by James Philip
Allen was aware of Fred Titmus’s ‘unfortunate accident’ and that David Allen was ‘on the sick list’, and expressed concern about ‘Trueman’s back’. Given that ‘the re-establishment of overseas air and shipping routes was a priority of the Emergency Government[84] in England it might soon be possible to fly our replacement players’.
Alec Bedser, somewhat taken aback and in any event in awe of the great man was at a loss as to how to respond. Ted Dexter was anything but ‘awed’ and it was he who dashed off what has become a famous cable.
DEXTER TO ACTING CHAIRMAN OF THE MCC CRICKET COMMITTEE STOP WOULD BE DELIGHTED TO SEE YOU IN AUSTRALIA STOP THE TOUR IS WELL ADVANCED AND NEWCOMERS FROM ENGLAND WOULD HAVE NO CHANCE TO ACCLIMATISE OR TO FIND THEIR FEET BEFORE THE ISSUE OF THE ASHES IS SETTLED ONE WAY OR THE OTHER STOP THE HOME COUNTRY IS MUCH IN OUR MINDS AT ALL TIMES STOP ENGLAND EXPECTS AND WE SHALL NOT LET ANYBODY DOWN STOP ENGLAND EXPECTS MESSAGE ENDS.
Far from welcoming the message from England or the ‘threat’ of having ‘replacements’ foisted upon him ‘willy-nilly’ everybody who encountered the England captain in the Windsor Hotel that evening testifies to his simmering vexation. His partnership with Bedser and Colin Cowdrey in the absence of the Grand Old Duke was proving most amenable and the mood of the party was grimly determined; the last thing he wanted was a ‘big man of the game’ in England meddling in his business.
Allen must have divined as much for forty-eight hours later at the close of the first day’s play in the Second Test he was at pains to emphasise that he had no wish to interfere with ‘current arrangements’ which ‘seem to have been so organised with self-evident competence and panache’.[85]
The Australian side had booked into the Windsor Hotel the previous day and off the field the teams fraternised to an extent which would probably have astonished the cricketing public. Friendships had been formed from previous tours down under and in England and, basically, in a World gone mad it was good sometimes to again encounter a familiar face.
Richie Benaud, asked about the prospect of facing David Larter in ‘his current frame of mind’ smiled: ‘He’s a big fellow but he’s just another bowler.’
It happened that 1962 was the centenary of the first English team to visit Australia and the Melbourne Test was the centre of the celebrations. That week the Windsor Hotel was full of the great and good of the Australian game, The Don – Sir Donald Bradman – and his post-1945 war ‘Invincibles’, and assorted greats of the twenties and thirties rubbed shoulders with the current crop of players and it seemed, everybody who was anybody in Australian cricket was in town.
Before play began on the first morning of the Test the teams were to be on parade to be ‘inspected’ and ‘introduced’ to the Prime Minister, Sir Robert Menzies, the Leader of the Opposition, Labour Party man Arthur Caldwell, Victorian State Premier Henry Bolte, the Governor General, Viscount De L’Isle, the Governor of Victoria, General Sir Reginald Brooks – a former first-class cricketer who despite being badly wounded at Gallipoli later scored hundreds for both Hampshire and the Royal Navy - and numerous other dignitaries. However, few could be in any doubt that the real star of the pre-match ‘evolutions’ was going to be Vice Admiral Julian Wemyss Christopher, Commander-in-Chief of the British Pacific Fleet, Australia’s friend and protector in those first awful, disorientating months after the cataclysm of October 1962.
Big grey warships flying the White Ensign now lay in all Australia’s main ports. Royal Navy men walked the streets of Brisbane, Perth, Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide. And Julian Christopher, tall, patrician and calmly commanding bestrode the diplomatic and political stage as if to the manner born. The Royal Navy stood ready to defend Australian waters against all evil, and he had declaimed ‘we will do what we can for the old, mother country’. In the meantime British Marines and Australian infantrymen kept the peace in Borneo, guarding the vital oilfields of Brunei, and Julian Christopher’s frigates and destroyers – stretched thin – patrolled the sea lanes along which the oil, rubber, tin and the produce of the Orient travelled, uninterrupted to Australasian shores.
Christopher had stood before the Australian Parliament in Canberra and promised ‘the Royal Navy will not desert our friends in these lands in these troubled times; I and my men stand shoulder to shoulder with you’.
The ‘Fighting Admiral’ had played cricket as a schoolboy but spent his twenties and thirties – when not bestriding the deck of one of Her Majesty’s ships – racing yachts and dallying around the fringes of Edward VIII’s circle when he was the playboy Prince of Wales. Christopher had tried and failed to win back the America’s Cup, now in his early sixties he had lost little of his debonair good looks and, it was said, most ladies of a ‘certain age’ recognised the lady-killer twinkle in his blue grey eyes...
In the fanfare of that morning one might have been forgiven for forgetting that the Victorians already in the great coliseum of the Melbourne Cricket Ground – by late morning over eighty thousand had passed through the turnstiles – had actually come to watch the cricket.
The night before at an unusually jocular press conference Ted Dexter had announced several changes to the team which had been defeated at Brisbane. In batting order the eleven would be: David Sheppard, Peter Parfitt, Ken Barrington, Dexter, Colin Cowdrey, Tom Graveney, John Murray (in for Alan Smith), Tony Lock (replacing the injured Fred Titmus), Fred Trueman, Brian Statham and David Larter (replacing Barry Knight).
Dexter had remarked that he and Barrington, who bowled respectable leg-spinners, would fill in if the main bowlers needed to be ‘spelled’ in the anticipated hot weather.
A great rumbling cheer went up when Richie Benaud tossed the coin and Dexter called wrong. Delayed by the pre-match presentations England eventually took the field twenty minutes late; with David Larter loping down to field on the third man boundary as Trueman and Statham marked out their runs.
In England a cricket ball can remain in relatively good condition for whole sessions, in Australia on the harder pitches and dryer outfields it can quickly turn into a scuffed ‘rag’, impossible to shine or in any way clean up or present in any manner remotely useful for an English-type bowler who relies on swinging the ball in the air to take his wickets. Moreover, in Australian conditions the seam of the ball tends to be battered flat after a couple of hours, thereby negating lateral ‘movement’ into or away from the batsmen. Generations of English fast-medium seam and swing bowlers have therefore, found their cricketing prowess emasculated down under. It was for this reason that it was essential for a visiting captain to have a quality spin bowler and at least one genuine ‘fast’ bowler in his pocket for those days when everything conspired against a fielding side.
Much more worried by Fred Trueman’s and Brian Statham’s ability – given half a chance - to make the ball ‘talk’ through the air and off the wicket, the curator of the MCG had prepared – possibly over-prepared – a strip that was almost grassless, bone-hard and had cut the grass on the surrounding square short. Although the grass in the outer was relatively verdant after the recent rains by the time the ball had scudded over the infield and been banged into the wicket a few times it would be for a swing bowler, who needed to preserve the shine on the ball for as long as possible, a nightmare.
For the Australian openers – Lawry and Simpson – at the top of an unchanged order from the victorious First Test, the trick was to survive the first five to ten overs until the ball ‘went off’ and Trueman and Statham lost their initial ‘sting’. Inevitably, this was not an entirely straightforward affair against two of the great bowlers of this, or any other era.
Fred Trueman bowled with the breeze at his back from the Members End; Brian Statham thought about debating the matter but, deciding the breeze would help him duck the new ball back into the right-handers, marked out his run up at the Great Southern Stand End.
Both bowlers found the edge of Bill Lawry’s bat, once the ball whistled between Cowdrey and Graveney standing respectively
at first and second slip without either man moving a muscle, the next over Statham was the unlucky bowler when the ball reached Dexter on the half-volley and the English Captain, uncertain if he had taken a clean catch declined to join his team’s spontaneous appeal. Lawry looked to him; Dexter shrugged and the batsmen remained at the crease. Simpson ‘wore’ a Trueman bouncer and Lawry another but then the ball started to come onto the bat and the runs began to flow.
Enter David Larter who gave every appearance of being off colour in his opening burst. He was economical – his waywardness obviated punishment - despite the fact he seemed to be operating at only three-quarters pace. It was as if he had taken one look at the pitch and despaired. His long run was tentative, old hands quickly pronounced that he ‘did not seem to be getting through his action’ and several times he bowled uncharacteristically front-on slightly round-armed balls, usually some distance wide of the mark.
Australia moved to 70 for 0 at the luncheon interval.
Not all was lost because Fiery Fred had obviously suffered no ill effects from his morning spell and Dexter threw him the ball directly play resumed. As the sun beat down it was evident that the pitch, initially even paced was a little slow and the bounce for Trueman and later Statham of the harmless, tennis ball variety. Nevertheless, Lawry, Simpson and Norm O’Neill[86] were all back in the Pavilion before the tea break arrived. The Australians had ridden their luck that afternoon; and Tony Lock believed that day, and ever afterwards, that he had thrown down Neil Harvey’s wicket before he reached double figures.
At tea Australia had reached 154 for 3; with Harvey on 23 and Peter Burge on 12.
After tea Lock found a little, albeit slow turn which troubled Burge for some minutes until he had ‘worked out his angles’, but not Harvey who was playing one of his ominously fluent innings in which nothing seemed to be happening until one looked at the scoreboard and saw he was about to go to his half-century.
Larter roared back into the attack.
This time he was more ‘himself’ and he had Neil Harvey ‘jumping about’ for a while before, wicketless, he was rested and Ted Dexter asked Ken Barrington to turn his arm over. Whereupon, suddenly presented with what must have seemed like easy pickings Harvey glided a ball into Tony Lock’s hands at short-leg. Nobody believed the catch had ‘stuck’ for a moment – it had come off the full face of Harvey’s bat – and Harvey stared in disbelief for two, three, four seconds before beginning the long walk back to the dressing room.
In Australia where all the grounds were immense open spaces in comparison to even the larger English venues, it was always a very, very long walk back to the Pavilion when one was dismissed.
The next ball Brian Booth pushed forward to a routine leg break which hardly deviated off line and Cowdrey threw up a regulation catch standing next to the keeper.
Watching this at the other end Peter Burge must have been a little perplexed.
The incoming batsman, Alan Davidson asked Burge: ‘What’s going on, mate?’
Nodding at Ken Barrington as he spun the ball from his right to his left hand as he chatted to umpire Colin Egar at the Members Stand End, Burge had replied, candidly: ‘Nothing, mate’.
Davidson allowed his first ball to pass by outside his off stump and then, unaccountably, he repeated the stroke; unfortunately, this ball was Barrington’s googly and instead of spinning gently away came back a fraction and clipped the outside of the off stump so gently that the batsman did not realise he had been ‘castled’ until Tony Lock helpfully observed that one of his ‘bails’ had ‘dropped’.
Australia was suddenly reduced to an unlikely 179 for 6 as Ken ‘Slasher’ Mackay strode out to the middle. He was a man perfectly suited by dint of temperament and technique for the present crisis and he dug in for the long haul while Burge, by far the more gifted batsman of the pair endeavoured to move the scoreboard forward.
Near the close Mackay mis-drove Larter for two fours, and then registered another, this time off his gloves and right shoulder looping over John Murray’s despairing gloves.
At the close of play on the first day Australia finished at 253 for 6; Burge on 43 and Mackay on 27 with Ken Barrington’s leg breaks having claimed 3 for 16 in the evening session. David Larter – the man who had unsettled the Australian upper and middle order - had bowled a dozen overs wicketless during the day at a cost of 59 runs.
Dexter brushed off any suggestion that Len Coldwell would have been ‘steadier’ in the Melbourne heat; and was clearly irritated by journalists keen to discuss his ‘catch that never was’ of the morning.
‘If I think a man’s out I’ll damned well say so! If I don’t know, I won’t!’
The following day was Sunday and thus the rest day.
On New Year’s Eve there was rain in the air as Dexter led his men out into the Lion’s den to renew hostilities. The second new ball having been due late at the close of the first day’s play, he wasted no time throwing the hard red cherry to Fred Trueman expecting it to perform as it would in England for at least an hour or so.
On Saturday it had been David Larter who was ‘off colour’, that morning it was Fiery Fred, bowling stiffly without his customary ‘nip’. Dexter persisted with him, hoping he would loosen up. Brian Statham was, as ever, in his own little bubble patiently, remorselessly working over Peter Burge; pushing him back onto his stumps before seaming practically unplayable deliveries away from his groping defensive bat.
Eager to get away from his tormentor Burge suddenly hared off down the wicket while Ken Mackay was still leaning on his bat handle; the two men met for ‘discussions’ in mid-wicket and after a brief fumble, Statham collected the throw from mid-on and broke the wicket at the non-striker’s end.
288 for 7 soon became 312 all out with the two veteran opening bowlers refusing to let go of the ball until they had claimed the spoils. When Garth McKenzie was out, concluding the innings, caught by Colin Cowdrey at first slip he became Brian Statham’s record-breaking 237th Test victim.
This left an awkward ten minutes to be negotiated by the England openers. David Sheppard survived a torrid first over from Garth McKenzie; only for his long sigh of relief to be abruptly curtailed when, bamboozled by a ball which swung back into him impossibly late in its flight Peter Parfitt departed without having troubled the scorers off the last ball before lunch.
The game was well and truly afoot!
Ken Barrington had hardly marked his guard before he was watching ‘the Reverend’ David Sheppard trudging back to the stands; his off stump uprooted and sent cart-wheeling towards wicket keeper Wally Grout the third ball after lunch.
England 0 for 2!
Ted Dexter called ‘LEG!’ to Umpire Bill Smyth, a Victorian standing in his first Test, looked around the field holding his bat like a broadsword and settled down to face Sheppard’s vanquisher. Garth McKenzie later said that that over before lunch and the ‘three or four’ afterwards were the fastest he bowled in the whole series.
The England captain swayed out of the path of an express delivery that whistled past his nose, and blocked a thunderbolt that almost got under his bat in front of middle stump. The next ball, on a good length about a foot outside his off stump he drove imperiously into the boundary pickets. He tried to repeat the medicine to a similar ball at the end of the over, this time flashing it to the boundary off a thick outside edge over second slip’s head inches above his despairing fingers.
Ken Barrington’s approach was somewhat less spectacular. During a long apprenticeship at Surrey, brought up on the ‘sporty’, often grassy wickets at the Oval prepared for ‘result cricket’, he had evolved a batting technique for all seasons, against all types of bowlers on any kind of wicket. He was the ultimate professional batsman – in the mould of Arthur Shrewsbury, Percy Holmes and Herbert Sutcliffe, Jack Hobbs and Len Hutton – forever hungry for runs and prepared to spend, literally, days at the wicket. Ironically, he had first joined the ground staff at the Oval as a leg-spinner but Surrey a
lready had Laker and Lock, so he had become a batsman. He had arrived in Australia with a Test Match batting average of 52.34 having scored at least fifty in twenty of his fifty international innings. Of men who had played more Tests for England only legends like Jack Hobbs, Percy Sutcliffe and Wally Hammond had higher averages than the Surrey professional.
He was in no hurry that afternoon; it was thirty minutes before he got off the mark while at the other end his captain flirted with self-immolation and crashed boundaries at will.
Suddenly a wicket fell. England 43 for 3; Barrington 1 not out, Dexter caught W. Grout bowled A.K. Davidson for 37.
Colin Cowdrey was a batsman who sometimes looked as if he had so much time to play a shot that his biggest problem was deciding exactly which one to select, and where he wanted to hit the ball. Everything he did was easy on the eye, like some reflection of the legends of the golden age of Edwardian cricket before the Great War...
His bat rang pure and the ball sped away, he turned his wrists to leg at the last moment and strolled an unhurried single; and in between deliveries at the bowler’s end he chatted amiably to the umpire and his score accumulated.
At the other end Ken Barrington could not find his timing, nothing hit the middle of his bat; Cowdrey began to manoeuvre Richie Benaud’s probing leg-spinners around the field, keen to prevent the Australian Captain getting either he or his partner in his sights, knowing that Benaud would have a plan for each of them that depended on bowling ball after ball at the same man.
In mid-afternoon the sun finally probed between the clouds, and as the interval approached the overcast burned away and the heat began to shimmer off the ground.
England had progressed to 95 for 3 at tea; Barrington 17 and Cowdrey 31 not out, still 175 runs adrift of the home side in what every cricket lover now suspected was going to be a relatively low-scoring match unlikely to go the full five day distance. The Australians had the runs on the board and batting last was going to be a trial on a low, slow turning wicket already playing like a fourth day track.
