Bedside Cricket Read online

  RETRO CLASSICS

  is a collection of facsimile reproductions

  of popular bestsellers from the 1980s and 1990s

  Bedside Cricket was first published in 1981

  by J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd

  Re-issued in 2012 as a Retro Classic

  by G2 Rights

  in association with Lennard Publishing

  Windmill Cottage

  Mackerye End

  Harpenden

  Hertfordshire

  AL5 5DR

  Copyright © Christopher Martin-Jenkins 1981

  ISBN 978-1-909040-33-5

  Produced by Lennard Books

  a division of

  Lennard Associates Limited

  Editor Michael Leitch

  Illustrations by Stan McMurtry

  Designed by David Pocknell’s Company Ltd

  This book is a facsimile reproduction of the first edition of

  Bedside Cricket which was a bestseller in 1981. No attempt has been made

  to alter any of the wording with the benefit of hindsight, or

  to update the book in any way.

  CONTENTS

  Preface

  Pre-Natal Cricket

  Child’s Play

  The Club Game

  Wandering Cricket

  The Spectator

  Higher Things

  County Cricket

  Cricketing Women

  The Press

  The Test Cricketer

  The Umpires

  The Commentators

  ...And Don’t Forget The Groundsman

  PREFACE

  I know a man who claims to be the only cricketer ever to have scored a hundred before breakfast. He did so in the Sudan where it is rather too hot to play at mid-day!

  The same man, Jake Seamer, once played for Somerset at Portsmouth the morning after going to a Commem. Ball at Oxford. His night’s sleep did not begin until he reached the dressing-room at Portsmouth at half-past ten. Two and a half hours later he was woken to be told that Somerset were 40 for five and that, although he had been dropped down the order, he must go in next wicket down. He did so and made his way slowly to the wicket, his eyes blinking painfully in the unaccustomed brightness.

  Lofty Herman was bowling. Jake, a studious and determined player with spectacles and a prominent nose, pushed forward to the first ball, which he never saw. He somehow got a touch and edged the ball to third man for a single. At the other end he played the same stroke towards a slightly slower red blur, delivered by Alex Kennedy, and he vaguely heard a fizzing through the air before the ball thudded into his pads. Frank Chester turned down the thunderous appeal. The next ball the batsman actually saw, but as he went back his studless boots slipped underneath him and he did a kind of splits. Again ball hit pads; again a loud appeal; this time Chester’s finger went up. J.W. Seamer made his way back towards the pavilion, head down, feeling very small and miserable. He gradually became aware that something was making the crowd laugh, but thought nothing of it until he saw the white of the picket fencing before him and looked up to see Herman standing on the square-leg boundary.

  ‘Excuse me, mate,’ he said, pointing towards cover-point, ‘but the pavilion is in that direction!’

  It is experiences like these, and characters like Seamer, which have helped to elevate cricket from a thoroughly enjoyable natural recreation into something of a religion for thousands of addicts for whom the game and all that goes with it has a fatal charm. In 1981 I started to do television commentaries on Sundays, having managed in previous years to play the game myself on the majority of Sunday afternoons. When I mentioned to my wife that in future I should have to try to play on Saturdays instead whenever possible she made one of her periodic, but creditably rare, outbursts: ‘What about the garden? And the children? And me? And all those games of tennis we were supposed to be having this summer? What about...’ She did not go much further. She knows, like a host of other cricketing wives, that she may win some battles but will never win the war! Once hooked on cricket, one is hooked for life. For better, I believe, than for worse.

  How do you know if you are addicted? Just before sitting down to write this preface my eye was caught by a headline on the front page of The Times containing the word ‘Lords.’ Not noticing the missing apostrophe, my interest was immediately aroused and I began to read, urgently. I went no further, however, than: ‘In the House of Lords yesterday...’ This, perhaps, is the test you should apply: you are on the way to being hooked if the word ‘Lords,’ with or without the apostrophe, speaks to you at once of Father Time, the Tavern, the clock-tower, a sloping ground and a tall pavilion of dark-red brick, its floors smelling of polished lino. You are hooked irrevocably if that emotive five-letter word loses its appeal when used in any context other than cricket.

  This book is therefore dedicated to all those to whom the word ‘Cricket’ on the cover stirred more emotions even than the allusion to ‘Bed’!

  PRE-NATAL CRICKET

  Non-scientists, perhaps, would settle for a bit of both, although there are enough instances in cricket of sons following successful fathers for the hereditary view to be reckoned the safest. In Test cricket alone I believe there are no fewer than twenty-three fathers who played for their country and produced sons who also played the game at the highest level. The cognoscenti might like to try their hand at naming them from memory (they are listed at the end of the chapter).

  More remarkable still, two Test-playing fathers each had two sons who played Test cricket – Wally Hadlee of New Zealand and Lala Amarnath of India – and several produced sons who played for different countries. Frank Hearne, who played for both England and South Africa (England first) had a son, George, who played three Tests for South Africa; and the famous Majid Khan, that most gifted member of recent Pakistan sides, is the son of Jehangir Khan of India. Both played for Cambridge, and the father is perhaps best remembered for killing a sparrow with a ball he delivered for Cambridge against M.C.C. at Lord’s – T. N. Pearce somehow played the ball while the sparrow dropped dead against the stumps without dislodging the bails. The son is still talked of at Fenner’s as being the best University captain of recent times.

  It is a sad fact, however, that not all cricketers can play for their country. There are over a quarter of a million active cricketers in Britain each summer, of whom only a tiny proportion have reached Test level or are ever likely to do so. Yet the vast majority once dreamt of wearing a cap with a crown and three lions. The glorious thing is that having failed to fulfil our dreams, there comes to many of us a second chance in life. It happens when she blushes coyly and says: ‘Darling, I saw Doctor Davis today...I think there is someone on the way.’

  ‘Darling, that’s wonderful news,’ you reply. The true test of a cricketer is what you are actually thinking as you say it. Scotsmen may be thinking: How the hell are we going to afford it? Philanderers may be thinking: Where on earth was I six weeks ago – at home or at the Sales Conference in Manchester? Oklahomans may be thinking: It’d better look a lot like me. But a true cricketer will be thinking of bats, balls, stumps, and a seat in the Lord’s pavilion as, twenty-five years later, the tiny embryo now nestling cosily within the tummy of his beloved, makes his way back to a huge ovation having completed a superlative hundred against Australia.

  Actually, the true cricketer will already have begun his dreams a little before this important day in his life has arrived. He will be aware that family planning, like late-cutting or leg-glancing, is a matter of delicate timing. Thus, with a bit of help from Science and The Almighty, he should have been able to ensure that the happy announcement of impending good news will have been made very early in the cricket season, so that the baby is
born a few months before the next season and nothing important is thereby interrupted.

  I have to confess personal failure here. Two of our three children arrived in the cricket season. The first, James, at least had been due to come in good time before the First Test at Trent Bridge in 1973. Although the weather was glorious that early June, he evidently preferred the security of the only place he had known and with every day bringing the Test closer, and no sign of him making any move, my dilemma grew greater.

  It was, of course, much more worrying for me than for my wife. Very few wives realize what husbands have to go through on these occasions. We heard of a friend who had hastened the arrival of her offspring by going for a vigorous walk around Winkworth Arboretum (in Surrey). So on the Sunday before the Test I hustled her up hill and down dale amongst the splendid trees and gloriously flowering rhododendrons and azaleas, oblivious to the disapproving looks of those who thought it cruel to make a pregnant lady walk so fast. It was no good. I had to leave for Trent Bridge on the Wednesday with my promise to be a good modern father – by being present at the birth – under severe trial.

  It was a humdinger of a Test match. England made only a modest 250 against good bowling by Bruce Taylor and Dayle, one of Wally Hadlee’s two Test-playing sons. (A third son, Barry, played in the Prudential World Cup, but never in a Test, poor chap.) Snow, Arnold and Greig then bowled out New Zealand for only 87. England made 325 in the second innings with centuries by Amiss and Greig before Illingworth declared with eight wickets down, setting New Zealand an apparently impossible 479 to win. I was confident the England bowlers would finish the job quickly and resolve my problem. The New Zealand captain, Bev Congdon, had other ideas, however, making a marvellous 176, and when I was rung up in Nottingham on Monday evening to be told that the baby would no longer wait I was given the decision of missing either a historic Test finish or a (personally) historic birth. I was released from my duties, zoomed down the motorway in time to see James delivered by a kindly Irish nun and watched England win by a mere 38 runs next day on television at the nursing-home. Brian Johnston kindly announced the news and a professional astrologer wrote to me (at great length) to predict that James would end up as a... cricket commentator!

  Number Two son came two years later in October, prompting the usual remarks from friends about having the opening pair of our cricket eleven, but our daughter was again due perilously close to a Test match, this time the Edgbaston game against India in 1979. Science, however, had advanced, and with the help of some magic tablets to give nature a push, she made it exactly a day before the match began. It was Brian Johnston, again, I think, who announced the news, but curiously enough it was in the same match that Lin Clugston, who makes the announcements at Edgbaston with a greater sense of humour than some, boomed over the public-address system at the end of a tense maiden over: ‘Will Mr Arthur Smith of Ashfield Road, Moseley, please return home immediately: his wife has just produced a baby!’

  I was reminded of two rather more melancholy announcements made at the seething Bangalore Stadium on M.C.C.’s tour of India in 1976–77. There was a note of extreme urgency in the voice which suddenly barked out, at great volume: ‘Will Mr Ranji Patel please return home immediately. His mother is close to expiring.’ An hour or so later came a less desperate follow-up. In a pleading voice the Bangalore secretary stated: ‘Will Mr Ranji Patel go home now. His mother has expired.’ True cricketers will at once recognize the conflict of loyalties: India were close to winning the match at the time. As at life’s beginning, so at its end.

  Witness, too, the story of the keen batsman in a club match who, seeing a funeral procession passing the ground, held up an arm to delay the bowler and removed his cap until the procession had passed. ‘How nice to see some old-fashioned respect for the deceased,’ remarked the wicket-keeper. ‘Well,’ replied the batsman, ‘I suppose it’s the least I could do. She was my wife.’

  As everyone knows, Yorkshire County Cricket Club will only play cricketers born within the county’s borders. There are tales of desperate journeys made by expectant mothers to ensure that the birth should happen in the right place. Lord Hawke, captain of the proudest county from 1883–1910 (during which time he led them to eight Championships) and president from 1898–1938, is the most famous exception to the rule. His parents lost the race and he was born in Lincolnshire.

  Generally speaking, cricketing fathers who have miscalculated or have failed to plan their family with the detailed care which the best of them apply to building an innings, do not let mid-season arrivals upset their form. I remember a club batsman excelling himself with a brilliant attacking century during the Cranleigh Cricket Week a few years ago. He explained afterwards that his child was expected that afternoon and that all those brilliant strokes had been made in a vain attempt to get himself out!

  The immortal ‘Silver Billy’ Beldam of Hambledon fame had 39 children (28 with his first wife, 11 more with a second partner) but one can be fairly certain that he would have felt that his first duty on those 39 occasions lay on the cricket field. W. G. Grace is equally unlikely to have interrupted an innings to deliver a child: certainly not if there is the remotest truth in the story that on one occasion as he went out to bat he was told to leave immediately to attend a young patient whose temperature was 101 and whose little sister was showing signs of being stricken by the same fever. ‘Call on me again,’ said W. G. as he adjusted his M.C.C. cap and sallied forth to bat, ‘when their temperatures reach 110 for 2.’

  FATHER AND SON TEST PLAYERS

  Player

  No.

  Tests Years

  L. Amarnath (India)

  24

  1933–34 to 1952–53

  M. Amarnath (India)

  25

  1969–70 to 1978

  S. Amarnath (India)

  10

  1975–76 to 1976–77

  W. M. Anderson

  (New Zealand)

  1

  1945–46

  R. W. Anderson

  (New Zealand)

  9

  1976–77 to 1978

  D. K. Gaekwad (India)

  11

  1952–53 to 1960–61

  A. D. Gaekwad (India)

  6

  1974–75 to 1979

  E. J. Gregory (Australia)

  1

  1867–77

  S. E. Gregory (Australia)

  58

  1890 to 1912

  W. A. Hadlee

  (New Zealand)

  11

  1937 to 1951

  D. R. Hadlee (New Zealand)

  26

  1969 to 1977–78

  R. J. Hadlee (New Zealand)

  35

  1973 to 1980–81

  J. Hardstaff, Snr (England)

  5

  1907–08

  J. Hardstaff, Jnr (England)

  23

  1935 to 1948

  G. A. Headley (West Indies)

  22

  1929–30 to 1953–54

  R. G. A. Headley

  (West Indies)

  2

  1973

  F. Hearne (England)

  2

  1888–89

  (South Africa)

  4

  1891–92 to 1895–96

  G. A. L. Hearne

  (South Africa)

  3

  1922–23 to 1924

  L. Hutton (England)

  79

  1937 to 1955

  R. A. Hutton (England)

  5

  1971

  Iftikhar Ali Khan,

  Nawab of Pataudi

  (England)

  3

  1932–33 to 1934

  (India)

  3

  1946

  Mansur Ali Khan,

  Nawab of Pataudi (India)

  46

  1961–62 to 1974–75

  (Both captained India)

  M. Jehangir Khan (India)

  4
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  1932 to 1936

  Majid Khan (Pakistan)

  57

  1964 to 1980–81

  J. D. Lindsay (South Africa)

  3

  1947

  D. T. Lindsay (South Africa)

  19

  1963–64 to 1969–70

  V. M. H. Mankad (India)

  44

  1946 to 1958–59

  A. V. Mankad (India)

  22

  1969–70 to 1977–78

  F. T. Mann (England)

  5

  1922–23

  F. G. Mann (England)

  7

  1948–49

  (Both captained England)

  Nazar Mohammad (India)

  5

  1952–53

  Mudassar Nazar (Pakistan)

  19

  1978–80

  A. W. Nourse (South Africa)

  45

  1902–03 to 1924

  A. D. Nourse (South Africa)

  34

  1935 to 1951

  J. H. Parks (England)

  1

  1937

  J. M. Parks (England)

  46

  1954 to 1968

  O.C. Scott (West Indies)

  8

  1928 to 1930–31

  A. P. H. Scott (West Indies)

  1

  1952–53

  F. W. Tate (England)

  1

  1902

  M. W. Tate (England)

  39

  1924 to 1935

  C. L. Townsend (England)

  2

  1899

  D. C. H. Townsend (England)