The Picador Book of Cricket

by Ramachandra Guha

  ⋆ ⋆ ⋆

  As more countries were granted Test status, and as they began playing more frequently against one another, the English County Championship began to lose its significance. Now, when the average county match attracts a crowd of a dozen pensioners and their dogs, it is difficult to recall the extreme passions that the championship once commanded. Local loyalties were deep and fierce, and local characters abounded. Much energy and skill once went into the portrayal of cricketers who played for county rather than country. Reproduced here are three essays on characters in the counties, written (by chance) by three Guardian men.

  JOHN ARLOTT

  Rough Diamond (1953)

  Tom Wass, the cricketer, died a week or two ago [27 October 1953] in Sutton-in-Ashfield, the village where he was born. He was seventy-nine. As a young man he played in Scotland and was once qualified for Lancashire, but he was always Nottinghamshire’s man.

  Wass’s great cricketing days were long over when I first met him at Trent Bridge in 1946, and shook hands with a man whose third and little fingers were immovably fixed in the palm of his hand from many years of bowling what modern cricket terminology calls the ‘leg-cutter’, but which Edwardian players called, fairly enough, a fast leg break.

  Later that day, I turned to Tom Oates, for years the county’s wicketkeeper, but by then their scorer, holding his pencil in fingers jerky as oak twigs from the fractures of his trade.

  ‘How good a bowler was Tom Wass?’

  ‘He was dam’ good.’

  ‘Then why didn’t he play for England?’

  ‘Tom were a roogh diamond.’

  ‘So were a good many of the Northerners of those days who played for England.’

  ‘Ay, but Tom were roogher’n moast.’

  ‘In what way, Tom?’

  ‘Well, when he first come to play for t’county, skipper Dixon hisself goas down to meet Tom off t’train. Tom gets off wi’ graat sheepdog. ‘‘What,’’ says skipper, ‘‘tha can’t bring that wi’ thee to t’ground, tha knows.’’ ‘‘Then,’’ says Tom, ‘‘if dog can’t coom, Tom doan’t coom,’’ and goes over bridge an’ back home on t’next train.’

  When the weather was dry at Trent Bridge, the master batsmen of the pre-war years of this century took unhurried centuries from Wass’s and his fellows’ bowling on that green and regal wicket. On their own grounds, however, or at Nottingham, when there had been rain, Wass’s leg-cutter would pitch on the leg stump and hit the top of the off or, taking the outside edge of the bat, fly to one of the five crouching slips or the prehensile A. O. Jones in the fielding position which he invented at gully. Wass had a reputation for bowling an extremely accurate first ball, and P. F. Warner and C. B. Fry fell to him only less often than the impeccable R. H. Spooner, who was beaten by that fast breaking ball for several ignominious ‘ducks’.

  He was christened simply Tom, which his friends ‘shortened’ into ‘Topsy’, but he was jealous of the right to address him thus, and one most eminent amateur batsman’s amiable ‘Hullo, Topsy’ at the crease was answered with ‘Tom Wass is my name, but I gi’ thee mister, and I’ll have mister o’ thee – if tha must talk.’

  That Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire coalfield on which Wass was born has been a breeding ground for fast bowlers for more than a century. They are men with the sloping shoulders and deep chests of the coal miner, but few of them have been Wass’s full six feet in height, for the narrow seams do not as a rule develop tall men. He had, however, the true miner’s weight of body muscle, and bowled long, tirelessly and eagerly at the cricket which brought him his days in the sun.

  He belonged to that old breed of Lancashire, Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire professionals of the great days when the real cricketing strength of England was centred there.

  They travelled third class by rail – the motoring cricketer is a very recent phenomenon – and if they had been offered the writing of a gossip column in a newspaper they would have been professionally indignant, even if they had been literate enough to encompass it, for they believed that cricket was a full-time job. In the winter, they put on their heavy, grey-tweed suits and their black boots, and drank beer and talked about cricket, for this time of bad weather was the well-earned holiday against which they had saved some shillings of the summer.

  Good judgements among the players of his time confirm Tom Oates’s opinion that Wass might reasonably have played for England. He took 1,665 wickets for Nottinghamshire – more than any other bowler – and, in 1907, he and Hallam virtually bowled the county to the championship.

  During one Lancashire v. Nottingham match at Aigburth, where Wass was once the club pro, he and A. C. MacLaren, the Lancashire captain, met when they were both looking at the pitch after rain. ‘Wass,’ MacLaren said, ‘you know this wicket; how do you think it will play?’ The fast bowler looked slowly up at him, paused a moment, and said, ‘We shall win.’ Subsequently he took nine Lancashire wickets for 60 runs in verification of his opinion.

  From 1897 to his bare two hours of post-war bowling in 1920, he bowled 12,000 overs, running long and straight and often under punishment on batsmen’s wickets. Most remarkably for a fast bowler, too, he came late to first-class cricket. The fast-bowler’s effective period is usually regarded as the years between nineteen and thirty, but Wass did not have a full season – in which he bowled as many as 500 overs – until he was twenty-six, while his best season came at thirty-three while, at thirty-eight, in the ‘blood’ match with Derbyshire, he had still the initial fire to take their first eight wickets for 19 runs in 14 balls.

  The men who bowled at Trent Bridge have always had to take the task seriously, and Tom Wass’s fitness was a pressing matter in his winter. He spent an hour with a punching bag every morning and he followed the hounds, often as far as twenty miles in a day, twice a week all through his ‘off’ season.

  From the pavilion at Trent Bridge, he watched the county games as a forgotten player in the 1930s until, during the past few years, he became something of a legend. Up there on the roof he held court in the eternal cloth cap set straightly upon his head, a collar looking two sizes too large for his neck, which had become stringy with age, and wearing a loose jacket which drooped about his craggy bones.

  The men who had played with him would climb slowly up the two flights of stairs to see him. As he came back into his heroic own, much of his earlier hardness seemed to drop from the old man, and, if he was never really expansive, there was perhaps more of social uncertainty than of unfriendliness in his silences.

  ‘Tom were roogher’n moast,’ said Tom Oates, and the bowler himself once told me, ‘Ah feared nowt.’ His batting was almost useless, and Wisden said of his fielding – when according him selection as one of its Five Cricketers of the Year in 1908 – ‘When an easy catch goes to him the batsman has a feeling of hopefulness until he sees that the ball has been safely held.’ So his bowling was his cricket and his living; perhaps that was why he gave so little away. In fact, his economy was always careful, like that of most of his fellows. The £3 a week of the Edwardian professional left little room for extravagance, and in the effort to economize on their match money many of them had arrangements with the players of opposing counties to save hotel bills by housing one another on a ‘home and out’ basis.

  It was a strange irony which brought together in such a bargain A. E. Knight, the Leicestershire all-rounder, who was a fervent Salvationist, and the big ‘roogh’ miner who bowled with such fury that he needed beer to give him something to sweat out, and who unloaded his emotions in words as hard as his bowling. For years, the dressing rooms cherished the story of Albert Edward Knight, given a camp bed in the Wass family bedroom, and, saying his prayers within the hearing of his host, closing with ‘Please, Lord, let me make a century tomorrow. Amen.’ There was, they say, a creaking of the springs of the Wass bed, Tom fell upon his knees, introduced himself to the Almighty as one whose voice might not be well known in those regions, but who was the Notting
ham fast bowler and who prayed that he might be allowed, upon the morrow, to ‘bowl beggar out for aught’.

  He followed the hounds for many years in those strong black boots of his. He had a good run, and would, I fancy, relish the thought that, like many a fox of those distant winters, he has gone to his Nottinghamshire earth.

  NEVILLE CARDUS

  Robinson of Yorkshire (1934)

  A few summers ago I arrived at Bradford an hour or two late for the first day of a match between Yorkshire and Middlesex; I got mixed up with a train connection round about the wilds of Low Moor. As soon as I reached the field my eyes went straight to Emmott Robinson, like the eyes of the lover to the beloved. At once I saw that something was wrong with the man. Middlesex were batting, and the scoreboard said 128 for 2. ‘What’s been doing?’ I asked a man in the crowd, using the vernacular. ‘Nowt,’ he said, ‘nowt but slow play – and Emmott missed Hearne when he was fower.’ Hearne was now 57 not out; Emmott Robinson walked across the wicket between overs with his head down. He was a man who took Yorkshire cricket seriously. That day at Bradford he did not look up until, at four o’clock, he bowled Hearne all over his stumps. Just before he achieved this desire he appealed for leg before wicket against Hearne, appealed with all his heart and soul and lungs. I happened to be watching the game from behind the bowler, with glasses fixed on Hearne. I saw that Hearne’s legs were not quite in front, and involuntarily I murmured, ‘Not out.’ Immediately I felt that somebody was observing me. I turned round and saw a typical Yorkshireman eyeing me from my feet to my head. ‘And what’s the matter with thee?’ he asked.

  All Yorkshiremen are like that at cricket, and Robinson summed them all up in himself. When Yorkshire were playing Lancashire at Old Trafford a season or two ago they somehow found themselves in a dreadful hole on the third afternoon. With only a draw to play for, they had lost five wickets at half past three; they were hundreds of runs behind. In came Robinson, and he fought the good fight. For two hours and more he defended, bat and pads and all. Ten minutes before close of play, when Yorkshire had but two wickets in hand, Robinson died the hero’s death – lbw. He waited a while after he saw the umpire’s finger go up, waited on the off chance that some mistake had been made. Then he proceeded to depart. You could not say he was not going, was not definitely moving in Time and Space from one point to another. The retreat was masterful; it was a strategic withdrawal. Alas! the scheme miscarried, through the incredible impulsiveness of Waddington, who rushed to the wicket, ran yards down the pitch and was stumped. Lancashire won first innings points with two minutes to spare.

  Months afterwards, in the depth of winter, I was in Yorkshire at a dinner. Who should be sitting next to me but Emmott Robinson? (He ordered a cup of tea after the dinner, saying that he thought coffee ‘were no good’ for anybody after a meal.) I had forgotten the match at Old Trafford, and Waddington’s rashness. But the wound was still bleeding for Emmott. ‘Think of it,’ he said. ‘Gettin’ stumped wi’ t’match in that state.’ He paused, and then, looking at me terribly, he said, ‘I’d ’a’ died first before they stumped me.’ He meant it; Emmott meant everything he ever said about cricket, or did about cricket, in all his life. He once told me how Derbyshire were put out by Yorkshire at Chesterfield for 86. ‘But,’ he added, ‘they should never ’a’ got them. Townsend were missed before he scored. They should never ’a’ got them.’ He was referring to a match that had taken place six years ago. ‘Never mind, Emmott,’ I said, in the hope of consoling him, ‘it all happened a long time ago.’ He smote the table with his fist. ‘It’s no matter,’ he answered, ‘they should never ’a’ got them!’ He will die in that belief.

  No cricketer has played the game with more than Robinson’s grand passion. He was one of the richest characters in the game’s great seasonal comedy. He bowled the finest outswinger of his period; he could use the new ball with more venom than any other bowler. He loved what he called a ‘green wicket’, and at the beginning of a match it was a joy to see him inspecting the turf, pressing his fingers in it, feeling it and talking of ‘t’texture’ like a shrewd buyer of cloth testing material. He could tell you exactly what the wicket would be doing at half past four. Yorkshire once batted the whole of the first day against Surrey and made 400 for 6. On the Sunday the weather broke. Yorkshire continued their innings on the Monday while the wicket was slow and gradually becoming difficult. Everybody was asking when Yorkshire were going to declare. I watched the morning’s first hour in the Yorkshire dressing room, and Emmott and Major Lupton and I sat and talked. The game at this stage was not particularly interesting and we talked of many things. Suddenly a ball jumped up; Emmott was in the middle of a sentence. ‘Aye, and I told him’ – then the ball jumped – ‘I told him (call ’em in, Major), I told him . . .’ Robinson missed nothing.

  He was not in technique a cricketer of extraordinary gifts, but by taking thought he added yards to his stature. He bowled as though nothing in the world existed at the moment but the batsman at the wicket’s other end; he would gather up all his loose energy and hurl himself at Makepeace as though at an object detestable. I remember how once he defeated Makepeace’s bat with a glorious swinger, and appealed for leg before. It was the last ball of the over, and when the umpire said ‘Not out,’ Robinson stood still, not comprehending, baffled at the inadequacy of justice in the world. So upset was he that he ran to his wrong place in the field. Against Worcestershire on a certain occasion he decided to field ‘silly point’ for M. K. Foster, who was in form and hitting the ball hard. ‘If I were you,’ said Foster solicitously, ‘I’d move back a little, Emmott.’ And Emmott simply remained where he was and said, ‘Get on with thi lakin’, Mr Foster.’

  Cricket was Emmott Robinson’s mission; Yorkshire was his religion. Only once did he ever forget himself. He was saving a match with Rhodes, and against Lancashire, of all counties. Over after over Robinson stonewalled. Suddenly, for no reason whatever, he made a magnificent late cut towards third man off Richard Tyldesley. He was so taken out of himself by the brilliance of the stroke that he stood there, transfixed. And when at last he returned from the world of aesthetic contemplation to the world of things as they are, Wilfred Rhodes was on his doorstep. Emmott was run out by the length of the pitch. No doubt he has not forgiven himself to this day, and no doubt he never will. He and Rhodes were the brains of the great Yorkshire team of their conquering period. I can see the two of them now, watching Roy Kilner flashing his bat at Macdonald’s pace. Roy Kilner was incorrigible; the Yorkshire grimness could not be taught him. Humour would creep in with Kilner, even on an August Bank Holiday at Sheffield. I can see him trying to cut Macdonald, with his cap all a-cock over his eye. ‘Hey, look at him!’ said Emmott to Wilfred. ‘He’ll never get sense, never get sense.’

  Robinson seemed to be made out of the stuff of Yorkshire county; I imagine that the Lord one day gathered together a heap of Yorkshire clay and breathed into it and said, ‘Emmott Robinson, go on and bowl at the pavilion end for Yorkshire.’ He looked the old soldier, with his lined face and fine grey hairs. He shambled about the field with his trousers loose. You were getting ready to see them fall down altogether when he would remember them in time. His feet were noble. And thrive he did though bandy. I loved the man, and the crowd loved him, because he did his job with all his heart. His cricket was of a kind that could never be estimated by the averages, by statistics; it was an activity that came out of his own being. Of ordinary cricketers there is little to be said when they are not doing well; on such occasions we overlook them. Robinson was always in the game passionately; indeed, it was in moments of frustration that he was at his most impressive. He had an eloquent droop of the body in his hours of impotence. You see, he expected to take a wicket every ball. Lancashire and Yorkshire matches, and perverse umpires, silvered his head. Often have I looked at his fine keen face and loved the lines in it, graven by experience. He enriched the nature of cricket, put into it the humours of the soil, invested it w
ith character. Like Tom Emmett, he belongs to Yorkshire for all time.

  DAVID FOOT

  Character in the Counties (1998)

  There was for years a defiant reluctance on my part to accept that cricket wasn’t always full of sunshine. Those of us blessed, even blinkered, by a consuming romantic regard for many aspects of sport are apt to take it badly when we at last discover that the clouds can hang heavy over the dressing rooms and that cricketers can be as contentious, unendearing and egregious in temperament as the rest of the human race.

  I clung to the uplifting image, from my idolatrous school days, of Wellard and Andrews, Somerset’s bronzed giants and fast bowlers, coming weary and contented off the field at the close of play, brotherly arms round each other’s shoulders, ready for a shared, strong pint and happy talk of a day’s work well done. In a country boy’s naivety, I noted that Bev and Dar Lyon opposed each other in the Gloucestershire–Somerset Bank Holiday matches and supposed that family feeling on those occasions carried the good-humoured exchanges that I watched amid the buttercups on my village green. What I didn’t know was that the Lyons, unlike in demeanour and philosophy, were apt to bare their teeth, for the duration of the match at least, in competitive sibling zeal and rivalry.

  My cricket-watching was mostly limited to the West Country. I saw what I wanted to see. Gimblett rattled the sight screen in the first over; I was in awe of his daring and knew nothing of his despair. Hammond was a Bristol prince, wondrous in his deeds, and I assumed there was always congenial banter among the courtiers. One of my first, hard, lessons in sporting realism came, I remember, when Bill Andrews confided in that subjective way of his: ‘Those Gloucestershire players really were a miserable lot of sods. I’d poke my head round the door of the dressing rooms and, apart from Reg Sinfield, I didn’t seem to get any kind of greeting.’