Kings of Cricket

The name of Richard Daft, certainly in my lifetime, has never been one which has attracted very much in the way of attention. Daft was however a very fine cricketer and, at his peak, WG Grace apart, he was the finest batsman in England. Thirteen years younger than WG his legacy’s misfortune was that his best years came just before Test cricket began.

Born in 1835 Daft was a talented cricketer from an early age but he also enjoyed a stroke of great good fortune at the age of 19. An uncle on his mother’s side of the family, who it seems possible Daft never really knew, died in Scotland whilst on a business trip and, having no family of his own, shared his not insubstantial estate between his many nephews and nieces.

For a couple of years, as a single man, the young Daft was able to play as an amateur but whilst the income he derived from the trust fund set up by his late uncle was a reasonable amount it was certainly not excessive so, in 1859, he turned professional. In the main Daft turned out for Nottinghamshire, and captained the county between 1871 and 1880. He also appeared from time to time for the famous wandering side, the All England Eleven, and he appeared regularly for the Players against the Gentlemen and for the North against the South. 

Outside of cricket Daft was, contrary to the impression given by his name, nobody’s fool. In time he acquired three businesses, a brewery in Radcliffe near Nottingham, a sports outfitters in the city and he was also the licensee of the Trent Bridge Hotel. His First Class career ended, to all intents and purposes, at the end of the 1880 season. There was an occasional appearance after that and Daft continued to play a decent standard of cricket at a lower level, so much so that when Arthur Shrewsbury was injured in August 1891 the 55 year old Daft was persuaded to return. In the end he played three times, and 27 runs in four innings amply demonstrated that the recall had been a mistake.

By the 1890s Wisden had been established for more than a quarter of a century. Other cricket annuals had come and gone, and there were a number of books of instruction available. Less common were books of appreciation, although men like Fred Gale and James Pycroft had published more general cricketing books. There had been a couple of tour books and, half a century previously, John Nyren had produced his classic The Cricketers Of My Time, and William Denison had collected together a number of biographical essays in his Sketches of the Players.

Back in 1882 Cricket: A Weekly Record of the Game had launched, and contained interviews and reminiscences. Other magazines such as Bailey’s Magazine and Bell’s Life contained much cricketing material and, admittedly only for four years, The Cricket Field appeared in direct competition to Cricket: A Weekly Record of the Game. It is perhaps surprising in the circumstances that the first cricketing autobiography did not appear until 1891. Entitled Cricket, almost inevitably the book was largely an account of the life of WG Grace, albeit the great cricketer did not put pen to paper himself, the book being ghosted by William Methven Brownlee.

In his preface to Kings of Cricket Daft said that he had been asked to write a book for many years now, so it must be likely that the success of Grace’s book persuaded him to finish the project. Of those who assisted him his two sons were certainly involved. The elder, also Richard, played once for Nottinghamshire in 1886. Harry, three years younger, was more successful playing as many as 200 First Class matches, almost all of them for Notts between 1885 and 1899 without ever suggesting he had anything like the talent of his father. Harry also played professional football for ten years. The majority of his appearances on the football field were for Notts County, and he was good enough to be selected five times for England.

Did Daft have a ghost writer? He clearly had plenty of assistance in placing the book for publication from James Catton. Catton was a sports journalist who wrote under the pseudonym Tityrus and whilst he was primarily a football writer his titling his autobiography Wickets and Goals clearly marks out his interest in cricket as well. He was a successful editor of the Manchester based Athletic News but, oddly given his undoubted role in getting the book published, Catton is not mentioned anywhere in Kings of Cricket.

Another outsider who is worthy of a mention is Andrew Lang, who penned a lengthy introduction. A Scottish man of letters Lang, whose younger brother played briefly and with some success for Gloucestershire in the early 1870s, was a famous man at the time and obtaining his patronage was quite a coup for Daft. That introduction is a marvellous essay that has appeared in many collections of writing on the game and contains two of the great truisms of cricket. The first is; one beauty of cricket is that, if you cannot play at it, you can at least look on and talk very learnedly, and find fault with the captain, showing how you would order matters if you were consulted, and the second; There is no talk, none so witty and brilliant that is so good as cricket talk, when memory sharpens memory and the dead live again.

The first chapter in Kings of Cricket is Early Days. Daft gives something of himself here but it is not really autobiographical other than to put in context Daft’s memories of the cricketers he writes of, who include giants of the game such as William Clarke, George Parr, Fuller Pilch and Alfred Mynn.

The next three chapters look at Daft’s time with the All England Eleven, followed by a chapter on its southern rival, the United Eleven (normally referred to today as the United South of England Eleven). Again these chapters are less about Daft than they are about his teammates and opponents. In addition not all of the narrative is, by any means, about the game itself. A brother of George Parr, Sam, was clearly something of a practical joker and, to cite a couple of examples, Daft relates a story of an occasion when a dead mouse was secreted in William Caffyn’s hat, and another when an elaborate ruse resulted in Thomas Box, apparently a man very proud of his long locks, being practically shorn by a barber in one town the All England Eleven visited.

After a chapter that concentrates on the Gentlemen cricketers of his time Daft moves on to his time with Notts, which he treats in much the same way as he did his association with the All England Eleven. One incident that occurred in 1870, long forgotten until the tragic death of Philip Hughes in 2014, was the death of George Summers after being struck on the head in a match at Lord’s in 1870. It is a curiously matter of fact recollection, and rather odd that Daft makes no mention of his own well publicised walk to the crease, next man in after Summers’ accident, with a towel wrapped around his head for protection.

Following his look at the county game Daft includes a chapter on his one overseas tour, to the USA and Canada in 1879. Again showing his fondness for the camaraderie of the game Daft relates with some relish a tale that involved George Ulyett filling the socks of Yorkshire teammate Tom Emmett with snails when the team visited Niagara Falls.

From North America Daft takes a brief look at the cricket he played after his retirement and also devotes an interesting chapter to his ill fated recall in 1891. Having brought his own story up to date Daft then spends a couple of the lengthier chapters in the book considering the ways in which the game had developed over his half century of active involvement in it as well as looking at the players who had taken centre stage in the years leading up the book’s publication. Some of these of course are names that are, because they played in the Test cricket era, familiar to many today, men like Tom Hayward and George Lohmann.

Daft concludes Kings of Cricket with a chapter entitled On the Advantage of Cricket over Other Games followed by 17 pages of Hints on Cricket. It seems an odd thing to tag on to the end of such a book, but then Grace’s book, which emanated from the same publisher, JW Arrowsmith, contained a substantial instructional section, so one suspects that Daft was just following WG’s lead. That said the hints were also separately published as a small booklet, which is the only other contribution to the literature of the game bearing Daft’s name that was published in his lifetime.

As to the book itself the manuscript was sold by Catton to Tillotsons of Bolton for £325. According to Daft’s biographer in 2008 that was the equivalent of £17,000. Neil Jenkinson must have used a different table to those I found, which suggest that figure, then, should have been nearer £30,000. Tillotsons themselves produced a subscriber’s edition, signed and individually numbered on better quality paper and with a different binding. It is was meant to be an edition of 150, although higher numbers than that have been seen. Both editions contain as many as 70 illustrations (plus some line drawings of Daft in the Hints on Cricket section) of which, and this perhaps illustrates as well as anything the book’s emphasis, only three are of Daft himself.

Despite his successes in the business world and the fact that Kings of Cricket was a considerable critical and commercial success Daft’s life began to unwind as the last decade of Queen Victoria’s reign unfolded and in 1898 he was placed in the ignominious position of being left with no alternative but to petition for his own bankruptcy. The strain of those proceedings no doubt contributed to his death, two years later, at the age of 65.

After Kings of Cricket was published Daft continued to write down more reminiscences, perhaps intending at some point to produce a follow up. If he did then he died before completing the project, but years later his remaining notes and drafts came into the possession of the leading historian of the day, Frederick Ashley-Cooper, who gathered them together and edited them into a second book, A Cricketer’s Yarns, which was published by Chapman and Hall in 1926. It is similar in content to Kings of Cricket, and there is a chapter on practical jokes, in which Sam Parr again plays a starring role. A Cricketer’s Yarns is certainly a decent read, but it does lack the continuity of its predecessor and it is, perhaps, fair to conclude that Daft’s best material had already been used.

For those interested in reading the book a copy of Kings of Cricket is not hard to obtain in the twenty first century, something that can only reflect how well it sold on publication. The limited edition is expensive but there are always copies of the standard edition available and a patient purchaser should be able to get a good copy for less than £20 and indeed for that price there would appear to be a modern reprint. That is something which sound appealing to me, albeit I have to confess to never having seen a copy. A Cricketer’s Yarns is less frequently seen, and might therefore cost a little more or, if a copy were found with the rare dust jacket, a great deal more.

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Gerald Howat

Bad luck batsman, were the only words Gerald Howat ever spoke to me. Had I realised who he was at the time I would have had a great deal more to say to him after our game had finished. It was back in the 1980s and he would have been pushing 60, but he was still keeping wicket for Moreton Cricket Club in Oxfordshire, something he had done for many years, and it would be a few more years before he hung his gauntlets up (although he had not played regularly for some time before it, his final appearance came at the age of 77!).

At the time I was a bit more concerned about his son, Michael, whose bowling I was facing. Described on cricketarchive as medium fast double blue Michael Howat was, of course, far too quick for a club batsman of such modest ability as I and my innings against him lasted just two deliveries. The first would have bowled me if the stumps had had an extra coat of varnish, and the second pinned me as plumb in front as it is possible to get.

The problem with having been dismissed so quickly was that, naturally in the circumstances, looking at the scorebook was the last thing I needed or wanted to do, so I never picked up on the surname of ‘keeper and bowler. Had I done so then, at that stage already owning a couple of books with Howat’s name on them, I would certainly have taken the opportunity of speaking to him in the pub after the game.

Sadly for me however none of those members of my team who knew who Howat was bothered to enlighten me until our end of season tour a month or so later. I was to look in vain for the name Howat in the opposition ranks on the couple of subsequent occasions I played at Moreton. It was my bad luck that our fixtures then were scheduled for a time he was away.

Howat was born in Scotland in 1928, the son of an Episcopalian minister. I do not recall, from those three words Howat uttered within my earshot, any obvious accent although I dare say it may have been discernible. In any event Howat was educated at Trinity College in Glenalmond before reading history at Edinburgh University, by which time his passion for cricket was well established. He had, by all accounts, already shown some ability as a wicket-keeper and had the good fortune to be coached whilst at school by, amongst others, Learie Constantine.

After University it was, in the manner of the times, National Service for Howat and he opted for the Royal Air Force. His first gainful employment then took him out to the Caribbean where he worked as a teacher for an oil company, Trinidad Leaseholds. The storeman at the school where Howat taught was Sonny Ramadhin, and whilst he was employed there he renewed his acquaintance with Constantine, who was the company’s lawyer.

It was 1955 that Howat returned to the UK. A teaching career that began at Kelly College in Tavistock took him then to Culham College and then Radley College in Oxfordshire. He also did a research degree on the subject of the place of history in education and for a time was involved in publishing being, on a part time basis, the general editor of the historical division of Pergamon Press, a company that was part of the Robert Maxwell empire. For three years Howat was also a visiting professor at Western Kentucky University in the US.

As an academic writing came naturally to Howat and there were many papers and literary contributions in his field throughout his career in education. His first book however was on a different theme. Co-authored with his wife, Anne, who he had met at University and had become a consultant psychiatrist, the book was The Story of Health and was published in 1967. Other books on historical and education topics also appeared.

In 1985, still only 57, Howat would retire from education in order to concentrate on cricket and writing about the game. He had written his first cricket book some ten years previously, a biography of Constantine that won the Cricket Society Book of the Year award for 1975. Clearly Howat was in a good position to write on Constantine and was encouraged to do so by John Arlott. What is less clear is why Arlott suggested the project as it is clear that the pair had never met before the suggestion was made, so perhaps it was just the case that Arlott, believing correctly that a biography of Constantine was long overdue, did some research into likely candidates and discovered the links with Howat.

Constantine had died in 1971, and had not left behind any great cache of personal papers or correspondence. That said he had written a number of books and had featured widely in the news throughout his life. Howat had access to his daughter and brother as well as many who had known him. He spent a good deal of time in Nelson where Constantine had first made his name as a professional in the Lancashire League, and most valuable of all came across a substantial volume of material at the BBC, who had retained many recordings of Constantine broadcasts.

Subsequent to Howat’s there have been two more biographies of Constantine, and Harry Pearson’s Connie is a fine book, but for anyone interested in Constantine’s many and varied achievements after he left the game of cricket Howat’s book remains the most comprehensive account of a remarkable life.

One interesting aside on the book is the reaction to it of CLR James. The man who wrote the acclaimed Beyond a Boundary and who, in 1933, had “written” Constantine’s autobiography felt that Howat had misrepresented the relationship between the two men. Despite that criticism he still felt able to describe the book as not merely a good but a valuable book, and was later to invite Howat to write his biography. That one was an invitation that Howat decided not to accept.

There were two books from Howat in 1980 the first of which combined his passion for cricket with his skills as a historian. Village Cricket was, as the title suggests, a history of how cricket was played in English villages from the game’s earliest incarnations up to date. There was, naturally in light of Howat’s origins, a chapter on Scottish villages  as well.

The Constantine biography was published by George Allen and Unwin and Village Cricket by David and Charles. The second book of 1980 was a much more homespun affair, effectively self-published by the North Moreton Press. Cricketer Militant is an unpretentious paperback biography of Jack Parsons.

Far from a household name now or then Parsons remains an interesting character. He played as a professional for Warwickshire between 1910 and 1914 before joining the Army where he earned a Military Cross for gallantry. He remained in the Army until 1923, playing as an amateur as Captain JH Parsons. He then joined the professional ranks for another six years until, having been ordained in 1929, he reverted to his amateur status as Canon JH Parsons until, at 44 he retired from the game.

A good batsman who might well have played for England in different circumstances Parsons’ life was an eventful one and, although he was in his late eighties when Howat started work, was still around to assist his biographer. The book is well worth seeking out.

Four years later Howat returned to a major publisher, once more George Allen and Unwin, for a biography of Walter Hammond. In the years after the Second World War Hammond had lent his name to a number of books and in a cricketing sense had left an indelible imprint on English cricket and in 1962 Ronald Mason had written his biography. Fine book that Mason’s was it had dealt almost exclusively with on field matters so a second look at Hammond’s life was fully justified.

Howat did a good job with Hammond, interviewing or corresponding with many of his subject’s contemporaries both cricketing and from outside the game, and from the UK and overseas. He also took the time to travel to South Africa, to where Hammond had emigrated in 1951, and interviewed his widow and daughter. The book was well received and, unlike Mason’s effort, made a serious attempt at unravelling the complexities of the man, a job that was finished just over a decade later in David Foot’s definitive Hammond biography, Wally Hammond – The Reasons Why.

The first post retirement project for Howat was one, that for me at least, remains his best book. Despite substantial volume of writing from the man himself ‘Plum’ Warner had not previously been the subject of a full biography and Plum Warner certainly filled a gap in the literature of the game. The fact that no one else has attempted the task since is telling. As with his Hammond book Howat spoke to many who had known Warner and, most importantly, the family gave Howat access to  Warner’s personal correspondence and it was that that interests historians the most, vividly illustrating as it does the depth of the despair that Warner felt during the ‘Bodyline’ series and the extent of his personal animus for Douglas Jardine that developed as the tour progressed.

The Warner biography was reviewed by two of the bigger names in cricket writing, by EW ‘Jim’ Swanton in The Cricketer and by David Frith in Wisden Cricket Monthly. Swanton described Howat’s writing as competent and professional but did not give the impression of being particularly enamoured of the book. Frith was much more enthusiastic, describing Howat as a skilful biographer and his book as absorbing. As would be expected from the man who would in time write the definitive book on the ‘Bodyline’ series Frith was, unsurprisingly, particularly enthused by the contemporary correspondence.

The next, and as it turned out last, biography from Howat was Len Hutton – The Biography, which appeared at the same time as its subject celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his record breaking Ashes 364 in 1938. Four years earlier, with the assistance of Alex Bannister, Hutton had written one of the better cricketing autobiographies but he was keen to have a biography written and fully co-operated with Howat. The book is not a hagiography although as one reviewer rather diplomatically put it it is a sympathetic portrait. That said whilst Hutton might have played the game with typical Yorkshire grit and a burning desire to win, he was always a charming man.

In retirement Howat took on a number of writing tasks, many on the subject of schools cricket. He reported on that for the Daily Telegraph and, for a number of years contributed the schools section to Wisden. He also wrote regularly for The Cricketer and, if not quite with the same frequency, for Wisden Cricket Monthly and the Journal of the Cricket Society. His penultimate publication, Cricket Medley, appeared in 1993 and was an anthology of his best work, primarily from those sources, but from one or two others as well.

His oeuvre clearly marks Howat out as an aficionado of the inter war years and his 1989 book, Cricket’s Second Golden Age, demonstrates his passion for that era. It is unlikely that too many reading this will not know a good deal about that period and there are no ground breaking revelations in a book that, by looking at cricket the world over for a twenty year period does perhaps spread itself a little too thinly. On the other hand for those new to cricket history it is an excellent introduction to a fascinating era.

And that, so it seemed, was that. Howat was not a man with a fondness for modern technology and that seemingly contributed to his decision to stop writing books. That said Howat was not lost to us and he did pop up in 2001, on the face of it well outside what might have been expected to be his comfort zone. In conjunction with the MCC, bookseller John McKenzie published Vernon Royle’s diary of the 1878/79 tour to Australia, and in the same volume include the reports and scorecards of the tour that had appeared in Wisden 1880. Howat contributed an excellent and detailed introduction which, if truth be told, is a good deal more readable than the rest of the book.

Finally, and perhaps unexpectedly, in 2006 Howat produced an autobiography, Cricket All My Life. In truth the book is more of an anthology of other writings and those form the bulk of the content. But that series of chapters is bookended at the front by the story of Howat’s life up to his retirement, and at the back by an account of his later years. Sadly he did not live for too long after the book’s release and, at the age of 79, died the following year.

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CW Games & CW Forum Arcade – End of Life

As many of you may already be aware, all the modern browsers are discontinuing support for Flash player towards the end of 2020.

The effect of this on CricketWeb is that the following functions of the site will no longer work and will be decommissioned when this occurs:

• Forum Arcade
• CW Cricket
• CW Cricket Quiz
• CW Cricket Hangman
• CW Cricket Memory
• CW Cricket Crosswords

This marks a sad end to the CW Cricket software that had a project team of 18 people across CricketWeb and our friends at PlanetCricket and was over a year in the making. CW Cricket has had 1,967,415 games played to date since its launch in 2009 and many tens of thousands of the other games played also.

Enjoy these games while you still can and help CW Cricket go out with over 2 million games played! 

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Jim Kilburn

Neville Cardus died in 1973 and, the best part of half a century on, his name is instantly recognisable. Such is his appeal that his life has inspired a couple of books in recent years, firstly Christopher O’Brien’s Cardus Uncovered, now in its second edition, and then last year Duncan Hamilton’s The Great Romantic, a new biography of an iconic figure.

A writer whose cause Cardus championed, Yorkshireman Jim Kilburn was viewed, certainly when I was a youngster back in the 1970s and 1980s, with almost the same level of reverence. Like Cardus Kilburn has also had the Hamilton treatment, albeit the 2007 published Sweet Summers was primarily an anthology rather than a biography per se. Nonetheless whilst that one received the acclaim it was due it did not succeed in bringing Kilburn a new audience in the way that I suspect The Great Romantic has done for Cardus.

There are certainly differences between Kilburn and Cardus. Whilst Cardus was very much a Lancastrian he, spending his later life in Australia and London, took more of a world view than Kilburn who, for his entire journalistic career, which ended in 1976, was never tempted beyond his position at the Yorkshire Post. His style of writing was very different as well, lacking the lyrical style of his Mancunian counterpart’s more florid prose. It is probably also worth making the point that, unlike Cardus who certainly does have and always has had his detractors, it is impossible to find any negative comments about Kilburn.

Born in Sheffield in 1909 Kilburn’s father played cricket in the hard school of the Bradford League. Kilburn himself was to appear in the same arena but his early playing career was for Barnsley in the Yorkshire Council. A very tall man, well over six feet in height, he bowled quickish offbreaks. At  Sheffield University in 1930 he assisted their eleven to its first ever UAU Championship and took a nine wicket haul against Liverpool so he was clearly a more than useful cricketer. One suspects that had he come from the south of England invitations to appear for his county as an amateur would have been received.

As it was after a grammar school education in Barnsley Kilburn secured a degree in economics and then spent three years as a schoolmaster in Harrogate. Always a keen writer he wrote plays for the school’s dramatic society and had some sketches and articles published in local newspapers. As a consequence the level of interest shown by the Yorkshire Post was such that when, at the end of his period of teaching he travelled to Finland he was invited to submit articles on his travels for publication.

When the 25 year old Kilburn returned to Yorkshire in the summer of 1934 he found the editor of the Yorkshire Post sufficiently impressed with his work to offer a three month trial as the paper’s cricket correspondent. Kilburn had some big shoes to fill. His predecessor, Alfred Pullin (‘Old Ebor’), had been a respected figure for many years. Pullin had retired in 1931 but had continued to write for the paper as a freelance until he collapsed and died of a heart attack on his way to the Lord’s Test in 1934.

One of Kilburn’s earliest assignments was the ‘Roses’ match in that season of 1934 against Lancashire at Bramall Lane in Sheffield. Sharing a press box with Cardus the man who by then had already acquired his lofty reputation was so impressed with his young colleague that he felt compelled to write to his editor in effusive terms. A permanent appointment swiftly followed together with a doubling of the Kilburn salary. He even, unusually for the time and certainly for the Yorkshire Post, was allowed to write under his own name rather than having to use a soubriquet.

Unusually amongst cricket correspondents Kilburn was universally popular with the players that he wrote about. No doubt his pleasant and straightforward but businesslike manner assisted him in that, as did his thorough understanding of the technical aspects of the game. Above all however was his refusal to write about anything other than the cricket that he saw on field. Anyone could take Kilburn into their confidence knowing that nothing would be disclosed.

There is a well known story that illustrates Kilburn’s attitude which relates to a match at Headingley when a message was received at the Yorkshire Post to say that his copy would be delayed. Somewhat perplexed by this departure from his usual reliability the office then contacted Kilburn to find out the reason and were told that the grandstand was on fire. Understandably Kilburn was asked whether he had contacted the news desk with this story, and his reaction was a blunt I am here to report cricket, not fires.

So what of Kilburn’s writing? He was at his best and most perceptive when writing about the players themselves and, of course, coming from Yorkshire, he had a rich variety of characters with which to deal. There was the immaculately turned out and consummate professional Herbert Sutcliffe, of whom Kilburn wrote; To watch one of Sutcliffe’s innings is to have complete understanding of his power. He always seemed to me rather to hurry to the wicket, everlastingly anxious to be batting and eager to test the quality of a bat which looks brand new every time he opens an innings. Nine times out of ten the first ball will be outside the off stump, and just so often will Sutcliffe step across, bring his feet together with military precision, lift that beautiful bat high out of harm’s way and gaze past point as the ball thuds into the wicketkeeper’s gloves. The padding up announces as clearly as spoken words “my dear bowler, you are wasting your time. I am proposing to make a century today”

He also had one of the finest fast bowlers of them all appear in Yorkshire just after the war, and of the chaos that ‘Fiery Fred’ caused amongst the Indian batting in 1952 he wrote; Trueman did not bat in the (England) second innings. Other business was in hand for him, beginning at 12:30 in nine overs he tore the frail Indian innings to shreds as a tiger would devastate a cage of canvas. He bowled as fast as any man has bowled at Old Trafford these 20 years and more, hurling himself into splendid and thrilling action with the allies of a following wind, a lively pitch, and indifferent light.

And Kilburn could write superbly of the lesser players as well and his description of all-rounder Emmott Robinson is as compelling as anything written by Cardus, who of course invented Robinson. Kilburn described him as; the most completely Yorkshire character – virtues, failings, appearance and all – ever to play for the county, and had he never taken a wicket or made a run or held a catch, he would have been an important factor in psychological warfare. As to Robinson’s bowling Kilburn conjures that up with; he was a new ball bowler of considerable potency, and through the 1920s his shambling run up, prefaced by a little kick off as though he was starting a motorcycle, marked daily onslaught upon the enemy’s opening batsmen.

But a man didn’t have to hail from the Broadacres for Kilburn’s pen to have his measure, as his summary of the ‘Notts Express’, Harold Larwood, makes clear; It is in the matter of accuracy that Larwood is without peer amongst fast bowlers. Actual speed of one man as against another must always remain a matter of argument, but of Larwood’s astonishing control of length and direction there can never be two opinions. Herein is Larwood’s greatest attribute, for without accompanying control mere pace has little terror for batsman with any pretensions of class on wickets that are mostly made for their liking. It is because Larwood is a master of his pace and does not use it blindly in sheer exuberance of spirit that he has known such high and such prolonged success. He rarely gives a batsman peace, for even at the times of his most ferocious attack, or when the inward fire is waning, a loose ball is an unexpected event.

Quite rightly Kilburn’s reputation is founded on the material he produced year in and year out for the Yorkshire Post, but there were a few books along the way as well. In truth Hamilton’s anthology, thoughtfully compiled and bookended by an excellent biographical essay and a collection of testimonials from the great and the good is probably the best place for anyone interested in reading the best of Kilburn to start but for a book a thing of beauty, very nicely designed as Sweet Summers is it cannot compete with Kilburn’s first book, In Search of Cricket, published in 1937 and worth buying for its dust jacket alone.

In Search of Cricket was itself nothing more than a collection essays, in the main culled from Kilburn’s columns in the Yorkshire Post, a number of which do appear in Sweet Summers. It was followed a year later by In Search of Rugby Union, a similar collection (albeit with nothing like so attractive a jacket) and, as far as I know, the only book on the oval ball game that Kilburn wrote.

There were no books from Kilburn during the Second World War but a number afterwards. He was also one of the many journalists who accompanied the England team to Australia for the first post war Ashes series in 1946/47 and, his great friend and fellow Yorkshireman Hutton leading them he went again in 1954/55. Kilburn did not contribute to the glut of books that appeared on wither tour, but did write Cricket Decade in 1956, a book examining international cricket in the ten years since peace had returned.

Kilburn also wrote a small book on the subject of the Scarborough Festival. There were two modest histories of the Yorkshire club, and one much more substantial volume, published in 1949, which followed on from previous books by RS Holmes and Pullin. There was never a biography of anyone else, although he did write a substantial booklet in 1951 on the subject of Hutton, which ran to a second edition. There was also a book, written with former England and Yorkshire captain Norman Yardley, on the subject of cricket grounds.

One can only assume that Kilburn never had the desire to write up anyone’s life, and he would surely have had the members of the great Yorkshire teams that he saw keen to engage him as a ghost had he been that way inclined. That he had the necessary skills to write that sort of book was made clear in 1972 when his autobiography appeared. Thanks to Cricket was an engaging and easy to read memoir that was the Cricket Society Book of the Year in 1972. Three years later Overthows, another dip into the Kilburn memory banks, was an equally satisfying book. Sadly however that was to be it. In 1976 Kilburn retired from the Yorkshire Post, which might have given him the opportunity to give us more but unfortunately his eyesight rapidly deteriorated, so that was that. At least he was, despite his handicap, still able to go matches and, in the words of his obituary in Wisden in its 1994 edition, he remained an upright, dignified man until he died. 

For a final few words about Kilburn with which to close I thought I would cast my eyes around for someone still with us who shared a press box with him which, realistically , is either David Frith or John Woodcock, or both. In the case of both Hamilton did the hard work for me. Woodcock began the tribute he contributed to Sweet Summers with Jim Kilburn wrote as he lived – with disciplined, somewhat austere urbanity. He was no more likely to construct an untidy sentence than to raise his voice. Indeed of all one’s colleagues in the cricket press box over many years he was the most imperturbable, and no one’s writing was more clearly a reflection of his character.

And I will go to the other end of Frith’s tribute, as he concluded with; As I look around me now in the so called ‘media centres’, with the predominantly history-allergic writers and their mass of electronic gadgetry, I do sometimes picture the reassuring figure of JMK with his solemn, shrewd gaze, his imposing nose and, of course, that thick nibbed pen which he used to put to such charming use.

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ECB Tasked By the UK Government to Lead the Study on the Viability of ‘Bio-Secure’ Sport

The government of the United Kingdom has instructed the ECB to take the lead in studying the possibility of playing games in an environment that is bio secure.

It is almost a consensus that the broadcast deals that provide the money that sustain the majority of the top flight sporting events can only be fulfilled if the remaining games for the season are completed, even if it means taking them behind closed doors. Because of that, the ECB has been instructed by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to study the viability of this option for all high profile sports including football, so as to share and implement it according to the results of the research. However, it is not all doom and gloom because even if this is the case, as sports fans we will still be able to bet on the fixtures and watch them. Nowadays you can watch live cricket on most betting websites through their streaming services. Here you can find some reliable UK options where you can sign up for free.

The notion out there is that Steve Elworthy’s technical know-how and experience in managing complex and large scale events (he organized the 2019 world cup and many others), plus the impeccable integrity of ECB’s Chief Medical Officer, Dr Nick Peirce are the pointers that led the DCMS to put their trust in the ECB and task them to study the matter critically and revert to the body in good time.

This announcement is coming just after Tom Harrison; the chief executive officer of ECB, gave some hints that holding an international cricket tournament later this year can only be possible in a bio-secure environment. Having that in mind, Harrison pointed to the fact that shelving of the previous schedules and match allocations is inevitable. This is because the international schedule must be held in the most minimum number of centres possible.

According to Harrison, that task before the ECB as apportioned by the DCMS covers rugby, tennis, horse racing, and football. Different sporting activities have been interacting in the area of health in the bid to ensure the safety of players. He pointed out that he was in a conference call with the RFU and FA chairmen previously, and it all centred on how to work together and share information between each other. He also said that he will talk to the Premier League about the same subject later, because the challenge cuts across all sports and divisions, and decisions must be taken as a single sector.

Whatever decision that the ECB reaches at the end, the government must approve them before the governing body will signal the resumption of play. The ECB hopes that the seeking of approvals at the dying minute that is normally occasioned by delays would be avoided by all bodies involved agreeing on a particular decision at the same time by partnering together from the onset.

The notion is that to complete their international fixtures, England will use just one or two grounds. The chosen grounds have not been concluded on, but with the huge hotels situated around some centres, like the Emirates around the Old Trafford, and the Ageas Bowl around the Southampton stadium, they appear to be the best two candidates. Some other grounds like the Lord’s and New Road also have large and small hotels respectively. When fewer grounds are used, it would be easier to keep it virus free and save a lot of costs.

He went ahead to say that venue allocation must be given a second thought because of the possibility of playing indoors. The entire understanding of hosting games will be altered because of lack of match day revenue. So, the concepts of offering these games to everyone in England and giving viewers the chance to see England in their backyard are not overtaken by the need to stay safe and save lives.

So, venues with the appropriate facilities to deliver on the mentioned conditions will be the top contenders to host the remaining games. But the body will have to agree with the government on the primary conditions to look for. They are trying to ensure that the system they will come up with would be approved by the government and medical personnel. But to come up with such a bio secure environment, a lot of resources would have to go into it.

The focus is to fix matches in neutral venues and execute them there. They also have to decide the number of centres that are necessary for the international fixtures and the centres that qualify for that. To make things more complicated, the multi day formats entail that the preparation of pitches would be a regular thing.

Things are also made complex in the domestic fixtures, in the sense that there are multiple teams involved. Because of these, there is huge work to be done if playing indoors is to become a reality. He also assured that they are already on it, even though much work is still needed. To put things in proper perspective, Harrison emphasized that they have the urge to deliver some domestic cricket games this season.

He went ahead to say that the same criteria to decide on the safety of international cricket are also used for the domestic type. Because of this, it’s looking more like domestic cricket will not happen in 2020, while the recreational cricket seems even more farfetched.

Now, the issue is not to have a measure for local cricket and a different one for international cricket according to Harrison. The overriding thing is the measure to keep people out of harm’s way whether they are men or women cricketers and whether in the domestic or international sphere. Moving from the recreational to the professional cricket levels, the cost becomes difficult to determine. The debate on the cost implication has to be completed before anything else.

That the UK is relatively doing lower tests is also a problem to sports in the country. While the government is planning on a hugely improved testing capacity, the people to prioritize now are the health workers and their family members. So, if by any means, there are more important areas in need of resources like it is for health workers and their family, it will be insensitive to plead for such resources to be diverted to sports.

The meaning of this is that everybody should understand that it is not possible to start testing privileged athletes or other people that work in the field of sports, even when vulnerable people and health workers are still facing a national health crisis. For Harrison, they will be expecting the government to inform them when it will be possible. But for now, it is yet unclear. They have no intention to lobby for that, they are only working with the government.

For Harrison, the remaining fixtures might still be fulfilled with the 1st July date set by the FA for return of football. But if it’s pushed back further, then games have to be cancelled and not postponed.

He had stated before that £300m loss will be experienced by cricket in England if games are not played this year, accepting that the impact of the current situation is already very bad, even if all games are completed successfully.

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Roy Webber

There have been statisticians around the game ever since cricket began, and the records the ancients left are still used today. But there can be no doubt but that in recent years the use of and analysis of the numbers our great game generates has vastly increased, and in the 21st century there are a number of people who, one way or another, earn their living from stats. All of them owe at least a nod back to Roy Webber a man who, if he certainly didn’t invent cricket statistics, certainly brought them into the mainstream.

Born in 1914 in Brighton Webber had already come under cricket’s spell when, as a twelve year old schoolboy, he was at the Oval Test in 1926 when England finally regained the Ashes for the first time since before the Great War. He must have had some latent talent and ability for the statistical work that was to be his legacy as he spent the 1930s employed in accountancy before joining RAF on the outbreak of the Second World War.

The hostilities over Webber decided to make his living from cricket. He secured employment with the BBC as their scorer and he was in at the start of what is now the Cricket Society (then the Society of Cricket Statisticians). That group was never intended to be a business and at the same time Webber began the Cricket Book Society, the purpose of which was to produce monthly booklets on a variety of cricketing subjects and, in doing so, to generate an income for him as proprietor.

There was a falling out between Webber and what became the Cricket Society over the cost of the production of its first journal, a dispute that ended up in court with Webber being successful. His cessation of any involvement in that Society enable him to concentrate on his own, but that lasted for less than three years, Webber seemingly at no point getting remotely close to the 500 members he claimed to need to cover costs.

The booklets issued by Webber’s society do appear from time and are never expensive, nor are the selections of them that were bound together as Cricket Omnibus. The quality is variable. Webber himself produced some reasonable statistical offerings, and Gerald Brodribb some typically entertaining work. There was some rubbish however, most notably the first one of all, a concise history of the game which was riddled with errors. For some reason Webber wrote it under a pseudonym, a fact that did not emerge for many years.

The Cricket Book Society also published two rather more extensive books, one limited edition biographical sketch of the brothers Grace and the other a statistical record of the doings of Glamorgan since the Welsh county’s elevation to the Championship in 1921. The former was the work of AG Powell and S Canynge Caple, the latter of Kevin Arnott and Webber himself. The Society lasted long enough for a second edition of the Glamorgan book to appear to mark the Welsh club’s unexpected Championship title in 1948, but no longer.

Irving Rosenwater described Webber, with some affection, as; never a scholar, never a profound thinker, he nevertheless catered for a mass audience that in a way he was partially responsible in shaping. Another job that Webber had was to produce the statistics for the Playfair Annual that was launched in 1948 and sold very well and which, in a different format, is still with us today. With his work for the BBC and Playfair Webber was much more ‘visible’ to many more people than any previous statistician had ever been.

In 1951, thanks to Playfair, Webber’s magnum opus appeared. The Playfair Book of Cricket Records, which Webber claimed to have been working on for all of his adult life, was 320 pages of tables, lists and other statistics. The book was not free of error, but then no book that was that ambitious could have been. It was well received and reprinted four times. It appeared once more, ten years later in 1961 without the ‘Playfair’ tag, and on that occasion ran to 480 pages. The biggest problem the book had, and the second edition did not resolve it, was failing to adequately deal with the sometimes vexed issue of whether or not certain fixtures merited First Class status.

In 1952 Who’s Who in World Cricket appeared. There had been two previous attempts at such a book, one that appeared annually between 1909 and 1913 and was edited by DV Dorey, and a one off in 1934 from Canynge Caple. Within its 192 pages Webber’s book contained 750 potted biographies of not only current players, but umpires, journalists and officials as well. As far as the players were concerned the biographies built on those Webber had prepared for the Playfair Annual. The book did not, in the manner of the Dorey and indeed the current Who’s Who that is now in its 25th edition, become an annual, but there was a revised version published in 1954.

Suitably encouraged by sales of the Book of Cricket Records in 1952 and 1953 Playfair published two volumes of the Playfair Book of Test Cricket. Volume one was 399 pages long and included the scorecard and a brief description of every Test played between 1877 and 1939. Volume two was slimmer, 256 pages, and brought the story up to date as well as including an extensive collection of Test records as well as a select bibliography of the format.

In 1957 another Webber book appeared, The County Cricket Championship. This purported to produce a definitive list of county champions going back to 1873. The County Championship as we know it was put on a formal footing in 1890 and that is the date that is now generally accepted as its first year. What is also universally accepted is that prior to that date there was press and public interest in the concept of a ‘Champion County’, and various writers have attempted to produce lists of champions going back as far as 1864.

To the delight of Sussex supporters everywhere Webber’s research caused him to assert that in 1875, rather than Nottinghamshire being outright champions, Sussex had shared the title with them and also with Lancashire. The issue then came up in a television quiz show in 1958. A twelve year old contestant was asked how many times Sussex had been winners and his Wisden checked answer of ‘Never’ was accepted by the quizmaster. In time that explanation became conflated into something that might be described as a conspiracy theory, and it took an exchange of emails in 2015 between Stephen Chalke and the by then 69 years old and living in Australia successful contestant to get to the somewhat more prosaic truth.

The minutiae matters little however because Webber was furious that his book had been overlooked. Wisden were then unhappy as well given that by implication Webber had said the Almanack was wrong. The Almanack’s editor, Norman Preston, looked to Rowland Bowen to clear up the mess. With his usual thoroughness and attention to detail Bowen had no difficulty in dismantling the Webber theory and seems to have been incensed at what he considered to be the cursory manner in which Webber had tackled his subject. It was one of the rare occasions when, perhaps subject to the addition of a few expletives, Bowen would doubtless have agreed with one of Rosenwater’s assessments, that which I quoted above.

In 1960 the Phoenix History of Cricket appeared. In 110,000 words Webber told the story of the game although this was not really a complete history. Webber’s historical knowledge was never great and this book was more of a whistlestop tour through the game’s early years, the bulk of the material covering more recent events. An unnamed reviewer in the Times Literary Supplement was witheringly critical of the book, and was presumably Bowen. Other reviewers were kinder, but Webber’s history is not regarded as one of the classics of the genre.

In addition to all his other activities Webber also found time to contribute to The Cricketer throughout the 1950s before, in 1960, being the joint editor, with Gordon Ross, of the first serious competition the magazine had ever had. Playfair Cricket Monthly dragged the concept of a cricket magazine into the modern era and, before too long, took The Cricketer with it. Ultimately however there wasn’t a sufficient market to support both, and in 1973 the two merged.

Did Webber dabble in anything other than cricket? The answer to that is certainly yes, at one stage dipping his toe into the world of professional gambling. It is perhaps not surprising that a statistician should try and find a way of beating the roulette wheel, but rather more unusual that one should think he had succeeded. Webber’s ‘system’ relied not on the spectacular but on making modest gains consistently. For a couple of weeks in Monte Carlo in 1958 he succeeded, but in the end, as it almost always does, the house won.

Roy Webber was at a meeting with the publishers of Playfair Cricket Monthly on 14 November 1962. Later that day however he collapsed as a result of a massive heart attack and died at St Bartholomew’s Hospital shortly afterwards. He was only 48, but had been carrying a great deal of extra weight for many years as well as the burden of an enormous workload.

Webber was survived by two children of his first marriage and his second wife. That lady, Daphne, must have been almost as keen on cricket as Webber was as she was responsible for preparing some of the earliest scoring charts. In time she married another cricket statistician, Michael Fordham, albeit one not so well known as Webber.

As noted Webber was no great historian or analyst of the way the game was played but he nonetheless influenced the way the cricket loving public of his time viewed the sport. Whilst I suspect that the widespread fascination with cricket statistics that we now have would have developed anyway there can be no doubt but that it was the 1950s and the work of Roy Webber that gave huge impetus to that particular area of fascination for researchers.

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Conrad Hunte

Conrad Hunte was born in 1932, the eldest of nine children. He and his family lived in a small house in Shorey Village, on the opposite side of Barbados from Bridgetown. His parents seem to have made many sacrifices to give their first born a good education and that seems to have been a source of some tension in the household. Hunte was clearly nobody’s fool, but as a youngster he preferred cricket to his studies, much to his father’s irritation.

In time Hunte realised the value of what his father was putting him through and achieved his school certificate, thus equipping him for the job in the Civil Service that his father had always wanted for him. He still played plenty of cricket however, with Bellepaine in the Barbados Cricket League (BCL). His opportunity to move on to the next level came in 1951, when he was selected to represent the BCL in their annual match against the Barbados Cricket Association (BCA) at the Kensington Oval. The BCA represented the most prestigious clubs on the Island.

For Bellapaine Hunte batted in the middle order and bowled a bit of off spin. He would happily have batted number eleven against the BCA, but he was invited to go in first. Given the choice by his senior partner Hunte elected to take the first delivery. He played and missed at a ball that seamed away from him. The next was more of the same, but Hunte got closer to it and it took the outside edge of his bat and flew to Test player Denis Atkinson at slip. Fortunately for Hunte the chance was missed, and the resulting couple of runs calmed him down. He went on to record an unbeaten 137 and become the first BCL player to score a century in the fixture.

Soon after the BCA fixture Trinidad visited Kensington Oval for two back to back matches and after his century Hunte was selected for Barbados. A few weeks previously he had been playing club cricket, so it was quite a step up to find himself now playing on a Test match ground for a side that included seven men who had represented West Indies at the highest level. In the first game Barbados ended up two wickets short of victory with Hunte taking the step up in his stride with scores of 63 and 15. He was less successful in the second match, but had done enough to secure selection for the Barbados side that made the trip to what was then British Guiana nine months later.

There was another half century against British Guiana, although in the second match Hunte was stung by some criticism in the press after occupying the crease for an hour and half for just 16. He had decided, after getting into hot water over a missed curfew, that occupation of the crease was the way to make amends, without realising the criticism he would get in a match where poor weather had already eaten into the playing time available.

The first job Hunte had had after leaving school was as a primary school teacher, something he felt no real vocation for. It was a couple of years later that he had left that employment to join the Civil Service and fulfil his father’s ambitions for him. He started to play his club cricket for the Empire Club, but rarely made big scores. He was fortunate however that in the infrequent First Class matches that Barbados had he continued to do enough to keep in the side.

A big opportunity to break into the West Indies team seemed to arrive in 1954/55. An Australian side led by Ian Johnson were carrying all before them by the time they arrived in Barbados. They had won two of the three Tests comfortably and had the better of the drawn second Test as well. West Indies, amongst other troubles, did not have a settled opening partnership.

Against British Guiana earlier in the season Hunte had done well without making a really big score, and then he retired on 97 in a trial match for the Barbados side that were due to meet the tourists before the fourth Test. It was no surprise therefore that he made the team, but perhaps he should have told the management about a thigh injury that was affecting his mobility. In any event Barbados batted first and Hunte opened the batting against Keith Miller. Expecting a quick delivery first up he was completely non-plussed by what amounted to a googly and it was all he could do to keep out of his stumps. Normal service was resumed for the second delivery as Miller produced his renowned outswinger. A fully fit Hunte might have survived, but his leg wouldn’t move into position as quickly as he wanted it to and he was caught at slip. He did little better in the second innings, making just three, and the selectors tried unsuccessfully to ease their troubles by asking Garry Sobers to open with JK Holt. The experiment was only partially successful, which is more than can be said for the decision to try the uncapped Trinidadian Hammond Furlonge in the final Test.

Understandably disappointed at events on the cricket field Hunte decided he needed a new challenge. A move away from the Civil Service, where he was now working in the accounts department of the General Post Office, into a sales based insurance was job was one thing he tried. As with his short lived teaching career however Hunte soon realised he was not a salesman. He eventually decided to emigrate to England, where he hoped to find a job as a professional cricketer. The making of such a momentous decision seems to have freed Hunte insofar as his batting was concerned and in three matches against a strong side raised by EW ‘Jim’ Swanton and captained by Colin Cowdrey in March of 1956 he made scores of 151 (his first First Class century), 95, 31 and 55*. A few days later he was on board ship to England, dreaming of making the 1957 West Indies touring party.

The original plan had been for Hunte to stay with Everton Weekes in Lancashire, but that came to nothing because Weekes had sold his house and moved into digs that did not have enough room for Hunte. The West Indian cricketers in Lancashire still pulled together however and accommodation was found for Hunte as well as employment with Leyland Motors. There was no league contract for 1956, but Hunte played as an amateur on Saturdays for his works team and on Sunday would supplement his income by playing for the West Indian Wanderers, a side made up mainly of league professionals.

It took Hunte a while to get used to the slow pitches in Lancashire, and he had to curb his natural enthusiasm for the drive as he found that the way the ball held up meant he was caught far too often at mid on and mid off. He soon learnt however and did well, his reward coming at the end of the summer when he was offered terms for the 1957 season by Lancashire League club Enfield. Less satisfactory was the day job. Hunte had originally taken a labouring job on the basis that he assumed he would be able to move into the company’s office, an environment for which he had more than sufficient qualifications, once an opportunity there became vacant. It soon became clear to Hunte however that a coloured man was not going to be allowed to work in the office at Leyland Motors. He became disillusioned and was eventually dismissed for poor time keeping after which he spent a difficult period without work until he found a job in a cotton mill.

To add to his troubles Hunte had received no enquiries from the West Indies selectors as to his availability to tour England in 1957. He asked his family to investigate and the answer was said to be that he had been written to but, no reply having been received, it was assumed he was not available. That misunderstanding clarified a further letter was sent, and Hunte cabled a response to indicate he was available. No invitation arrived however.

Hunte enjoyed a good season with Enfield and topped the Lancashire League scoring table in 1957. As he made runs his countrymen were having a less than successful time as they lost the Test series against England 3-0 and could draw little comfort from their performances in the two drawn matches. Their failure did however bring forth an offer to Hunte from the selectors to pay for his passage back home so that he could be available for the series against Pakistan in the Caribbean in the New Year of 1958.

It must have been an emotional moment when Hunte sailed into Bridgetown in mid December of 1957 to be greeted on the quayside by his family, none of whom he had seen for 18 months. As he had found it took time to adjust to the slow English wickets so it took him a while to once again gauge the pace of his home turf. That he did so quickly enough was evidenced by his 77 in the colony match against the tourists, and he was duly selected to open the innings in the first Test with Rohan Kanhai. The West Indies had not had a reliable opening pair since Allan Rae and Jeff Stollmeyer, and they weren’t to acquire another one until Gordon Greenidge lined up alongside Roy Fredericks, but at least in 1958 they discovered one top class opening batsman, even if they never managed to find a partner for him.

Before Hunte did so the only West Indian to score a century on Test debut was the great George Headley. It was a record Hunte equalled in some style, finally dismissed for 142 from the first ball of the second day. In the third Test he recorded what was to remain his highest Test score, 260, and shared in a second wicket partnership of 446 with Sobers, who went on to make his unbeaten 365. He added another century, 114, in the fourth Test to end his first series with 622 runs at 77.75. The wickets were good, but lest it be suggested otherwise the Pakistan attack was a strong one. The great medium fast bowler Fazal Mahmood was still in his pomp, and was ably backed up by fellow pacemen Mahmood Hussain and Khan Mohammad.

Naturally Hunte was an automatic selection for West Indies tour of the sub continent the following season. The Indians had no answer to the pace of Roy Gilchrist and Wes Hall and succumbed easily. The series was not a happy one for Hunte however. He passed fifty only once and his average fell to 27. In his own words my success had gone to my head, and I did not settle down to study the bowlers. He failed in the first Test in Pakistan as well and, to his horror, was dropped for the remaining two matches. He didn’t take the decision well, blanking his captain Gerry Alexander when he attempted to console him, but it did make him determined that when he regained his place he would not lose it again.

Frustrations were taken out on Lancashire League bowlers in 1959 as Hunte scored a club record 1,437 runs at 79.83. He was still only second in the League averages though, Australian Bob Simpson scoring a handful more runs but at the Bradmanesque average of 103.14. As Alexander had predicted Hunte was back in the Test side the following winter when, by a 1-0 margin, England won a series in the Caribbean for the first time. The only time in the five Tests that Hunte passed 50 he went on to an unbeaten 72, but time and again he was out after getting well set, and his average for the series was a respectable 41.57.

In 1960/61 Hunte and a West Indies side led by Frank Worrell toured Australia for a five match series. The contest has gone down in history as one of the great Test series, beginning with the famous ‘Tied Test’. After that the two sides each won one match comfortably and West Indies would, but for a famous last wicket partnership between Lindsey Kline and ‘Slasher’ Mackay that hung on for the best part of two hours, have gone 2-1 up in the fourth. West Indian hearts were then broken in the final Test when, after a great fight was put up, the Australians got home by two wickets. Hunte averaged 37.70 and contributed a century and two fifties. He didn’t score too many runs in the famous tie, but was responsible for a remarkable chase and throw from 90 yards into Alexander’s gloves that saw Wally Grout run out during the frantic denouement.

Something else significant happened to Hunte in Australia. Always a committed christian he watched a film, The Crowning Experience, that was promoted by Moral Rearmament, a christian organisation that promoted the highest ethical and moral behaviour from its members. Hunte committed himself to the organisation, now known as Initiatives of Change and remained with it for the rest of his life.

In early 1962 India visited the Caribbean and were beaten 5-0. It was a comprehensive win albeit one to which Hunte contributed little, averaging only fractionally more than he had in India in 1958/59. His year did not improve much when he arrived in England to be told that the 1962 summer would be his last with Enfield, the club having decided not to take up an option to sign him for 1964, it always being assumed he would be touring with the West Indians in 1963.

Frank Worrell’s 1963 team were an immensely powerful combination and they beat England 3-1, and did so by playing some exhilarating cricket. Hunte set the tone for the summer with 182 in the first Test, and after a relatively quiet time in the next three he came back to form in the last with 80 and an unbeaten 108 to end up with 471 runs at 58.87. There were no significant partnerships at the top of the order however as the selectors tried Joey Carew twice, then Easton McMorris twice before, for the final Test, choosing leg spinner Willie Rodriguez to partner Hunte. The highest opening partnership was the 78 that Hunte and Rodriguez put on in the second innings of that last match.

At the end of the 1963 tour the West Indies selectors had to appoint a new captain to replace the newly retired Worrell. Hunte had been vice-captain in 1963 and confidently expected to be appointed. In the event he wasn’t, the job being offered to Sobers, Worrell’s favoured candidate. The position was not one that Sobers coveted, and he took some time to decide to accept. Hunte was bitterly disappointed at being passed over so much so that after a number of weeks of being disgruntled he felt the need to apologise to Sobers and pledge his commitment to him. It has never been said that his belief in Moral Rearmament was in any way responsible for his being overlooked, although the former Jamaican Prime Minister Michael Manley certainly suggested in his authoritative history of West Indies cricket that a habit of seeking to convert members of the team to his beliefs was a factor.

Sobers’ first series as captain was against Australia in the Caribbean in early 1965 and he led his men to a famous victory. Hunte did not score a century in the series but, with as many as six half centuries, was remarkably consistent. He was less successful in England in 1966, a series dominated by a succession of stunning performances from Sobers, but he made one century there and a final Test century, his eighth, in India in 1966/67. At just 34 Hunte then bowed out of the game to concentrate on Moral Rearmament. In 44 Test he had scored 3,245 runs at 45.06.

After his retirement Hunte stayed on in London working for Moral Rearmament before, in the late 1970s, he emigrated to Atlanta where he was to remain for a dozen years. During that time as well as his efforts for Moral Rearmament he also worked in financial services and acted as Barbadian Consul General. He also found the time to marry and, despite being in his late forties by then, sire three daughters.

A new mission presented itself to Hunte in the early 1990s with the breakdown of apartheid in South Africa and the release of Nelson Mandela. Feeling the call Hunte made contact with Ali Bacher to offer his services. The offer was gratefully accepted and Hunte spent seven years working in the townships developing cricketing talent. His duties included acting as manager for the South African women’s team that visited England in 1997.

In 1998 Hunte was awarded the highest honour Barbados could bestow, the Order of St Andrew. It was more than forty years since he had regarded the island as his home but Prime Minister Owen Arthur still saw Hunte as the man who could revive the flagging fortunes of cricket in the country and the wider Caribbean. Hunte was happy to accept an offer of employment from the Ministry of Education and Youth Affairs.

The following year, 1999, was a desperately sad one for Bajan cricket. On 4 November the great Malcolm Marshall lost his battle with cancer. Hunte was one of the pall bearers at his funeral. Shortly afterwards the apparently fit and healthy 64 year old travelled to Sydney to deliver the keynote speech at a Moral Rearmament conference. On 3 December he was playing tennis with friends when, with no apparent warning, he collapsed and died. His doctors in South Africa had expressed some concern about his heart, but the fatal coronary that took him was anything but expected and Barbados mourned again when his loss was announced, the mood of the nation saddened further by the news, just a single day after Hunte’s passing of another unexpected cricketing death, that of Sylvester Clarke.

Despite a few promising signs from time to time the strength of West Indies cricket, certainly at Test level, has been fragile throughout the twenty first century. Had Conrad Hunte been given just a few more years his unbounded enthusiasm and love for the game of cricket and his country would surely have resulted in a legacy that would still be felt today, not just in the Caribbean, but throughout the cricket playing world.

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Bruce Harris – Bodyline Author

Stephen Bruce Harris was born in Ireland in 1887, although he was brought up in Somerset. A career journalist he began that calling in the north east of England before moving to Birmingham. His writing was interrupted by the Great War, which Harris spent as a Lieutenant in the Fifth Battalion of the Royal Scots Fusiliers, primarily serving in the Middle East. He returned to Birmingham after the war, but in 1920 joined the staff of the Evening Standard in London and, moving to the capital, he spent the rest of his life living in Ealing.

The first position that Harris had with the Evening Standard was on its news desk before becoming a sports editor, and then the paper’s tennis correspondent. His career path changed markedly however in 1932 when his employer became the first English newspaper to send a journalist to Australia to follow an Ashes tour.

In May of 1932 a young EW ‘Jim’ Swanton was told he would be the man going. Swanton was only 25. A decent club cricketer who would go on to play three times in First Class cricket Swanton understood the game and in time became one of the giants of post war cricket writing. A man who strongly disapproved of Douglas Jardine’s ‘Bodyline’ tactics cricket history might have been different had he gone. As it was however a bad mistake in the middle of June cost him the chance. Having been dispatched to Leyton to report on the visit of Yorkshire to Essex Swanton watched Herbert Sutcliffe and Percy Holmes compile their record breaking opening partnership of 555. Last in the queue for the single telephone at the ground Swanton failed to get his copy back to the office in time.

It took some time for the decision to be made not to send Swanton to Australia, perhaps through a lack of alternatives but, in the end, it was decided to send the experienced newshound Harris, who was promptly dispatched to the end of season Scarborough Festival to start his crash course in cricket. Understandably bitter Swanton was, in his 1972 autobiography, critical of his colleague’s appointment. He described Harris as a very decent, conscientious fellow who knew nothing about cricket at all.

In his splendid book, Bodyline Autopsy, David Frith made his point rather cleverly in recognising that what Swanton said was true, but adding that Harris was, like many a tabloid scribbler skilful at concealing his ignorance. His means of doing that was to quickly establish a rapport with the England captain, Douglas Jardine. The Iron Duke was, of course, no fool himself and saw the importance from his point of view of having a friend in the press box.

There were only three English writers in Australia in 1932/33. Jack Hobbs was one, and whilst he did not approve of Jardine’s tactics he was not about to openly criticise his county captain. The other source of copy was the Reuters correspondent, former Australian skipper Warwick Armstrong. The Big Ship was not overly impressed with ‘Bodyline’, but was nonetheless the man who had unleashed the formidable pace attack of Gregory and McDonald on England a decade earlier so the English public were never going to attach to much credence to criticism from him. In any event the Reuters style tended towards neutrality and objectivity.

As for Harris the title of his post tour account tells the whole story of his attitude. Jardine Justified began with a reproduction of a hand written letter from Jardine, fulsome in its praise for Harris, followed by a considered foreword. The book is inevitably approving of Jardine’s tactics but is certainly not a bad read and set down a benchmark for Harris’s style of writing. He was not afraid to leave the cricket from time to time and look at other aspects of the touring experience.

The book was well reviewed. A delightful and valuable story according to the West Sussex Gazette and the Derby Daily Telegraph described it as first class reading. Harris’s former employer the Birmingham Daily Gazette referred to a fascinating account. In Australia Arthur Mailey, writing in the Sydney Sun, was not impressed with the backslapping exchanges between Jardine and Harris at the front of the book, but that apart his views were largely positive and Harris was no doubt delighted to see that no less a man than the former Test leg spinner complimented him on his understanding of the technical aspects of the game.

Harris was back in Australia in 1936/37. Again he wrote a book,1937 Australian Test Tour. Interestingly he once again had a foreword from the England captain, this time of course Gubby Allen, the man who refused to bowl ‘Bodyline’. Of Harris Allen wrote; he has been a very good friend to me – one wonders what Jardine would have made of that one? Harris’s publishers in 1937 were Hutchinson, the company who had published Don Bradman’s Book in 1930. The closest Harris came to writing any biographical work was to add a few chapters to that book to produce a second edition, and some competition for Bradman’s new book, My Cricketing Life, which also appeared in 1938.

In his late fifties by the time cricket resumed after World War Two Harris toured with England again in 1946/47, 1950/51 and 1954/55. There was a book each time and, in the case of the latter, a foreword from the England captain Len Hutton. Harris was clearly unable to persuade England’s captains in 1946/47 and 1950/51 to similarly contribute. Interestingly both men, Walter Hammond and FreddieBrown were veterans of the ‘Bodyline’ campaign, albeit Brown had not played in any of the Tests. Harris also wrote a book on the 1953 series, his first book on a home series, although for that one, assuming he was invited to do so, Hutton could not be persuaded to contribute.

Tour books were plentiful in the 1950s and the home series in 1955, 1956 and 1957 against South Africa, Australia, West Indies were all dealt with in books by Harris. In each of them he secured a foreword from England captain Peter May and in the first two one from the visiting captains as well, Jack Cheetham and Ian Johnson, notwithstanding that both men had their own books in the marketplace. Harris’s books on home series lacked the stories of the touring experience that marked his books from his trips to Australia so were rather less distinctive amidst what, in 1953 and 1956 particularly, was a crowded marketplace. In 1953, the year England finally reclaimed the Ashes Padwick lists ten tour accounts, with nine for 1956. Times changed quickly however and by 1957 Harris had the field to himself. His account of a disappointingly one sided contest was West Indies Cricket Challenge.

The final book from Harris was his only one from a genre other than that of the tour book. The True Book About Cricket, published in 1958, has an interesting title but the main eyebrow raiser, the use of the word True, is something of a misnomer. At that time the book’s publisher, Frederick Muller, had a whole series of The True …. books, which were aimed at a school aged audience. This was therefore a relatively modest (144 page) history of the game. A review in the Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News described it as containing a great deal of interesting historical information about the game. It is not a book I have personally seen, but if I see a copy I will certainly look at it if for no other reason that the reviewer’s later comment that the text is not enhanced by the illustrations,which lose their point through to an occasional tendency to be facetious.

Bruce Harris died at the age of 74 in October 1960. He had married late in life at 64 in 1951 but, despite his wife being twenty years younger than he was, she predeceased him by a couple years. According to Harris’s obituary in The Cricketer he had been ill for a long time. Given that there was a legacy in his will to Cancer Research that suggests that was the disease that claimed Harris. He left a similar amount to a local church and the bulk of his estate to his younger sister. He left his collection of cricket books to the Ealing cricket club, and his tennis books to a journalist friend.

from Cricket Web https://ift.tt/3dbkzDw