News
Dwelling on all eight, one naturally muses on the challenge
posed in attaining portraits of players in their pomp (perhaps
yet to achieve true greatness) or hesitating, with regret, until
their dotage. Nowhere is this challenge visually more striking
than the portraits of the two great figures from the Golden Age
of cricket who survey the England’s team’s route through the
Long Room. Though team mates, WG Grace, commissioned
by the members, is `at bat’ at Lord’s, resplendent in MCC cap,
whereas CB Fry is caught in reflective old age, an echo of the
supreme athlete and outstanding all-round talent of his youth.
In refocusing the tradition of commissioning portraiture for
the collections, the Arts and Library Committee has decided
to commission future portraits as close to a player’s playing
days as possible. There is also a strong belief that a painted
portrait should capture or allude to a sitter’s character rather
than simply acting as a representation for that player within
the collection.
The most important landscape in the re-hang is by Albert
Chevallier-Tayler. It depicts a game between Lancashire and
Kent at Canterbury a few years before the First World War.
Chevallier-Tayler paints a beautiful, if breezy, afternoon. The
Kent left-arm spin bowler, Colin Blythe, is in his delivery
stride and bowling to a very attacking field. There is a sense of
expectancy, partly due to the shadow cast across the picture’s
foreground and partly due to the slip fielders who crouch in
anticipation. The viewer is left to imagine what happens next.
Blythe was among the many who died during the war and to
whom the museum at Lord’s was dedicated. The painting acts
as a visual foil to Francis Cotes’ portrait of Lewis Cage both as
a multiple portrait and as an accurate depiction of ground and
game. The painting had been on long-term loan to the Club
but recently it was sold at auction, only for the purchaser, the
Andrew Brownsword Art Foundation, to generously lend it back
to MCC. It now hangs for the first time in the Long Room.
guided tours of lord’s
To book visit: www.lords.org
Or call: 020 7616 8595/6
Above James Lloyd at work on his portrait of Rachael
Heyhoe-Flint. When complete this will be the first female
cricketing portrait to enter the Collection. Heyhoe-Flint
is being painted in The Committee Room at Lord’s with
The Media Centre in the background. Lloyd is anxious
to capture the sparkle of this remarkable cricketer who
was the first woman to captain England at Lord’s and the
first woman to join the MCC General Committee.
Below Albert Chevallier-Tayler, Kent v Lancashire
at Canterbury, 1906, oil, Andrew Brownsword Art
Foundation. The painting was commissioned by the Kent
Club to celebrate its first County Championship.
guided tours include:
The Long Room; The Museum (incl. The Ashes Urn);
Lord’s Media Centre; Real Tennis Court;
Players’ Dressing Rooms and Indoor School.
Lord’s Ground, London, NW8 8QN
Nearest station St. John’s Wood
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28
MCC MAGAZINE
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MCC MAGAZINE
31
30
Cricket Mattered
“
MCC MAGAZINE
end. Abbé says “no”. Despite
Kwells, girls were all but sick,
and while we were at Salisbury it
rained. Test Match and Ashes won
by England. We wanted to hear
John Arlott’s summing up at 10.15;
I reminded Abbé at 10.10 but he
let it go, not wishing to disturb the
other guests. In mentioning my
disappointment they all expressed
theirs. I was so miserable in bed
I couldn’t help sobbing and then
had a good cry. Felt better after
that.’
In the 1950s, cricket was the national game. David Kynaston’s talk
‘Before the Fall?’ revealed a very different sport to the one we know
today. Here we publish an extract
The first match I saw at Lord’s was between the Gentlemen of England and the visiting Australians in
1961. The world was beginning to change quite swiftly, including the world of cricket. The following
year the decision was taken to abolish the amateur/professional distinction which brought to an end
this annual fixture. 1963 saw the start of one-day cricket with the Gillette Cup, and as the ’60s went on
into the ’70s more and more overseas players came to play in England.
Once England won the World Cup in 1966, football superseded cricket and the game slipped
back into being the summer game and one increasingly encroached on at both ends of the season
by football. But back in the ’50s, before all this change happened, cricket was the national game and
never more so than in 1953 as England strove to win back the Ashes after 19 years. The first four Tests
had been drawn and it came to the decisive fifth Test at The Oval, a remarkable match in all sorts of
ways. The first day, Saturday, a full house at The Oval, was the very day that Margaret Thatcher gave
birth to twins and the cry went up ‘where’s Dennis?’ Well, no mobiles then of course, Dennis was
incommunicado at The Oval.
The key passage of play was on the third day, the Tuesday afternoon. One of the many people
around the country following events was the cricket-loving Yorkshireman, AA Thomson, a civil servant
by profession and a notable writer on the game: this is how he recalled events working from his office
somewhere in Whitehall: ‘Word came to me from a colleague at the far end of my building who in turn
was receiving signals from some honest workmen who had a television set in a factory on the opposite
side of the road. The progress of the battle was conveyed to me by telephone, an instrument I had not
previously admired, and though it started sedately, the tempo of the match perceptibly quickened.
There is nothing to excite the blood pressure in a score of 59 for 1 but - the telephone rang – “hello?”
“59 for 2, it’s Hole.” Pause and ‘ping’ “Hello? Who is it?” “60 for 3; it’s Harvey.” “Hello? Who is it?” “61
for 4, it’s Miller.” Short pause and ‘ping ping’ “Hello? Who is it now?” “61 for 5, now it’s Morris, they’re
on the run!” The feeling was incredible; outside and beyond human possibility: 61 for 5: Hassett, Hole,
Harvey, Miller and Morris had travelled the broad road. We have them. These wickets had fallen so
unbelievably quickly that I could no longer exercise normal patience. Five minutes passed, nothing
happened. Ten minutes. The telephone bell rang shrilly and I snatched the receiver with shaking hand.
“Who is it now?” “The Foreign Office,” replied a slightly irate voice, “if you have no objection”.’
Also following this tumultuous match were many people on holiday, for after all it was the middle
of August. One such family was the Haines’ family from Chingford in Essex. They were on holiday in
Boscombe. Judy kept a diary and both she and her husband, Abbé, followed cricket. They had two little
girls. On that Tuesday afternoon, Judy recorded in her diary: ‘Several wireless sets on beach and people
very friendly passing round the score. Abbé was suddenly missing from his deckchair; he had gone to
toilet and then, fascinated by somebody’s wireless, stayed.’ Well, at the end of the day England needed
only 94 to win with 9 wickets in hand, which they duly got amidst memorable scenes at The Oval.
But for Judy Haines it was the most bitter-sweet of days, and her diary entry is not only wonderfully
descriptive about the day itself, but also somehow emblematic of the ’50s in a broader sense - for
instance the pressure on one to behave in certain ways and the frustrations that could come from that.
Her diary continues: ‘I decided to go to Wimborne Rd, Bournemouth, to buy Mum the corsets she
had seen advertised. I suggested Abbé stay at home for the Test Match but he wanted to come. The
particular shop was miles up the road and a long way out of Bournemouth Town. Abbé was fed up. I
was annoyed as I had not wanted him to come. He had wanted to be back for the cricket commentary
at 11.30. When we regained Boscombe I suggested he go ahead. He and Ione chased off while Pamela
and I relaxed. We bought some embroidery for Ione and purple knitting for Pamela, and I felt better. We
are booked for coach ride to Salisbury. I suggested putting it off as Test Match is coming to a thrilling
***
Above John Arlott broadcasting
at Scarborough. Photograph F
Stanley Cheer
I would like to look at cricket
in the ’50s in a broad way: to
look at the sport not from the
perspective of the producers, the
cricketers themselves, but from
the consumer, the spectator, the
follower of the game. We know
a good deal about the cricketers
themselves, we know much less about the spectators and their experience. In order to evaluate a
particular cricketing era I have come up with ten criteria to see how cricket in the ’50s fares in relation
to these criteria.
My first criterion is aesthetic; the sensory aspect of watching cricket is somewhere near the core
pleasure to be derived from it. John Arlott in 1952 wrote, ‘There is beauty in the patterns and rhythms
of white flannelled players against the green grass background,’ and it’s not difficult to put together a
list of ways in which we have lost so much in the last 50 or 60 years: helmets, garish-coloured clothing,
umpires no longer in long coats, sponsors’ markings on the actual playing area, even at Lord’s. We’ve
also lost a sense of restraint on the part of the players themselves, with the continual noise and the
exaggerated celebrations.
My second criterion I’ve called meritocratic. In the ’50s, we had a two-class system of amateurs and
professionals; cricket was a society shot through by social class. Amateurs, who were not necessarily
worth their place in the team, quite often captained county teams and there was the tradition - though
it was happening less by this time - during the school summer holidays, of schoolmasters and others,
carefree and gung-ho, taking the place of professionals.
My third criterion I’ve called competitive: one-sided cricket is boring to watch, and the best Test
matches are the ones where there’s a balance between bat and ball. In the immediate post-war years
the bat was dominant; whereas by 1955, 77% of matches achieved results and the ball held sway.
Added to this were some pretty weak international teams who toured England, including India in
’52 and ’59 and New Zealand in ’58; there was also Surrey’s unprecedented dominance with seven
successive titles, and the general fielding standard was far from competitive.
My fourth criterion is craft, or technical accomplishment, and here it was John Arlott who,
particularly in his early post-war writings, brought out the notion of the cricketer as craftsman, as this
extract demonstrates: ‘The county cricket professional is a craftsman; the fast bowler alike with the spin
bowler, as the blacksmith is not less than the cabinet maker. The county pace bowler’s technique is a
triumph for conservation of energy against its maximum application at a strategic point. These men
are craftsmen working to a specific and logical end. You do not ask your thatcher to prove he is a good
thatcher by making the biggest thatch in the world when it is not necessary, nor by thatching a cottage
faster than a thatcher from the next county, you rather judge his skill by the economy, the decorative
quality, the soundness of his work.’ I would make three additional points. In the ’50s pitches were
mainly uncovered and required greater technical ability and variation from both batsman and bowler
to cope with the different conditions. Secondly, bats were much lighter than they are now. Thirdly,
there was no one-day cricket, which has, undoubtedly, coarsened technique, particularly batting.
MCC MAGAZINE
32
Events
MCC MAGAZINE
Above Test match at Lord’s in
the 1950s between England and
West Indies
COURTESY MCC
My fifth criterion is simply excitement. One wants to be entertained and, broadly speaking, the
verdict on the ’50s is negative, certainly judging by what contemporary critics were saying. It’s a
repetitive chorus of complaints about dull, unadventurous batting in particular. Neville Cardus in
1952: ‘The pressure of the spirit of the age hinders freedom and individuality; life in this country is
rationed; can we blame Blogs of Blankshire if in a four-hour innings he lets us know that his strokes are
rationed?’ In 1954, Wisden’s editor, Norman Preston, wrote: ‘A horrible new term has crept into cricket
– occupation of the crease’. In 1956, MCC set up a special committee to examine ways of increasing
cricket’s tempo and making it more attractive to spectators. The great West Indian writer and cricketlover C L R James asserted in 1957 that the game ‘has fallen very low. The reason is that it has become
professionalised and now has adopted the ideology and temper of the modern welfare state – safety
first, no risks; characteristic of modern bureaucracy.” My last example is from John Arlott’s journals of
the late ’50s and early ’60s. This extract laments the absence of leg spin bowling: ‘Your modern English
captain in these days of tight bowling and defensive fields, of bonus points and slavish in-swing, looks
askance at the man who might bowl a long hop and two full tosses in a single over which could cost
more runs that the in-swinger yields in half an hour. But once the shine has gone what would he have?
A wicket once in 50 minutes or, at little greater cost, once every quarter of an hour?’
My sixth criterion is personalities, terribly important in terms of enjoying cricket. Jack Hobbs’
verdict according to the 1952 edition of Wisden was that he found ‘more pleasure in watching a village
match than modern county cricket’ and ‘there are few personalities in the game today’. I wonder if this
is a fair assessment. After all, if you look at the England teams of the ’50s there’s Johnny Wardle, Denis
Compton, Godfrey Evans, Fred Trueman: all showmen with extrovert characters.
My seventh criterion is sportsmanship. It’s not much fun watching something that’s meant to be
sport, being played in a mean-spirited way. Was there sportsmanship in the ’50s? Certainly there was
an agreed code of conduct, including the batsman taking the fielder’s word over whether a catch had
been cleanly taken or not. There was also a convention in county cricket, which was then played over
three days rather than four, that the batting side did not go on past the first day, but at Kidderminster in
July 1956 Worcestershire decided to bat on into the second day. Yorkshire couldn’t get over it. Johnny
Wardle’s first over of the second morning contained six ballooning, unreachable bouncers in protest.
Worcestershire declared after about an hour and a half and a rattled Yorkshire lost by an innings.
On the question of walking: county pros as a rule didn’t walk unless the umpire raised his finger.
They took the view that sometimes decisions went against them and over a season these evened
themselves out. As for time-wasting, the 1956 MCC committee noted, ‘an increasing tendency on the
part of both the batting and fielding sides is to waste time’. There had been the infamous episode at the
fouth Test at Headingley in 1953 when, on the last afternoon, Trevor Bailey prevented Australia from
winning the match and thus retaining the Ashes by bowling slow overs to packed leg-side fields. If
England had lost the match there would not have been those happy scenes a week or two later at the
Oval when England regained the Ashes for the first time in 19 years. So, it’s a mixed picture in terms of
sportsmanship in the ’50s.
My eighth criterion is crowd behaviour: watching cricket is ruined if one is surrounded by
inconsiderate people. Lord’s is now pretty much the only Test Ground in England where one can be
reasonably sure there’s going to be civilised, considerate behaviour. I don’t think crowds in the ’50s
were wholly passive but there was a huge aura of respectability and also a lack of overt partisanship.
What has differentiated cricket from football crowds is cricket’s ability to applaud good play on both
sides.
My penultimate criterion I’ve called ‘mattering’: cricket doesn’t really matter but at that moment
when one’s watching, it does seem to matter. And there are five main reasons why cricket used to
‘matter’ more.
In the first place there was a relative lack of other leisure activities available. Secondly, cricket
was part of the unvarying national ritual; the cricket calendar was fixed. The tourists played their
first serious match at Worcester year in, year out. County matches started on the same day, either a
Saturday or a Wednesday. The Test at Lord’s always started around June 20, the Scarborough Festival
always rounded off the season. Thirdly, there were fewer Tests and each Test mattered. It mattered
greatly to the people who played them, it mattered to the people who watched them; in other words
less meant more.
My fourth reason I’ve called localism. There was still a wide spread of grounds within each county
where county cricket was played in the 1950s, which meant that these matches were a real local event.
I have taken the 1955 season, halfway through the decade, as an example. County cricket that year was
played on 72 grounds, included Romford, Brentwood, Llanelli, Newport, Gillingham, Dover, Hinkley,
Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Peterborough, Kettering, Frome, Yeovil, Dudley, Hull and Huddersfield. It would
be lovely to get back to those days.
My fifth reason why cricket mattered is also to do with localism: county cricketers tended to come
from the counties they represented, and this increased spectators’ sense of identity with the team.
Sussex, for instance, in 1955 included Jim Parks from Haywards Heath, Alan Oakman from Hastings,
George Cox from Horsham, Robin Marlar from Eastbourne.
None of those five reasons apply now. I think cumulatively they make quite a difference to the way
one feels about the game. My final criterion is coverage: cricket has always been a game that many
more people have followed via the media rather than being a spectator. Match reports in the papers
were much fuller then than they are now and more county matches were covered. On the other hand,
the analysis of Test matches now often comes from quite interesting, unexpected angles in a way
that one didn’t get then. The ’50s were Arlott’s heyday on the radio – but radio coverage today is still
very good. As for television, technically it’s now superb, even if the commentary can sometimes be
irritating. But perhaps the commentary was always a bit irritating, as this 1955 memo from the BBC
suggests: ‘I would be very reluctant to drop Peter West whom I consider in many ways to be the best of
our cricket commentators. He is considered a better summariser than Swanton, who annoys people by
his pomposity. He has a very considerable knowledge of the game, certainly much more than Johnston
and not much less than Swanton and above all he is far more producible than Swanton, and no less
so than Johnston. It may interest you to know that this year we have had many more complaints about
Johnston’s continued irrelevances, primarily from those interested in cricket, though I have no doubt
that the fringe viewer rather enjoys his quips.’
Should we be regretting what has happened to cricket since the ’50s? I think overall it comes out
pretty even – there’s good and bad in both eras and yet undoubtedly cricket in the ’50s had its own
charm. I would like to finish with another extract from Judy Haines’ diary. Whereas she’d had a bittersweet day on the last day of the Oval test in 1953, two years later she had a wholly sweet day. The family
enjoyed a car outing to Chelmsford over the August Bank Holiday to watch Essex play Worcestershire.
She writes: ‘Instead of lining up for a cup of tea, at my insistence we had 2/6d set tea - it was delicious.
Dainty sandwiches, bread and jam, delicious cakes, two pots of tea instead of watering down first lot.
Girls charged half. A lovely sunny day and we stayed till end of match - 7pm. Bought fish and chips at
Epping, so no cooking on arrival home. Opened tin of peaches. What a lovely day!’
David Kynaston’s talk ‘Before the Fall? reflections on cricket in England during the 1950s’ is part of
the Cricket History Society lecture programme hosted at Lord’s each year by the Curator’s Department.
MCC MAGAZINE
33
”
34
F
My Lord’s
The Duke of Richmond’s family has a long association
with cricket, one of his illustrious forebears helped draw
up the laws while another helped finance the first Lord’s
ground. David Rayvern Allen talks to his Grace
Goodwood is, of course, associated
inextricably with horse-racing and also,
in more recent times, motor-racing. But
cricket? ‘We don’t know exactly when
cricket started here, but we do know that
it was at least one hundred years before
horse-racing was established in 1802’. His
Grace, the 10th Duke of Richmond and
Gordon chuckled. We were sitting in the
drawing room of Molecomb House, his
magnificent residence overlooking gardens
and wooded parkland in the Goodwood
Estate. ‘We have a receipt for a barrel of
brandy in 1702. The 1st Duke decided to
award it to the winning team in a match
against Arundel during that year. Now,
whenever visiting teams come down here, I
make the point that they’re not going to get
a barrel of brandy – it’s too expensive!’
According to his distinguished
descendant, ‘the 1st Duke was a bit of a
free-spender’. His father was King Charles
II and his mother Louise de Keroualle,
Duchess of Portsmouth, who was the
monarch’s favourite mistress for some
fifteen years before his death in 1685. It
was, however, the 2nd Duke who lavished
attention on cricket. In 1727, he made an
indelible mark in the annals of the game
when organising two matches with Alan
Brodrick, later Lord Middleton, of Peper
Harow, near Godalming in Surrey. With
serious money likely to have been gambled
on the outcome and probably in order to
avoid potential disputes, the first –as far
as is known - codified laws or articles of
agreement were drawn up. During the
latter 1720s and early 1730s, the Duke
instigated a number of matches for his
MCC MAGAZINE
team with like-minded pioneers such as
Sir William Gage, Edwin Stead and Messrs
Andrews and Chambers. These games in
Sussex, Surrey, Kent and London were, in
effect, the precursor of county cricket.
‘We’ve played two matches in my
time, according to the 1727 rules and
customs using similar equipment and
wearing the same apparel’, remarked the
Duke. ‘In the first match, I played; in the
second I umpired. In the first game, I said
I’ll keep wicket. I ought never to have said
it, because in those days they played with
no pads and no gloves. I thought our team
‘
I said I’ll keep wicket.
I ought never to have
said it
’
needed a bit of bolstering, so I asked Peter
Graves, who was captain of Sussex for a
time, to turn out. Graves threw the ball in
just as if he were at Hove and there was I
with no gloves. I couldn’t write for a week.
Having played cricket at Eton, the
Duke and his brother were evacuated
to the USA and Canada in 1940, ‘just at
the time we thought Mr Hitler was going
to walk in. As a result, for the next two
years we played baseball rather than
cricket – it rather upset the development
of my cricket’. ‘Do you see more parallels
than diversity between the two games?’
I asked. ‘Well, first of all, I think baseball
is a good game – can’t say the same for
American football –bit of a bloodbath,
really – and in baseball the pitcher throws
the ball, it doesn’t bounce and the fielders
catch mostly with their gloved left hand
- the right hand is not usually gloved
for ease of throwing – and a home run
is the equivalent of a six. Yes, there are
similarities, but not very many’. ‘Of the two
games, which do you prefer?’ ‘Oh, cricket,
no doubt about it, there are far more
subtleties. Mind you, I’ve played and seen
a lot more cricket than baseball. After all, I
was President of Sussex for five years and
am now Patron and I’ve been a member of
MCC for no less than fifty years’.
It was a reminder that Charles
Lennox, 4th Duke of Richmond, together
with the Earl of Winchilsea, had given
encouragement and financial backing to
Thomas Lord in setting up the first Lord’s
Ground just north of what was then the
New Road, where Dorset Square and
Marylebone Station now stand. Alongside
being an extremely able cricketer and
scoring the first known century in
Scotland, the 4th Duke had a spectacular
and eventful career including high-profile
duels, fighting at Waterloo with Wellington
and fathering fourteen children in a fertile
marriage.
‘You know, my grandmother was a
keen cricketer’, continued the Duke. ‘She
played for the White Heather Club before
going with my grandfather to the Boer
War. The Club played against boys’ Prep
schools. My father and son never played
– more interested in wheeled vehicles. My
two grandsons though are very passable
cricketers. They come to Lord’s with me
and know everything that’s going on. Over
the years my family have had quite an
influence on the game of cricket.’
a full-day excursion to Cyrene,
ew places around the
one of North Africa’s great cities
Mediterranean can inspire
of antiquity. Continue to
the traveller as much as
Apollonia and see the impressive
Libya. Its Greek and Roman
marble columns of the Eastern
sites are simply breathtaking
Basilica.
A VOYAGE FROM CRETE ALONG THE COAST OF LIBYA
and beautifully illustrate the
Day 6 Benghazi & Ptolemais.
brilliance of their empires.
From Benghazi, Libya’s second
ABOARD THE MS ISLAND SKY
Perhaps the greatest site,
largest city and a major
WITH MARK CORBY & PAUL HARRIS
commercial port, travel to the
Leptis Magna, transports you
attractive area known as the
to another world and time
10th to 20th November 2010
Jebel Akhdar (Green Mountains)
and here it is easy to imagine
to visit the remains of ancient
daily life in Roman times.
Ptolemais. The most impressive
There can be little doubt
construction work here is
that a wonderfully
underground; beneath the
comfortable vessel such as
paving of the gymnasium are
the MS Island Sky is the ideal
great vaulted chambers.
way to see Libya. From
Day 7 At sea.
Day 8 Khoms & Leptis Magna.
Tobruk in the far east of the
This morning, call at Khoms on
country to Sabratha in the
Libya’s Tripolitanian coast.
extreme west, Libya’s
Nearby are the ruins of Leptis
extensive Mediterranean
Magna, one of the
coastline stretches for over
Mediterranean’s most
800 miles and by far the
compelling ancient sites.
most interesting sites are close to the shore
GREECE
Excellently preserved to the present day because
Athens
or indeed right on the sea. As we take our
•
of its burial under shifting sands, this glorious
M
passage through history, our guest
coastal city is a unique example of ancient town
ED
CRETE Heraklion
speakers and local guides will enhance our
Valletta I T E
•
planning.
R
MALTA
•• • Sitia
RA
knowledge of this epic land where once
NE
Day 9 Tripoli. Spend the day exploring Libya’s
A N Knossos
SEA
Cyrene
the legendary Ulysses travelled, Caesar
capital, focusing on the Medina, the medieval
Zuwara
Apollonia
Tripoli
Ptolemais
•• • Derna
Sabratha• • • •
walled town built on the site of the Roman
•
battled with the Berbers and his Roman
Leptis • Khoms
•Benghazi• Tobruk
settlement. Also tour the Jamahiriya Museum.
Magna
rivals, and Belisarius, the greatest of all
Day 10 Sabratha. From the port of Zuwara, drive
Byzantine generals, fought and ejected the
LIBYA
to nearby Sabratha which began life as a
Vandals.
Roman Africa
MS ISLAND SKY
The MS Island Sky offers exceptionally spacious
and well designed cabins. All cabins are in fact
suites with a sitting room area and some have
private balconies. Each suite affords considerable
comfort with good outside views, en-suite
bathrooms and excellent storage. With just over
100 fellow passengers, you can enjoy the
comfort and peace that only a smaller vessel can
provide. The spacious and finely decorated
public rooms include a lounge, elegant bar,
library and a single seating dining room. Outside
there is a sun deck, Jacuzzi, café and bar.
THE ITINERARY
Day 1 London to Heraklion. Fly by scheduled
flight via Athens. Upon arrival, transfer to the
MS Island Sky and embark.
Day 2 Heraklion, Crete. From our berth it is a
short distance to the Palace of Knossos,
legendary home of the Minotaur. Wander round
the site impressively excavated by Sir Arthur
Evans seeing some of the 1300 rooms adorned
with lively frescoes where King Minos held
court.
Day 3 Sitia, Crete. Sail in the early hours along
Crete’s northern coast to Sitia. Drive to the
Minoan palace at Malia and the excavated town
of Gournia.
Day 4 Tobruk, Libya. Our first call in Libya will
be Tobruk in the far east of the country close to
the Egyptian border. It was here that some of the
fiercest battles of the Second World War North
African Campaign took place. We will visit some
of the battle sites and the British War Cemetery.
Day 5 Derna, Cyrene & Apollonia. This
morning, the MS Island Sky docks in Derna (the
ancient Darnis) on Libya’s Cyrenaican coast. Take
020-7752 0000
www.noble-caledonia.co.uk
NOBLE
CALEDONIA
2 CHESTER CLOSE, BELGRAVIA, LONDON SW1X 7BE
Carthaginian trading post. Under the Romans the
city flourished and the impressive ruins including
temples, public baths, fountains and an excellent
museum are located by the sea.
Day 11 Malta to London. Disembark after
breakfast and transfer to the airport for the return
scheduled flight to London.
For bookings made before 30 June 2010
there is a £300 early booking discount.
Special offer prices per person based on
double occupancy start from £3295 (£3595)
for a standard forward suite to £5695
(£5995) for an owner’s balcony suite. Suites
for sole use from £4495 (£4795).
Brochure prices shown in brackets.
Price includes: Economy class scheduled air
travel, 10 nights aboard the MS Island Sky on full
board with house wine, beer or soft drinks with
lunch and dinner (alcoholic drinks not permitted
whilst ship is in Libyan waters), shore excursions,
services of a cruise director, tour manager, guest
speaker, gratuities to crew and whilst on shore
excursions, transfers, port taxes, airport taxes.
Not included: Travel insurance, visa.
N.B. Ports subject to change. All special offers are subject to availability. Our current booking conditions apply to all reservations (available on request).