by James Philip
Do you want to make a match of this?
Queensland 354 for 5 declared; Burge on 172, Grout on 40, 130 runs behind the visitors.
Often in England captains would get together and ‘mention’ what might be a ‘sporty’ target if and when it was in the interests of both parties to seek a positive result. That sort of thing did not happen in Australia where touring teams were involved; or at least, not normally.
That evening Dexter staunchly denied that there had been any ‘conversations’ between him and Mackay other that was, than the customary civilities and banter. Given that Queensland had unleashed Wes Hall upon the MCC openers it was clear that if an ‘arrangement’ had been made it clearly did not involve anything that had happened in the final three-quarters of an hour that evening.
Pullar again fell for a low score (7), this time run out in the middle of a period when both he and David Sheppard were preoccupied with not being on the receiving end of Hall’s opening broadsides. Confronted with Ted Dexter for his last over the West Indian fast bowler became a little ragged and one short pitched delivery ripped ten feet over the batsman and the wicket-keeper’s head to conclude the day with four byes.
MCC had reached 28 for 1; Sheppard (9), Dexter (6).
Regrettably, an overnight storm left half the ground under water so nobody ever found out exactly how ‘sporty’ Ted Dexter would have been on that fourth day.
The party boarded a bus for Toowoomba at the abandonment of the day’s play in mid-afternoon, although nobody troubled to tell the several hundred paying members of the public patiently waiting in the ‘bleachers’ for the outfield to dry sufficiently to allow the match to resume. In those days, as so sadly now, the spectators are rarely accorded the respect or common courtesy they deserve. The more things change the more they remain the same!
Normally, the Queensland match would have been the appetising hors d'oeuvre before the main event, the First Test. The insertion of an extra up country match might, before the tour, have had MCC’s Treasurer rubbing his hands in anticipation but few cricketing cognoscenti thought it was a terribly good idea.
Sitting on the top of the Great Dividing Range west of Brisbane surrounded by verdant agricultural land enriched by volcanic soils, Toowoomba was, by Australian standards, an old town having been founded when Queen Victoria was still young.
Dexter, David Sheppard and the Duke of Norfolk had stayed in Brisbane to meet, and to be briefed by State and Government officials. These sessions were to be a regular occurrence throughout the rest of the tour with at least one member of the Ambassador’s Staff in Canberra effectively travelling with, and by the end of the tour, treated practically as a member of ‘the team’.
From this point on Colin Cowdrey, the vice captain, became the ‘state and country’ skipper, and the party’s CO for the Tasmanian leg of the schedule. Ted Dexter in the meantime was setting out on a path which would inexorably draw him into the world of international affairs and politics.[68]
As his men battered the country bowlers mercilessly around the Toowoomba Athletic Oval before declaring at 301 for 5 in mid-afternoon and the South Queensland Country XI fought with dogged spirit to claim a draw with their score on 177 for 8 at the conclusion of hostilities Dexter, Sheppard and the Duke of Norfolk were being briefed by Vice Admiral Julian Christopher, the C-in-C British Far East Fleet onboard his flagship HMS Ark Royal in Moreton Bay.
This was the day that they discovered the full dimensions of the cataclysm. Until then they had heard rumours and opinions, best and worst scenarios and hoped, above hope, that things were not quite as bad as they might have been; that day the blinkers were removed and the true magnitude of the disaster was writ large.
European civilization north of the Alps and the Pyrenees was gone bar parts of southern and western France. London was no more, likewise the towns of the Thames Estuary, the Weald of Kent, Liverpool was wrecked, York, Leeds, Lincoln, Hull and Grimsby were ‘horribly’ mauled and survey parties were still assessing the carnage in East Anglia; martial law was in effect in the United Kingdom and practically everything, including the railways and the National Health Service had to all intents, broken down, overwhelmed by the catastrophe. Fallout clouds and what was described as the early severe onset of winter added to the misery; while everybody was ‘doing their best and pulling together’ the situation was ‘dire’.
It was feared that at least ten – possibly as many as fifteen – million people had died in England alone and shortages of fuel and foodstuffs, and the non-availability of modern medical services across large areas of the country ‘boded ill’ in the coming months.
‘While our American allies have promised emergency aid,’ Admiral Christopher informed the cricketers, his tone aridly terse, ‘such aid has not thus far materialised.’
There was no doubt that the United States had ‘won’ the war. Several American cities had been hit – although only one, Buffalo was completely destroyed, with Chicago, Seattle, Boston and Houston all partially wrecked - but it was believed at the time that the Soviet Union had been wrecked from end to end. Eastern Europe, Germany, Austria and the Low Countries – and probably, Scandinavia – had also been ‘put to the sword’.
As everybody had assumed it had ‘all started over Cuba’. Nobody knew who had fired the first shot although President Kennedy had already claimed, repeatedly, that when Texas and Florida came under attack he had had no choice but to do the ‘only thing which might save everything that we hold dear’.
Dexter later wrote of that first meeting with Admiral Christopher: ‘A man of a little above my own height, grey blue eyed and with a commanding presence that instantly galvanised the room when he entered, the ‘fighting admiral’ who had so distinguished himself in command of destroyer and cruiser squadrons in the Second War, told us the bad news without flinching, and then, and I shall never forget this as long as I live, declared; no matter, we still have the Navy and while our ships still float there will always be hope.’
Even then so soon after the war the C-in-C’s Staff were drawing up detailed plans, blueprints which by the summer had become the basis for Operation Manna[69].
That evening as Dexter and Sheppard were reunited with the MCC party freshly returned to Brisbane from Toowoomba, the selection of the eleven to face the Australian’s less than thirty-six hours hence in the bear pit of the Woolloongabba – the ‘Gabba’ – must have seemed almost incidental to Dexter and his fellow selectors.
Chapter 11 | First Test
Cynics maintain that there is a very good reason why the Australian authorities make the Brisbane Cricket Ground – ‘’the Gabba’ – the opening venue in any major cricketing ‘Test’ series. In more recent times the place might have been somewhat ‘gentrified’, its facilities renewed and improved and around it the city itself has shrugged off its frontier feel and attitudes; but in November 1962 it was the nearest thing the Australian nation had to a cricketing gladiatorial arena.
This author unashamedly resorts to quoting, verbatim and at length the words of one who knew ‘the Gabba’ and its environs in those days[70]:
‘I am all in favour of robbing Queensland of its greatest cricketing occasion, for the ground depresses. It is not a cricket ground at all. It is a concentration camp! Wire fences abound. Spectators are herded and sorted out into lots as though for all the world this was a slave market and not a game of cricket. The stands are of wood and filthy to sit on. The dining rooms are barns, without a touch of colour or a picture on the wall. Everywhere there is dust and dirt... The field is rough, although the wicket is usually a good one until it rains. Then it is a strip of turf with thousands of demons prancing up and down... Forgive me if I am bitter about the Woolloongabba ground...the city has many good points, and the people who live there are generous and hospitable to the highest degree, but once one goes to the cricket ground the advantages are overwhelmingly lost in the mass of rules and regulations...’
Cricket had been played on th
e ground since 1896 and the first Sheffield Shield match in 1931. Australia had won all but one of the eight Tests played in Brisbane since 1945, and the other match, against West Indies in 1960 had been the first ‘tied’ contest in the eighty-five year history of Test cricket!
The first morning of the series was burning hot without the tropical humidity sometimes encountered in Brisbane, or any threat of the torrential rain which often deluged the coast overnight. This said, in recent days the wind had veered unpredictably, sometimes northerly, or gustily from the eastern expanse of the Coral Sea and that made forecasting the weather even an hour or so in advance something of a puzzle.
In Geoff Pullar’s absence – he had cracked a rib, or rather, Wes Hall had cracked two of his ribs for him in the Queensland match – David Sheppard found himself listed to open with the young left-handed tyro Peter Parfitt. Ken Barrington was to bat at three, followed by Dexter, Cowdrey, Tom Graveney, Barry Knight, wicketkeeper Alan Smith – which surprised the journalistic community somewhat as he had shown little real form with the bat thus far and John Murray was generally acknowledged to be the better stumper – Fred Titmus, Trueman and Statham. Before the toss Dexter had blithely discounted worries over Graveney’s recurring fibrosis, referring to it as nothing worse than ‘passing tennis elbow’.
Richie Benaud’s Australians – fit and ready for battle - were as named the previous weekend: Bill Lawry and Bobby Simpson at the top of the order, Norm O’Neill at the fall of the first wicket, followed by Neil Harvey (in what was expected to be his last home Ashes series), Peter Burge, Brian Booth, Alan Davidson, Ken Mackay, Richie Benaud, Wally Grout behind the stumps, and fast bowler Garth McKenzie.
Eying the sun-baked cracks already evident in the wicket and how they might play into the hands of Benaud, and the better than part time leg breaks of Simpson later in the contest, Dexter must have been even more anxious than usual at the toss. In the event he called ‘heads’ and the coin fell ‘tails’, and thereafter, practically everything that could go wrong for England did!
Fred Trueman opened the bowling from the Stanley Street End; Brian Statham from the Vulture Street End. In front of over twenty thousand baying spectators Colin Cowdrey dropped Bobby Simpson at first slip – a regulation waist high catch - before he had scored off a monumentally exasperated Trueman, and Lawry ought to have been stumped just before lunch off Titmus, otherwise the Australians ground the visitors into the dust until Fred Titmus hit one of the already opening cracks, the ball reared at Simpson and he was finally dismissed for 123. Enter Norm O’Neill who drove the next ball for four.
At the close of play on day one: Australia 307 for 1; Lawry (107) and O’Neil (64) unbeaten.
It was hardly an auspicious first day for the tourists.
On the second morning apart from a couple of deliveries from Brian Statham which hit the edges of cracks it was more toil beneath a burning sun. Only Bill Lawry’s apparent lack of ambition slowed the Australian’s remorseless progress.
One of the Statham deliveries removed O’Neill for 77 but this only hastened Neil Harvey to the wicket. When unexpectedly he was bowled off an inside edge off Trueman fifteen minutes before lunch two short of yet another half-century a dreadful moan circled the ground. Peter Burge followed him back to the pavilion shortly after lunch and Lawry, perhaps wilting after a day-and-a-half in the heat was trapped, statuesque in front of middle stump by a ball that kept a little low from Ted Dexter for 148. Much to the crowd’s disenchantment Ken ‘Slasher’ Mackay then embarked on a typically pedestrian innings while Alan Davidson, and then Richie Benaud took easy runs of an exhausted attack.
Australia had eventually declared on 517 for 8; and England had crabbed to 11 for 0 wicket at the close.
England’s bowling had not impressed. Trueman and Statham had looked relatively innocuous, Knight and Dexter had both conceded runs at over four an over and only Fred Titmus – taking 3 for 91 off 44 gruelling eight-ball overs had exerted any modicum of control.
The next day was Sunday but knowing that all that awaited them was a three-day fight against the odds to save the match on a deteriorating wicket, few Englishmen were sanguine in their thoughts as they rested by the hotel pool or re-hydrated in the bar. Moreover, as they listened to the rain hammering down in the early hours of Monday morning they – rightly as it turned out – had nightmares about facing Alan Davidson’s mesmeric ‘swingers’ in the humidity of a post storm opening session in the cauldron of the Gabba.
He swings it this way.
He swings it that way.
The ball thumps into pads.
The bat cleaves through thin air.
Edges fly hither and thither.
Stumps rattle behind a lunging forward defensive stroke...
Parfitt and Sheppard survived for twenty-five minutes and then the mayhem ensued. Ted Dexter strode to the wicket like Christ come to cleanse the Temple; three balls later his middle stump cart wheeled into space. He was the second of Garth McKenzie’s victims that morning, blasted out. The other six men to fall fell to Davidson’s mastery of line, length and often extravagant swing. At one time the ball was hooping around so extravagantly no man could get an edge on it. Colin Cowdrey, playing with grace and apparently, all the time in the world held out, now and then casually stroking the ball to one of the ninety yard boundaries. He was 37 at the break out of his side’s 87 for 8 with Fred Trueman swinging unavailingly, much in the manner of a drunken lumberjack for 11 at the other end.
Tropical sunshine had burned off the humidity over the luncheon interval; suddenly the ball was coming down barrel straight from the three Australian seamers; Davidson, McKenzie and Mackay. Fiery Fred’s agricultural mows and heaves began to hurry the score along; a thing Richie Benaud soon put a stop to by bringing himself into the attack.
Cowdrey went to his fifty; Trueman holed out in the deep and Brian Statham was almost comically bamboozled by Benaud’s ‘googly’ – a ball that breaks into rather than away from a right-handed batsman – and England were all out for 144 in less than forty eight-ball overs.
England was 373 runs behind at a little after two o’clock on the third day of the First Test.
As if to twist the knife, with two-and-a-half days still to play, Benaud decided that Australia would drag England’s stiff, weary and decidedly ‘cheesed off’ bowlers out into the field again to administer still more punishment, rather than to invite Dexter’s men to bat again.
If the home supporters narrowed their eyes and looked to each other in bemusement because of their captain’s decision not to enforce the follow on[71]; Dexter’s response soon had all Australians scratching their heads. Setting ultra defensive fields, the only close catcher other than the wicketkeeper being Fred Trueman fielding at a position half-way between leg slip and leg gully, and with Brian Statham relegated to cover point, the England captain opened the bowling in company with Barry Knight.
Given that it was Bill Lawry who had accompanied Bobby Simpson to the middle, Dexter said that evening that he had divined that as Benaud’s motive in batting again was not to score ‘quick runs’, he had determined – unashamedly – to ‘further slow things down’, operating on the principle that one should always try to do the very thing one’s opponent does not want you to do!
Up until the tea break Dexter and Knight, bowling mainly on the batsmen’s legs or down the leg side effectively halted the game moving forward. Eleven overs produced fourteen runs and no little existential angst in the grandstands and in the Australian dressing room.
Benaud would have been scathing had he not got wind of an unprecedented tea time contretemps within the English camp.
‘Look here, Dexter!’ The Duke of Norfolk had protested, coming up to his captain while he was in conversation with Fred Trueman. ‘What the Devil is going on out there?’
The Earl Marshal of England – who had a habit of wagging his finger when he was agitated - had also wanted to know why the ‘two finest opening bowlers in the World
’ had not yet been employed. As for the employment of ‘leg theory’ the Grand Old Duke was positively aghast.
Dexter, somewhat hot and bothered after bowling for nearly an hour in temperatures of over ninety degrees; had at first retained an air of respectful deference.
But then the Duke had made a remark about ‘it not being cricket, Dexter!’
This was like waving a red flag in front of a bull.
‘Neither is rolling over and surrendering, sir!’ His captain had retorted with testy patience.
Fred Trueman, never a man to step back when there was a fire to be fanned had put his two pennies’ worth into the debate.
‘You and that bugger Benaud might want to see me and Brian running around that field like two carthorses in the sun but there’s still four Test matches to play after this one!’
It was at this point that the Earl Marshal had ill-advisedly wagged a patrician finger in the face of the land’s premier fast bowler.
‘And,’ Trueman had added, ‘the days when the like of you lift your finger and the likes of me jump are over,’ he declared, after a second or so remembering to add, somewhat sourly: ‘Your Grace.’
Trueman had shaken his head and walked away.
‘I didn’t dismiss him,’ the Duke murmured in complaint.
Dexter meanwhile – in a scene witnessed by several cricket correspondents and half the MCC party – was so angry there was very nearly steam coming out of his ears.
‘I resent your remark about it not being cricket, sir!’
The older man had blinked at him as if he mistrusted his ears.
‘Dammit, man. We can have nothing to do with ‘bodyline tactics’...’
