Cricket On The Beach (Timeline 10/27/62 - Australia)

by James Philip

  [48] My Aunt had become estranged from my grandfather in the fifties during my grandmother’s final illness. She and my father – separated by several years in age – and by childhoods spent in separate boarding schools had never been close. Oddly, it was only after my mother and father came to Australia in 1966 that relations were re-established and brother and sister eventually became lifelong friends (much of which, I suspect was my mother’s doing).

  [49] Twenty-six year old Barbadian, Garfield St Aubrun Sobers, already one of the greatest all round cricketers in the history of the game, an automatic pick for either his batting or his bowling in any conceivable World XI of that era.

  [50] Re-designated British Pacific Fleet on 1st December 1962.

  [51] This was a purely administrative courtesy since such facilities were already available ‘on demand’ under existing bi-lateral naval agreements. Immediately after the war Christopher had taken the bulk of his fleet north intending to offer all possible support – disaster relief – to the Japanese authorities; an intention thwarted by the US Seventh Fleet’s decision to refuse to co-ordinate operations and fleet re-supply at sea.

  [52] Sir Peter Julian Christopher, VC.

  [53] Murray Louis Tyrrell, an Australian civil servant who had been the Official Secretary to the Governor General since 1947.

  [54] The Commander-in-Chief of the ill-fated British Expeditionary Force in France in 1940.

  [55] In the event this author’s father, Sir Peter Julian Christopher, VC, had the singular honour to be the last non-native born Governor General of Australia.

  [56] Victorian Robert Neil Harvey, then thirty-four years old who had first played for Australia in 1948.

  [57] Now Sydney (Kingsford Smith) Airport.

  [58] First-Class cricket in England resumed in a small way in 1964; with a Country Championship, featuring fourteen of the pre-war seventeen counties fielding teams in a much reduced fixture list resuming in 1965.

  [59] Twenty-nine year old Brian Charles Booth who had first played for his country against England in 1961.

  [60] Thirty-three year old Alan Keith Davidson, the finest left-arm swing bowler of his generation who had first played for Australia in 1953.

  [61] Although there were several cricket journalists in the room nobody actually took contemporaneous shorthand notes so the author craves his readers’ indulgence insofar as he has attempted to paraphrase Dexter’s words as accurately as possible.

  [62] John Warr’s description.

  [63] Twenty-five year old Barbadian Wesley Winfield Hall, possibly the fastest bowler in the game.

  [64] Kenneth Donald Mackay.

  [65] Twenty-five year old Thomas Robert Veivers, who bowled right-arm and batted left, later played several Tests for Australia.

  [66] Twenty-eight year old Samuel Christy Trimble would, had it not been for the settled Test opening partnership of Lawry and Simpson, almost certainly have played many times for his country.

  [67] Thirty year old Peter John Parnell Burge had made his Test debut in 1955 and been a fixture in the Australian middle order for many years.

  [68] Dexter was elected as an Independent Conservative on the Surrey and South London List in the March 1965 General Election.

  [69] But no more of this herein. Operation Manna deserves to be, and is the subject of another book.

  [70] John Kay in his book ‘1950-51 Ashes Series’.

  [71] At that date the follow on was 150 runs in a match that was 3 or more days long, 100 in a 2-day match, and 75 runs in a one day match. The rule increasing the follow on to 200 runs in a 5-day Test Match was not introduced until many years later.

  [72] Several waves of ‘infection’ – ‘contagion’ some experts postulate – swept the northern half of the Australian continent during 1963 resulting in mortality rates comparable and in some locations worse than that recorded during the Spanish Lady’ pandemic of 1918 to 1920.

  [73] At least four separate ‘disease nexuses’ were eventually identified for successive waves of the infections which beset Australasia in the period December 1962 to June 1965; the MCC Party coincidentally ‘passed through’ one of these as witnessed by the illness contracted in Brisbane by David Allen.

  [74] Migrants from North America were soon required to prove that they were not going to be a burden on the Australian, or the New Zealand State; from February 1963 onwards both governments charged a ‘settlement fee’ of the equivalent to US $35,000 to any US citizen who was resident for more than three months in any two year period.

  [75] The Duke’s perambulations would eventually help to pave the way to Commonwealth military and economic co-operation beyond the scope of what became Operation Manna. Some credit him with ‘laying the foundation’ for the Commonwealth Mutual Assistance and Free Trade Agreement (CMAFTA) eventually initialled at the Manhattan Conference in 1965.

  [76] The so-called ‘Saint Paul Incident’ is covered in ‘Operation Manna’.

  [77] Indeed, practically every cricketer – or ‘ghost writer’ – who put pen to paper about the subject of the ‘October War Tour’ referred to that evening in his memoire of those times.

  [78] Later Sir Henry Bolte (appointed a Knight Commander of the Order of St. Michael and St. George (KCMG) in the honours list of April 1965).

  [79] Twenty-one year old Ian Richie Redpath.

  [80] Twenty-seven year old left-arm fast bowler Ian Meckiff had first played for Australia in 1957 but his awkward, front on bowling action had brought up allegations of ‘throwing’ on the 1958-59 MCC tour and controversy clung to Meckiff ever after.

  [81] A thing they did during Australia’s first two post-October War tours of England when Lawry was captain of Australia and Cowdrey of England.

  [82] Thirty-three year old Leslie Ernest Favell had played 19 Tests for his country between 1954 and 1961 without ever quite doing justice to his talents.

  [83] Allen, a member of the London Stock Exchange who lived in St John’s Wood had survived the October War because he had been staying with friends in Cambridge after attending a function at his alma mater, Trinity College.

  [84] Nobody in the United Kingdom actually called the ‘United Kingdom Interim Emergency Administration’ by its correct name for many months after the war – to all and sundry it was just the ‘Emergency Administration or Government’.

  [85] In the event injuries, the wish of several men to return to England and the exigencies of the preparations for Operation Manna led to several replacements being sent out from England to complete the New Zealand leg of the tour in March 1963.

  [86] When Brian Statham bowled Norm O’Neill he claimed his 236th Test wicket, equalling Alex Bedser’s record.

  [87] Allen’s letter of complaint to the Prime Minister, Rt. Hon. Edward Heath survives in the National Archives at Oxford. Allen wanted to convene a meeting of the Imperial Cricket Council in Australia and was seeking ‘travel warrants and documentation’ to ‘secure official paid air passage for’ a list of notables from among other places South Africa and the Indian sub-continent.

  [88] The ‘money problem’ was probably more down to inertia and incompetence than the mendacity, or otherwise, of Gubby Allen. If the ‘self-appointed’ new great men of English cricket back home were guilty of anything at this time it was of failing to speak with a single voice, a case of too many cooks rather than Machiavellian intent. The question of the ‘Australian tour monies’ was not finally resolved until April 1965.

  [89] The Imperial Cricket Council was never fully resuscitated. In 1965 the Commonwealth Cricket Council was established and with the acquiescence of the Indian and Pakistani Boards of Control this became, in 1968, the International Cricket Board which has – with MCC acting as its ‘rules’ committee – overseen the World game ever since.

  [90] In the event Dexter was called home by the United Kingdom Interim Emergency Administration to perform ‘essential public duties’ (basically, he toured the country giving morale boosting speeches and making e
ndless public appearances which incidentally, were to be the foundation of his later career in politics).

  [91] This generous gesture was to be repeated at Adelaide (Fourth Test), and again at Sydney (Fifth and final Test), benefitting many of the crews of the hard-pressed British Pacific Fleet as its ships were rotated through Australian ports for re-victualling and to undertake emergency maintenance and repairs.

  [92] Brian Statham’s first wicket; that of R.B. Simpson on the second evening of the match was his 236th in Test cricket, equalling Alec Bedser’s total. Western Australian B.K. Shepherd was his 237th and record-breaking victim.

  [93] The words quoted here are those of the Right Reverend R.C. Kerle, Bishop Coadjutor of Sydney, from Moyes’s funeral oration.

  [94] Brian Statham took the last two wickets in the innings raising his Test Match haul to 239, while Trueman’s tally reached 236 (coincidentally, the record Statham had broken in the Melbourne Test).

  [95] Richie Benaud’s three wickets in the England second innings brought him level with Fred Trueman (and Alec Bedser) on 236 Test wickets; thus three men were albeit briefly, tied in joint second place as second highest wicket-takers in Tests.

  [96] He was of course, still joint second in that illustrious table with none other than Fred Trueman and Richie Benaud.

  [97] That day was his thirty-second birthday.

  [98] This match was of interest only in retrospect for it marked the first occasion on which an English team encountered a certain Kevin Douglas Walters, a seventeen year old son of Marshdale, Dungog, New South Wales; later to be a bane of English and other international attacks in the late sixties and early seventies.

  [99] HMNZS Otago.

  [100] This affair is covered in some detail in ‘Operation Manna’, the non-sporting sequel to this book.

  [101] Thomas Lyall ‘Tom’ Goodman, whose cricket reporting career had begun in 1920 and at the time of the 1962-63 MCC Tour was correspondent of the Sydney Morning Herald.

  [102] That sort of thing happened now and then in Australia; it was something to do with the heat and ‘life’ in certain wickets, and possibly the wood the stumps were manufactured from ‘down under’.

  [103] His Grace vehemently denied this. He recollected that he felt he was far too far away to be properly informed of events in Sydney – he was at Balmoral in Scotland consulting with the Royal Household that weekend – and was, in any event, mistakenly under the impression Gubby Allen was ‘in charge out there’.

  [104] The initial operational phase of that agreement became Operation Manna under the command of C-in-C British Pacific Fleet, Vice Admiral Julian Christopher.

  [105] Ian Wooldridge of The Dail Mail.

  [106] Fred Titmus never returned to the United Kingdom. He settled in Melbourne and eventually remarried an Australian woman.

  [107] It later transpired that he had engaged agents in Melbourne and Sydney to book him a lucrative public appearance and ‘speaking tour’ which kept him fully occupied until the next Sheffield Shield season came around at which time he accepted a two-year contract to play under Tony Lock’s captaincy for Western Australia.

  [108] Fiery Fred finally returned to England in May 1964. When he returned to Perth to fulfil the second year of his contract with Western Australia he took his previously estranged wife, and two surviving children with him where they settled, remaining in Perth when Trueman returned to England in 1965.

  [109] Gubby Allen – after almost succumbing to sickness in Australia – came home against doctor’s advice on the Canberra with many of the other MCC tourists but died in the winter of 1963-64 without ever being well enough to participate in the work of re-building the game of cricket in England.

  [110] England did not play another official Test Match until that at Trent Bridge (Nottingham) against Bobby Simpson’s visiting Australians in June 1966, the best part of three-and-a-half years later.

  [111] All three played in the First Test at Brisbane on the 1966-67 tour.