Edging Towards Darkness: The story of the last timeless Test

by John Lazenby

  There were further rumblings in the South African press at the timing of Hammond’s declaration, and many believed that Melville’s side had no other option but to play for a draw. Mitchell clearly thought so, but proceeded to take the situation to absurd lengths, spending almost four hours at the crease for 42. Once again there was no pace in the wicket for Farnes but Verity, at his scheming best, picked up five for 70 and, despite a muscular 120 from Nourse, Hammond was able to enforce the follow-on. Farnes provided some early hope for England by removing Mitchell cheaply, but South Africa’s batsmen successfully closed out the game – Van der Bijl and Rowan making 87 and 89 respectively – to ensure that they travelled to Durban for the third Test all square. It was a drab ending, Farnes recalled, relieved only by the changing hues of Table Mountain as it towered over the ground, and the applause of a drunken sailor from a tree: ‘“Well played, Viljoen!” he cried again and again. “Good ol’ Viljoen!” Actually, Viljoen was a thousand miles off in Johannesburg – he had been unable to get leave to play in the match.’

  England: 559-9 declared (Hammond 181, Ames 115, Valentine 112, Gibb 58; Gordon 5-157); South Africa: 286 (Nourse 120; Verity 5-70) & 201-2 (Van der Bijl 87, Rowan 89no). Match drawn.

  The tourists moved on to Port Elizabeth, where Hutton hit 202 against Eastern Province and the slumbering giant that was Farnes rediscovered his appetite for wickets, building up a rare head of steam on a pitch of extreme pace. More significantly he carried his form into the third Test in Durban, starting on 20 January. This time the toss proved a profitable one for Hammond to win, and England amassed 469 for four declared in a little over six hours. Paynter stroked a scintillating 243 (334 minutes and 24 fours) to exceed 1,000 runs for the tour, and Hammond an effortless 120, his 20th Test century. Hammond also got his declaration in early for once on a wicket that was mostly easy-paced, allowing his bowlers two days and two sessions to win the game. Moreover, there was just enough grass on the surface to keep them interested.

  Fittingly, in what he considered the most English of South African cities (with its clean streets, good buildings and interest in the arts), Farnes produced his best bowling performance of the series. He captured four for 29 to rout the Springboks for 103 and, sensibly used by Hammond in short bursts, snatched three more after they followed on, 366 behind. Not surprisingly, Mitchell provided the main obstacle to England’s progress, batting 190 minutes for 109 – he even dusted off some handsome cover-drives among his 14 boundaries – before edging a lifting delivery from Farnes to Ames. Bowling to a cordon of slips and encircling close fielders, Farnes unsettled all the South Africans with his pace and accuracy, and put the seal on victory by an innings and 13 runs, claiming the last wicket with a day to spare. Verity, as ever, provided invaluable support with three for 71 from 35 overs.

  Wisden recorded that the light deteriorated badly during the latter stages of the Springboks’ innings though, curiously, none of the batsmen thought to appeal against it. Inevitably Paynter and Farnes shared the headlines but, as Nourse wrote, the result was nothing short of a personal triumph for Hammond: ‘From the moment almost when he won the toss he had the match won for his side. Besides a spirited and flawless century, he switched his bowlers magically. He held magnificent slip catches [five in all] and took a wicket as a bowler just to prove himself the “General” complete.’

  England: 469-4 declared (Paynter 243, Hammond 120); South Africa: 103 (Farnes 4-29) & 353 (Mitchell 109, Rowan 67, Viljoen 61; Farnes 3-80, Verity 3-71). England won by an innings and 13 runs.

  It was also in Durban that Gibb became involved in one of the more bizarre incidents to befall an England cricketer on tour. Yardley explained that a few of the team had managed to acquire some ‘incredibly good but ancient cars for knockabout use’ during their stay in the city. The thought of England’s cricketers careering around the streets of Durban in these ancient vehicles boggles the mind, and demonstrates the level of autonomy granted to players on tour in those days. Gibb had paid a sum of about £5 to become the proud possessor of what he vigorously maintained was an original Ford. But no sooner had he parted with the money and driven off downhill than the car started to spit fire and smoke. He had not gone far when the hill grew steeper, and it was at this juncture, he discovered to his horror, that when he put his foot hard on the brake nothing happened, except the car went faster and faster. Unable to control it, Gibb ended up ploughing through the middle of a fruit stall, where he came to an ignominious and somewhat sticky halt. As luck would have it there was an equally amusing postscript to this misadventure.

  The next morning, having settled up with the indignant stall owner, Gibb somehow managed to humour his vintage Ford through the traffic to Kingsmead, leaving it parked at the ground out of harm’s way before the start of the game. But on reaching the pavilion he was apprehended by a policeman who informed him that, as the car was neither licensed nor insured, he would have to report immediately to a police station. ‘As Paul was everlastingly getting pranks played on him, he simply laughed at the policeman’s momentous gravity, supposing that one of us had given the man a couple of shillings to play a joke on him,’ Yardley related. ‘The more Paul laughed the more portentous the officer became, and the more unable the rest of us were to do anything but hold our sides.’ The matter was eventually resolved, though not without the cost of much embarrassment to Gibb, particularly after it found its way into a newspaper under the headline, ‘Test cricketer in car crash’6.

  After the Test victory at Durban the tourists decamped to Rhodesia for a two-week interlude, where they spent a couple of days at Victoria Falls and took a trip along the mighty Zambezi. Farnes was particularly entranced and felt that he had entered ‘the Africa of my imagination for the first and only time on the tour’. There was some cricket, too, at Bulawayo and Salisbury, against a Rhodesia XI, with both matches played on matting; the country had yet to graduate to turf pitches. The experience would leave an indelible impression on the team. At Bulawayo the bare outfield had to be covered in white sand to enable it to dry after a rainstorm and, according to Farnes, ‘made you feel as if you were playing in snow’. At Salisbury the outfield at least had some grass on it but the game was again badly hampered by rain; so to dry the thick clay that formed the base of the matting wicket, the groundstaff simply doused it in petrol and set it ablaze. After several minutes of leaping flames and thick black smoke, the fixture went ahead as scheduled.

  It was still raining when they returned to Johannesburg for the start of the fourth Test on 18 February. A victory for England at the Wanderers would wrap up the series 2–0 and eliminate the need for the fifth Test in Durban to be played to a finish. However, a draw or even a win for South Africa would ensure a timeless decider. In the end the fourth Test was spoiled by the weather (the third day was a washout) and gave the inescapable impression that everything was building slowly towards a timeless conclusion. England spent what little of the match there was on the back foot, despite Hammond calling correctly at the toss for the eighth successive Test. He had appeared in two minds whether to bat or bowl in the damp conditions, and Duffus reported that he hesitated for an uncomfortably long time before opting to bat7.

  The wicket offered regular assistance to all the bowlers and not a single century was scored. Hutton, with 92 in England’s first-innings total of 215, came closer than anybody before Mitchell bowled him with a ball that spun wickedly. The most potent threat came from Langton, who exploited the conditions so artfully that he produced the best figures by a pace bowler in the series, five for 58 from 19 overs. In a quest for quick runs Melville pushed himself to the top of the order, with Mitchell moving to No. 4 to play the sheet-anchor role, and went on the attack. The switch instantly paid off. The captain hit 67 in an opening partnership of 108 with Van der Bijl at more than a run a minute and declared on 349 for eight, leaving England four hours to save the match.

  They duly did so, reaching 203 for four, but not without an anxious moment or tw
o. Indeed, had Hammond been caught early in his innings off the impressive Gordon, things might have been interesting. Ronnie Grieveson, who gave a highly competent display behind the stumps on his debut, did well to get his glove to a difficult leg-side chance but could not hold onto it. As it was, Duffus wrote, ‘Hammond, having survived, won back his mastery and, in the closing stages, gave a brilliant exhibition of footwork, placing and timing’ to finish unbeaten on 61. And with that, all eyes turned to Durban for the timeless Test.

  England: 215 (Hutton 92; Langton 5-58) & 203-4 (Hammond 61no; Gordon 3-58); South Africa: 349-8 declared (Rowan 85, Melville 67, Mitchell 63). Match drawn.

  Four

  A Threepenny Opera

  ‘The South Africans have got this timeless Test all wrong. Evidently they think that the big idea is to stay in as long as you like and score as slowly as you can’ – William Pollock

  Day one: Friday, 3 March

  One of the South Africans could not bring himself to watch and retreated to the dressing-room where, according to Nourse, ‘he sat, with fingers crossed, hoping to be of assistance to Melville’. The other nine players leaned forward intently over the balcony rail, refusing to take their eyes off the two captains as they made their way out to the middle; most had their fingers crossed, too. The willowy 6 foot 2 inch Melville, some three inches taller than the square-shouldered, thick-set Hammond, drew a threepenny bit from his blazer pocket and showed it to the England captain, before spinning it high into the warm Durban air. After losing four tosses on the bounce to Hammond, Melville had decided to swap his usual half crown for an ordinary threepenny bit, given to him several days earlier by Norman Gordon. The coin, however, came with an assurance.

  Gordon, in fact, had won it off Hutton during the interminable train journey from Johannesburg to Cape Town after the first Test, when the teams travelled together and the pair wiled away the idle hours by playing cards. The Englishman lost half a crown and, being short of change, settled his losses by throwing in a threepenny bit, or a ‘tickey’, as it was known in South Africa. Gordon hung onto the twelve-sided piece and, according to Louis Duffus, handed it to Melville a few days before the timeless Test in Durban, eager for some of his luck to rub off on the captain. ‘If you toss with this you can’t possibly lose,’ he told him.

  On the pavilion balcony the South Africans watched the coin land. ‘Melville bent down anxiously to scan it,’ Nourse recalled, ‘and rose with a smile. Hammond lifted his head and then bowed as Melville said something to him, and we knew in that moment that we had won the first round at least.’ In losing the toss for the first time in nine Tests since becoming England captain, Hammond admitted he had been momentarily distracted by the sight of the new coin and changed his call to tails at the last second. There was a thumbs-up from Melville to the players’ balcony, ‘and jubilantly we went into the dressing-room to tell our team-mate that his crossed fingers had done the trick,’ Nourse added. Seconds later a huge cheer from around the ground set the timeless Test in motion. The whimper would come later.

  All week the talk had been of the timeless Test, and interest in the match was reported to have reached ‘unprecedented proportions’; many of the big hotels in Durban were booked out. The anticipation had been heightened by South Africa’s forthright display in the fourth Test – much of which was credited to the positive influence of Melville and the apparent loss of form by several England players. The tourists, as Farnes pointed out, had given their most ragged performance of the series in Johannesburg: ‘We had prayed for rain and a sticky wicket to bowl on. Now that we had it our bowlers, Hedley Verity and Tom Goddard, who usually account for sides for ridiculously small scores on such wickets, bowled worse than they had ever done in such conditions, and had no luck either.’

  Suddenly, the Springboks’ chances of squaring the rubber were being talked up by the newspapers and embellished in offices, trains and bars across the country. The confidence of the South African selectors was reflected in an unchanged side, announced on the final day of the fourth Test almost two weeks earlier. Grieveson’s sparky presence behind the stumps in Johannesburg appeared to have had a galvanising effect, while ‘Bob’ Newson, having replaced the tearaway Davies as opening bowler, proved an effective and accurate addition to the attack. The batting had a reassuring ring about it, its depth accentuated by the presence of the ever-dangerous Langton at No. 9.

  Inevitably, injury and tiredness were catching up with England, and Hammond had no choice but to tinker with his selection: out went Wilkinson and Goddard (the former on fitness grounds, the latter on lack of form) and in came the mercurial Kent leg-spinner Doug Wright and Reg Perks, the Worcestershire pace bowler, for his first cap. ‘Some of the England players, particularly the bowlers, are showing signs of staleness. I think the whole team has probably passed its peak,’ Pollock informed the readers of the Daily Express.

  Paynter, who had pulled a thigh muscle, was only passed fit on the morning of the match after undergoing a strenuous run around the ground. Once again Hammond had been reluctant to omit Edrich, and the all-rounder retained his place in the XI, leaving Yardley and Bartlett surplus to requirements. The pair could have been forgiven for feeling hard done by. Certainly Bartlett’s attacking credo might have been put to more imaginative use by Hammond, and there appeared nothing to lose in awarding him a first cap. Disappointingly, he was the only member of the party not to appear in a Test during the series.

  Edrich’s 150 against Natal at Pietermaritzburg in the only game before Durban had undoubtedly saved his place – that and his usefulness as a bowler. Made in enervating heat, many were calling it his finest display of the tour, leading MCC to their ninth victory. ‘Although I say it, I did not give a chance in that innings and wondered whether, at this late stage, form was not coming back, after all,’ he said. ‘But that was the trouble – I could not be sure.’ In 11 Test innings since making his debut against Australia at Trent Bridge in 1938 Edrich had managed only 88 runs, with a highest score of 28, and knew better than anyone that this was effectively his last roll of the dice.

  Having achieved their first objective of winning the toss, the Springboks’ tactics, in theory, were simple: to bat as long as possible and to amass as many runs as they could before the wicket started to break up, which in the natural order of things it was bound to do. The mechanics of timeless cricket invariably enable the side that wins the toss to establish supremacy through sheer weight of runs, when the over-prepared wicket is at its best, and then drive home their advantage with the ball on a wearing surface against opponents dog-tired and psychologically demoralised after several fruitless days in the field. As Hammond, who was certainly no apologist for timeless Tests, put it: ‘The idea is to tire the bowlers with a huge score, and then go on and make it bigger still.’ Much, in fact, as England had done to Australia at The Oval seven months earlier, though on that occasion the mishap to Bradman was not part of the original script.

  Few expected the wicket, or indeed the match, at Kingsmead to last beyond five days. As the tourists’ itinerary had allowed for one last fixture – the 19th – against Western Province, starting on 11 March in Cape Town (they would sail for home six days later), there appeared to be ample time for the completion of both games. Nourse had no doubts. ‘Quite obviously the winning of the toss at Kingsmead was of paramount importance,’ he said. ‘Remember, the match was being played in Durban where the weather even in March cannot be relied upon. I had decided that whoever won it would win the match within the week.’

  Gordon’s ‘lucky coin’ had done the trick.

  A blustery sea breeze was blowing almost diagonally across the pitch, noisily rustling the palms and casuarina trees, when Farnes prepared to bowl the first ball of the timeless Test in bright sunshine. Barely 4,000 spectators were in the ground to watch the opening overs, though the numbers would expand steadily throughout the day. The Kingsmead wicket, brown in appearance, with little or no grass, was in marked contrast to th
e one that had offered the bowlers a rare ray of hope during England’s victory there in the third Test in January. The only encouragement was the breeze, providing the possibility of some swing at least for the quicker bowlers, and perhaps a trace of early moisture in the surface, but no more. It was typical of the many over-prepared, artificial pitches that England had encountered on tour – ‘one to gladden groundsmen’s hearts,’ as Pollock put it, ‘never mind about bowler’s hearts.’

  The cricket writer Ralph Barker described Kingsmead as ‘an open ground with no tall stands to spoil the light’, and as such it was equally advantageous to players and spectators alike. It was a pleasant ground and made a welcome change from Johannesburg’s vertiginous skyscrapers and steep stands which, according to Farnes, made it sometimes difficult for players to see the ball. Kingsmead’s single wooden stand and pavilion were on one side of the ground, side-on to the wicket, and the low terracing that encircled the square ‘did not interrupt the view of flat, rather featureless country from the pavilion balconies’. To the right, Barker continued, ‘lay the fringes of the city of Durban, while to the left the field rose into mounds on which were planted trees to commemorate the scoring of a century in a Test match on this ground’. Hammond and Paynter had already planted saplings there in the third match of the series. But such was the number of batsmen who perpetuated the tradition during the timeless Test that it might have warranted a small plantation of its own.

  Farnes, bowling off 11 paces in what was described as ‘a canter rather than a gallop’ (his run-up was considered short even by the standards of the time), started with eight dot-balls to the equally imposing Van der Bijl. Surrounded by three short-legs and an array of slips the 6 foot 4 inch opener bent so low in the crease, Pollock observed, that ‘his body was almost at right angles to his bat’1. At the other end Perks, bowling to Melville, swung the ball in against the breeze at a brisk pace. Runs came ominously slowly.