by John Lazenby
Once again it was Perks who came to England’s aid when, with the score on 475 for six, he forced Nourse to drag an attempted pull into his stumps after making 103. It was an innings entirely out of character – he would never bat so painstakingly again in his career – but one, he maintained, that was completely in character with the demands of the game and of putting the Springboks into a winning position: ‘The only joy in its execution was the knowledge that I was getting my own back on the bowlers, particularly Verity, and that it would better serve the cause of our bowlers when their turn came. An obstinate delight in holding out their bowlers and keeping them in the field made the slow progress more palatable than it might otherwise have been. The spectators bore the snail’s pace with stoic calm.’
Incredibly enough, the young Dudley Nourse had to learn his cricket ‘off his own bat’ and without any assistance from his famous father. Between 1902 and 1924 ‘Dave’ Nourse was the batting rock on which South Africa’s Test game was cast, and the call of duty kept him away from home for much of that time; he was touring with the Springboks in Australia when Dudley was born on 12 November 1910. He was reputed to have given his son just one piece of advice when it came to the art of batting: ‘I learnt to play the game with a paling off a fence. Now you go and do the same.’
Dudley Nourse did as he was told and became the acknowledged ‘king of street cricket’, a young batsman who cultivated his craft in the thoroughfares and parks of Durban, rather than in the nets. Essentially self-taught, his batting style was often described as rough-hewn, but one that was not without the ‘occasional glitter of polish’, in the words of the journalist Denzil Batchelor. Duffus referred to it as the ‘rough wrought metal’ of his cricket. More incredibly, his father never saw him play until he was 22, by which time he had established himself in the Natal XI and was only two years away from embarking on his first tour of England, with Herbert Wade’s victorious team of 19353.
Grieveson, in the company of Langton, pressed on confidently after Nourse’s dismissal, completing his half-century and taking South Africa past 500 with a well-timed boundary off Verity through midwicket. Astonishingly, it was the first conceded by the Yorkshireman since the afternoon session of the opening day. Grieveson had reached an accomplished 75 when he gifted Perks a fifth wicket by edging a long hop into his stumps, attempting to collect his fourth boundary. ‘Few international cricketers of this country won distinction so quickly,’ Duffus wrote of the 29-year-old wicketkeeper. ‘There were no frills to his batting, but there was a pervading sense of quality.’
Verity claimed the last two wickets just before three o’clock, wrapping up the innings for 530 after 13 hours’ batting, though not before South Africa had registered their highest Test score and Langton had driven him high over the sightscreen for six, with what Duffus described as a ‘wild whoop’. Perks earned the noble figures of five for 100 from 41 energetic overs, while Verity, who rarely bowled a bad delivery in 446 balls (55.6 overs), finished with two for 97, with 14 maidens.
South Africa: 530 (Van der Bijl 125, Nourse 103, Melville 78, Grieveson 75, Dalton 57; Perks 5-100).
England replied cautiously but lost Gibb shortly before tea with the total on nine, feathering a rising delivery from Newson into the gloves of Grieveson, much to the delight of 6,000 spectators. Paynter joined Hutton at the wicket under a darkening sky, and the pair had to scrap and scrape for survival with run-scoring opportunities few and far between. Paynter took 20 minutes to get off the mark and Gordon bowled three maidens on the trot, exploiting the conditions expertly in tandem with Langton, who beat the bat on numerous occasions to draw gasps from the crowd. Hutton relieved the pressure with a couple of crisp square-cuts to the boundary before, inevitably, a combination of bad light and rain brought the third day to a close with England on 35 for one. ‘It was not a good foundation for a prospective innings of over 500 runs,’ Paynter remembered.
The chatter around the ground was that the momentum had started to shift in favour of the Springboks – the newspapers would certainly say as much the following morning – and batting would only get harder as the match progressed. England’s first objective was to avoid the follow-on, in conditions that were expected to assist the bowlers; the weather forecast was for more humidity and cloud cover. That night the England players heard the familiar patter of rain on the streets outside their hotel, and wondered whether the pitch could repeat its powers of rejuvenation for a second day in succession.
England: 35-1, trail South Africa (530) by 495 runs.
Five
The Cut-Price Test
‘By all precedents South Africa were already in a winning position’ – Louis Duffus
Day four: Tuesday, 7 March
There was the usual huddle of spectators and groundstaff crowded around the middle before the start of play on the fourth day, indulging in what had already become one of the timeless Test’s many rituals: diagnosing the state of the wicket. Made from a rich clay-like soil extracted from the nearby Umgeni River, the wicket had one enduring quality: it knitted together in the wet and rolled out as good as new. Despite the previous night’s downpour, the strip remained unmarked after three punishing rounds. Once more, the corner men had worked their magic.
Indeed, far from hastening the conclusion of the Test, as many had predicted, the rain appeared to be protracting it. ‘The pitch was soft, but the heavy roller was used twice before play started and ironed out the surface,’ Duffus reported. Not that England’s batsmen were expecting a comfortable ride. The breeze had died away but there was a canopy of clouds and moisture in the air to aid the bowlers, especially Gordon and Langton. ‘The prediction was that, without further rain, the pitch would assist the bowlers for an hour or so and then become plumb,’ Duffus added. If the Springboks were going to knock over the batsmen quickly and enforce the follow-on, they would need to make their incursions early, while the conditions remained in their favour. Instead, England handed them a wicket on a plate.
There were only a few hundred spectators in the ground when Newson bowled the first over to Paynter, though as ever those numbers would swell later in the day, or sooner if South Africa made a sensational start. Newson had trouble locating the stumps with his first six balls but the seventh thudded into Paynter’s pads and the left-hander survived a concerted appeal for leg-before. Langton bowled a typically testing spell to Hutton and runs came sporadically, only nine in the first half-hour. ‘Hutton and Paynter were soon patting and prodding at the pitch when back at the old address this morning,’ Pollock wrote. The pair had added a further 20 runs to the total, and were still treating the wicket with a mixture of suspicion and the utmost caution, when Hutton, on 38, played a ball from Gordon to Van der Bijl at mid-on and moved purposefully out of his crease. Paynter responded immediately and was halfway down the wicket before his partner shouted, ‘No,’ but the little Lancastrian kept coming and Van der Bijl’s return to Gordon left Hutton stranded in the middle of the track. ‘It was a deplorable business,’ Pollock judged. ‘Paynter could have got safely back if he had done what Hutton told him to.’
Hammond’s arrival at the wicket on 64 for two did little to accelerate the scoring rate, or suggest permanence. He was not at his best and spent almost 30 minutes marooned on three, tied down by the bowling of Gordon, who swung the ball dangerously late from an exacting length. Gordon had delivered a similarly awkward spell to the England captain in the fourth Test in Johannesburg, and Nourse declared that it was the first time he had seen Hammond look worried at the crease: ‘To watch him in acute discomfort was a new experience for me.’
At the other end Paynter was performing his own go-slow, neglecting all but the easiest scoring opportunities, aware that his first objective was to keep his wicket intact. It was during this pivotal point in the game that Melville’s undemonstrative but shrewd captaincy gained in authority. His attacking field changes and placings, made with no more than a barely discernible movement of the finger, like
a secret sign, were instantly spotted by his fielders and eagerly acted on; their returns, whipped in over the top of the stumps to Grieveson, intensified the pressure on the batsmen.
Hammond grew increasingly impatient. He had failed to despatch a single boundary and, after taking the score to 125 and completing a 50-run partnership with Paynter after lunch, he skipped down the wicket to Dalton’s leg-spin, drove at fresh air and was stumped by Grieveson for 24. It was a quicksilver piece of work, Duffus pointed out, ‘as the ball had been deflected by the batsman’s pads’. Ames’s uncluttered approach to batting perfectly mirrored his wicketkeeping and he announced himself with a couple of confident straight drives to the ropes after replacing Hammond. As Duffus duly noted, ‘There was no occasion during the tour when Ames did not play bold enterprising cricket.’
Paynter, though, struggled on. He was dropped in the slips by Melville off the luckless Gordon on 46 and beaten time and again outside off stump, before eventually reaching his half-century in 220 minutes – slower than it had taken Van der Bijl and Nourse to compile theirs. He had been unable to throw off the cares of timeless cricket and, for a batsman who invariably brought a blast of fresh air with him to the wicket, it was an innings played entirely against type: stale and flat. After adding 44 with Ames, however, his luck ran out and he was trapped in front by a Langton off-cutter, having struck only three boundaries in his 62. At 169 for four, with the ground slowly starting to fill up, Edrich walked out to the middle with more than just a hint of crisis in the air.
Two runs later his wretched Test form continued when he was deceived by a cleverly disguised slower ball from Langton, played too soon and prodded it straight to Rowan at silly mid-on, who devoured the catch. Edrich admitted he had been so consumed by nerves during his short stay that it was like batting under ‘a black shadow’. His confidence was shot: ‘I could not see the ball properly; I felt for it desperately . . .’ He was replaced at the wicket by Valentine – a batsman, conversely, with enough chutzpah to supply an entire team and still have some left over. The crisis swiftly turned into an adventure, and for the first time in the match the scoring rate romped above a run a minute. The Kent pair contributed 58 in 55 minutes to the total, bringing ‘a reviving breath of festival Canterbury to the solemnities’, as the inimitable R. C. Robertson-Glasgow phrased it in Wisden 1.They enjoyed themselves so much they did not even bother to appeal against the fading light, and Ames bustled to his half-century in 97 minutes. Duffus observed how they ‘scampered up and down the wicket as though competing in a race against time . . . indulging in cheerful banter’.
It could not last, of course, and with the total on 229, Valentine’s cameo came to an end at 26 when he overreached himself against Dalton, dancing down the track to become Grieveson’s second stumping victim of the innings and the sixth England wicket to fall. Dalton bowled Verity for three soon after – 245 for seven – with a ball that dipped and turned but Ames continued to play a brilliant hand, taking 11 off one Dalton over, before even he conceded it was too dark to carry on. When play was again suspended early for the day, Ames was unbeaten on 82 and England were teetering at 268 for seven. ‘It was significant,’ Pollock concluded, ‘that the only England batsman who really batted in his ordinary, normal fashion, Leslie Ames, came off best.’
England: 268-7 (Ames 82no, Paynter 62) trail South Africa (530) by 262 runs.
Day five: Wednesday, 8 March
Admission prices had been reduced by the time the game ticked over into its fifth day. The announcements, made during the previous day’s play, rang and reverberated around a ground that was often barely half-full, despite South Africa’s commanding position. The crowds had declined significantly since Saturday’s pinnacle of 11,000, and the public address announcements lent a somewhat farcical quality to proceedings. The absurdity of the situation was certainly not lost on Pollock. ‘It has been broadcast that if the match goes beyond Tuesday, the prices of admission will be reduced,’ he wrote, before adding: ‘The announcer omitted to say on Tuesday of what week.’ His humour remained as indestructible as the pitch itself.
Further reductions followed during Wednesday’s play, prompting one South African newspaper to suggest that the timeless Test should be renamed ‘the cut-price Test’. Pollock mused whether a game in which only one side had completed a full innings in four days, and the public already appeared to have given up on, was not becoming ‘a sort of bargain sale’. Despite this, the receipts for the first five days of the timeless Test would realise £3,640 – a record for Kingsmead.
Ames, who had at least given the crowd their money’s worth on Tuesday in an innings that radiated class, added only two more runs to his overnight score when play resumed in warm sun and a gentle sea breeze. No more than 500 spectators had taken advantage of the admission reduction when Ames, attempting to hit his eighth boundary, drove Langton fiercely on the up into the covers, where Dalton leapt and pulled off a breathtaking two-handed catch. ‘It seemed that Melville just touched the ball as it flew past him at silly mid-off,’ Duffus reported. It was a hammer blow for England, whose chances of beating the follow-on, slim at best, disappeared with Ames. Farnes and Wright, however, used the long handle to good effect, taking the score past 300, before Newson and Dalton – with his fourth wicket of the innings – delivered the final thrust. England were bowled out for 316, made in seven hours and 38 minutes in what had amounted to an anxious and fragmented performance.
England: 316 (Ames 84; Dalton 4-59) trail South Africa (530) by 214 runs.
Bob Crisp, the former South African fast bowler, adventurer and twice conqueror of Mount Kilimanjaro, turned Fleet Street journalist, judged that England were already a beaten side. ‘Their fall is imminent,’ he wrote, with his usual unassailable confidence in the Daily Mail on Wednesday morning. ‘Even allowing for all the traditional uncertainties of cricket, it seems impossible that they can extricate themselves from their difficult position.’ Melville, he added, was unlikely to enforce the follow-on – ‘That would be foolish except on a sticky wicket’ – and concluded: ‘But if we cannot tell you when it will end, we can tell you how it will end, in the defeat of England.’2
Melville, as predicted, did not enforce the follow-on, despite a lead of 214. The South African captain, who had spent much of England’s innings carrying a leg injury, dropped himself down the order instead, sending in Mitchell in his place to open with Van der Bijl. Or to put it another way, as Robertson-Glasgow did, ‘Melville was dead lame. But he could still speak. So on they went.’ Pollock observed that the game was already taking its toll on the players, and ‘some of the South Africans had looked just about done in this fifth morning. Melville’s right leg was so stiff that it took him a long time to cross over between overs, and Van der Bijl evidently found it difficult to run or bend’. According to Nourse the prospect of putting England in again had not even been up for discussion: ‘This was an opportunity for piling on the agony and making perfectly certain of victory by leaving England an impossible total in the final innings when the wicket must be showing signs of wear.’
Hammond disagreed and believed that by foregoing the chance to make England bat again, Melville had made a blunder he would come to regret. ‘We might have lost the match if we had done so, for we were tired and the pitch was not too good,’ he commented later. ‘There is always a disheartening feeling about following on in a Test.’
The wicket, in fact, was starting to display its first battle scars, where the footmarks of the bowlers had left a tracery of scratches and scuff marks, but the turf remained iron-hard, still packed with runs. Reunited as an opening pair, Mitchell and Van der Bijl gave South Africa’s second innings the perfect launch, quickly removing the sting from England’s opening attack and rubbing in their dominance at every opportunity. Things had not augured well for England from the moment the ball slipped from Farnes’s grasp as he was about to propel the first delivery, and his return bout with Van der Bijl did not materialise. Perks ev
en resorted to releasing the ball from some two or three yards behind the bowling crease, just for the sake of trying something different or to combat the boredom, and Ames was soon standing up to the stumps to both fast men. ‘Van der Bijl, with his old enemy Farnes reduced to medium pace or resting in the sun instead of buffeting him with fast bumpers, scored more quickly than Mitchell,’ Pollock reported.
At one point a voice in the crowd boomed out: ‘You’ll still be here at Christmas.’ The bleak image seemed to stick inside the heads of the fielders and two chances went astray; Wright was the unfortunate bowler on both occasions. Verity spilled the first, reprieving Van der Bijl at short-leg though, as Pollock suggested, ‘he did not appear to be fully awake . . . He wasn’t the only one in that state by a long chalk’. A little later Paynter, fielding in the same position, put down a relatively simple chance from Mitchell. The half-century stand arrived in 65 minutes, and when the score reached 86 the Springboks were 300 ahead and work on another mighty foundation was well under way. ‘By all precedents South Africa were already in a winning position,’ Duffus insisted.
Van der Bijl was the first to his half-century after 124 minutes, and Mitchell reached his soon after, twice square-cutting loose deliveries from Wright to the boundary; the 150 came up in 187 minutes. Farnes, whose battles with both men raged long and hard during the series, was ungrudging in his praise for the opening pair. His repeated attempts to blast Van der Bijl from the crease may have strayed over the line on occasion but had been countered, he readily acknowledged, by a batsman with the heart of a prizefighter. ‘He played with great determination and concentration,’ he wrote in Tours and Tests. ‘An excellent judge of the ball to leave alone, he was very hard to shift indeed, and moved across the wicket to play the ball farther than anyone I have seen. Being slow-footed he was expected to be prey for the spinners, but had generally the better of them.’ His remarks typified the respect and high regard that the teams formed for each other’s abilities. It was Mitchell’s wicket, though, that Farnes prized above all others: ‘When I consider South Africa’s batting, Mitchell stands out in my mind as the dominating figure. At times he was painfully slow, and probably felt his responsibility greatly. But he was always so sound, and stands upright at the crease, gently swaying his bat with a quiet, reserved indolence.’
