Neither Successful nor Happy: The Reputation of C. B. Fry

The three captains of the 1912 Triangular Tournament. Left to right: Frank Mitchell (South Africa), C. B. Fry (England) and S. E. Gregory (Australia). (Image: Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 11 May 1912)

Even with various caveats and qualifications, there is little doubt that the list of achievements by C. B. Fry is impressive. A noted scholar in his youth; cricket and football for England; a joint world-record in athletics; “blues” in three sports from Oxford University. Nor were these his only interests: he dabbled in writing, politics and various other spheres, albeit with varied levels of success. He also had interest in the stage; he made an impact at Oxford as the Prince of Morocco in The Merchant of Venice — albeit more for his enthusiastic rendition of the line “Oh, Hell” than his acting ability — and was later fascinated by Hollywood, expressing interest in appearing in film. Yet there is a lingering air of dissatisfaction about his life; he came across as vain, arrogant and self-centred, while later in life he suffered from serious mental health problems. But he had a questionable relationship with the truth, as can be seen in his autobiography Life Worth Living, often wildly exaggerating his feats. For all the praise given in later years to his all-round sporting credentials, he never became part of the cricketing establishment in the same way as contemporaries like Pelham Warner or F. S. Jackson. Partly this may have been connected to his prolonged spell of mental illness in the 1920s (for example Harry Foster, Fry’s old Oxford team-mate, wrote to Gilbert Jessop in 1932 that he did not see him much anymore because he was “odd”). But there were other reasons; some of them were sporting but others were likely connected to his unconventional politics and personal beliefs.

Part of Fry’s problem was that when he was part of the cricketing establishment, he made a bit of a mess of it. This can be seen in his patchy record as a captain; despite being one of the few men to be undefeated as England captain, he was not convincing in the role. If he turned himself from an ordinary batter into an outstanding one through analysis and hard work, he never managed the same with leadership. At Oxford, his proficiency at sport meant that he was awarded the captaincy of the university football, athletics and cricket teams for his final two years, winning one and losing one of his matches against Cambridge in each of the three sports. But at university level in the 1890s, captaincy was as much a social role as a tactical one, and he had little impact on any of his teams. After leaving Oxford, he showed little appetite for cricket captaincy; he generally played under Ranjitsinhji for Sussex and under Archie MacLaren for England, concentrating purely on establishing himself as a top-class batter.

When Fry was appointed Sussex captain for the 1904 season, after Ranjitsinhji resigned owing to other commitments, the county dropped from second to sixth in the County Championship and over the following seasons never challenged for the title as they had around the turn of the century. The fault was not especially that of the new captain; the team had struggled for many years with a weak bowling attack and the loss of Ranjitsinhji between 1905 and 1907 was a heavy blow. However, his relationship with his professionals was strained. When he was just an ordinary member of the team, he viewed them largely as a supporting act that should not distract from his achievements. For example, he had forced Joe Vine, his opening partner, to become a very defensive player and had once admonished him for hitting three fours in one over: “[He] told me plainly that it was my job to stay there and leave that sort of cricket to him.” When Fry took over, he rarely took the time (and perhaps did not know how) to inspire or encourage them. Sometimes he even deliberately did the opposite, for example making Robert Relf go in as nightwatchman one evening in 1907 when he had already changed to make a quick getaway for an evening out in Canterbury,

A bigger problem was that he was often absent from the team owing to his many other interests, leading to an unsettled side. A ruptured achilles tendon in the second game of the 1906 season put him out of the team after two games and restricted him in 1907. By 1908, he appeared to have such little interest in playing for Sussex that it was picked upon by the press and there were frequent rumours he was going to retire. While he had a legitimate excuse, in that his time was taken up by the need to secure funding to keep the TS Mercury running, he was still the county captain but seemed unwilling either to resign or to commit to the club. The disharmony surrounding him meant that his spell as Sussex captain was not a success; it may not be a coincidence that he was never Hampshire’s official captain after moving there in 1909, although he performed the role several times as a stand-in.

Given his reputation and generally certain place in the side, Fry was often touted as a possible England captain. After a couple of occasions where he missed out, he was invited to lead the MCC team in Australia for the 1911–12 Ashes series. But his reputation was damaged further by this episode. He took weeks to decide whether to accept, which was not ideal from the prospective captain; the financial aspect of touring as an amateur was unappealing and he was not keen to leave the Mercury for so long. And there was a backlash when a Fry-endorsed appeal was launched by The Field to raise money to keep the Mercury running and free him up to tour; this attracted a huge amount of criticism and it generated little money. Fry eventually asked Field to end its campaign and he withdrew from the team. It was an embarrassing episode.

Fry’s only experience as England captain came the following summer, during the Triangular Tournament played between England, Australia and South Africa. Although past his best as a player, Fry was well positioned to lead England as he had been a keen supporter of Abe Bailey, who had been pushing for such a competition to take place since 1908. If the press questioned whether Fry was the best man to lead England at the age of 40, his association with Bailey and the newly formed ICC made him the ideal ambassador. Even so, the MCC appeared hesitant, and if we can believe Fry only offered him the role for the first Test. Fry’s version: he replied that he would only accept if given the role for the whole summer; Lord Harris, upon reading his letter, exclaimed “I think this fellow Fry is right!” As usual, it is a questionable account. Nevertheless, Fry led the team all summer and in the end was vindicated when England won the tournament. But this was not a particularly great achievement. The South African team was horribly weak and the Australian team barely representative after six leading players pulled out in a dispute with their board. Anything other than an English win in those circumstances would have been very unlikely.

But Fry did not impress on the field. He batted particularly nervously throughout the tournament, and seemed unhappy at several dismissals. And the pressure clearly got to him; the England wicket-keeper Tiger Smith later recalled that he missed two easy catches in the first game and took himself to the outfield away from the action in embarrassment. Nor were the press enamoured with his leadership. He was criticised for not bowling Frank Woolley, England’s most dangerous bowler in wet conditions, against Australia at Lord’s (although he later claimed the decision was tactical to prevent the Australians seeing Woolley’s bowling in a match certain to be drawn); and his delay in using Woolley against South Africa at the Oval was judged to be a tactical error later in the competition.

By the time of the decisive final game, against Australia, his relationship with spectators was at rock bottom. He was booed loudly at the toss for his part in a delayed start — he considered conditions unfit when the Australian captain wanted to play — and batted particularly poorly in the first innings. However, Australia collapsed to the bowling of Woolley; he was observed, according a 1984 biography by Clive Ellis, performing a handstand when a wicket fell. In England’s second innings, he scored a dour and chancy but important 79. Tiger Smith recalled many years later that Fry seemed unaware during his innings how bad conditions were — he was batting too well — and it was the professionals in the team who realised England’s best chance of an easy win was to get out quickly and bowl. Fry was critical of their approach, but they were proven right. Australia once more collapsed to Woolley, although Fry again behaved oddly. He was heard to shout for “George” (Hirst) to take a catch when the ball went in the air — but Hirst was not in the team. England won the game by 244 runs but Fry refused to come out onto the balcony when the spectators were cheering for him, remembering his treatment on the first day. As it happened, this was his final Test, and he ended his career never having lost a Test as captain; but he had been an unconvincing leader.

Even so, Fry was briefly a candidate to lead England during the disastrous 1921 summer, when he was 50 years old. But it was not his tactical skill that appealed; the desperate selectors were thrashing about for answers against an overwhelmingly superior Australian team, and Fry’s name promoted warm feelings of nostalgia and romanticism. The revival of his claims betrayed selectorial incompetence and showed their lack of awareness for what Test cricket had become in 1921.

If there were question marks over Fry’s captaincy, there were even bigger ones over his role as a Test selector. Owing to the way that committees were composed, Fry was a selector several times. In 1899 and 1902, he was part of the committee through being one of the first amateurs picked for the England team; in 1909 and 1912 (in the latter season as both chairman of selectors and England captain) he was a permanent selector. As ever, Fry was eager to inflate his importance in Life Worth Living. For example, he claimed (not very convincingly) that in 1899 he unwittingly had the casting vote in choosing Archie MacLaren to replace W. G. Grace as England captain. In his version of the selection meeting for the second Test, Fry arrived late and when he was asked by Grace if he thought MacLaren should play, he said yes without knowing that the others had been deadlocked over whether Grace or MacLaren should be captain. Fry believed that he therefore was the man who ended Grace’s Test career. But as usual, we cannot trust Fry, and it would have been perfectly possible for both MacLaren and Grace to play.

The England team for the first Test of the 1902 Ashes. Back row: G. H. Hirst, A. A. Lilley, W. H. Lockwood, L. C. Braund, W. Rhodes, J. T. Tyldesley. Front row: C. B. Fry, F. S. Jackson, A. C. MacLaren (captain), K. S. Ranjitsinhji, G. L. Jessop. (Image: Archie (1981) by Michael Down)

Fry’s next experience in the role came in 1902. As in 1899, he was co-opted onto the panel through being one of the first amateurs picked. But in retelling his role in that Test series, Fry was aware that the selectors had been heavily criticised for their negative influence over that summer and so attempted to absolve himself from any part in the mistakes. As it happened, he was only a selector for the first two Tests (he was a late replacement in the third game and was dropped for the final two after scoring 0, 0, 1 and 4 in the series), but rather than explain this, Fry chose to portray himself as the lone voice of sanity that summer. He was critical of the selectors’ tendency change the team owing to the unsettling effect on the players; as he was dropped, this is hardly a surprising view. But he emphasised how correct Archie MacLaren, the captain, was in his opinion that Gilbert Jessop — dropped for the fourth Test before scoring a match-winning century in the fifth — was an indispensable part of any England team.

He wrote a detailed account of the selection meeting for the fourth Test in which Fred Tate was selected largely owing to a clash between MacLaren and Lord Hawke, the chairman of selectors. He said that Hawke had not allowed Schofield Haigh to be chosen as it would affect the Yorkshire side, which already had contributed three players to the England team. According to Fry: “When someone proposed Fred Tate instead of Schofield Haigh, I distinctly told my colleagues that Fred Tate could not field anywhere except at slip, and that, though he was a careful slip in a county side, he was not up to the standard required in a Test Match. Lord Hawke was huffy, and we gave way to him, me protesting.” Tate, of course, dropped a crucial catch in that game and was harshly judged as being to blame for England’s three-run loss; retrospectively (and a little unfairly) he was judged as having been an ill-judged selection, out of his depth at Test level. If we believe Fry’s account, he had seen this and attempted to stop it. It is a beautiful story, but Fry was not a selector for that Test match, having already been dropped and not being a permanent member of the panel. This discussion is nothing more than a figment of his imagination, another product of his compulsive need to be the hero of every story; even so, the tale was frequently retold in later years as if it were true and still can be seen unquestioningly included in accounts of the series.

There were similar criticisms in 1909, when Fry was one of the permanent selectors. That panel has been ridiculed as one of the worst of all time, drawing comment from Sydney Pardon in Wisden that one of their decisions “touched the confines of lunacy”. Some of the worst decisions were made before the second Test, when the chairman of selectors, Lord Hawke, was recovering from a long illness in France. Apparently going against the wishes of the captain MacLaren, the two remaining selectors — Fry and H. D. G. Leveson Gower — dropped Wilfred Rhodes and Gilbert Jessop, two men generally guaranteed a Test place in this period. Even worse, despite making five changes to the team that won the first Test, they failed to pick a fast bowler in helpful conditions. Fry, in his autobiography, unconvincingly tried to abdicate any responsibility, although he still claimed credit for the partially successful inclusion of Albert Relf. Pardon in Wisden lamented: “Never in the history of Test Matches in England has there been such blundering in the selection of an England eleven.” Even when Hawke returned, the choices made by the panel were vehemently criticised for the rest of the season.

If his final term as a selector, for the 1912 season, was more successful on paper, Fry still felt the need to prove himself in Life Worth Living. He claimed that he had insisted on being the chairman and that the rules were changed so that only two other selectors could join him. He also wrote that they met only once, and chose “a definite team with definite substitutes if required for the whole series of six matches and we never met again.” This is likely another exaggeration, and Alan Gibson in Cricket Captains of England (1979) notes that there are “stray references” that other meetings took place. Iain Wilton, in his 1999 biography of Fry, notes that 17 players were used by England that summer which, if it was not an unusually high number for the period, indicates less stability of selection that Fry indicated. Nor were all the selections an unqualified success; the weakness of the opposition meant that errors were not as costly as in previous summers.

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Aside from the damage to his reputation from his selectorial misadventures, there was another blot on Fry’s cricketing copybook. He turned to writing early in his career as a way to supplement his meagre income. To a modern audience, Fry’s writing is usually quite readable, especially his later work. But some of it can be impenetrably dense, and his style often seems contrived. For example, writing about how rain affected cricket pitches in 1902, he said: “It sounds artificial, but, by Hercules! the idea of covering up the wicket with a big tarpaulin is not so very unreasonable.” But he was undeniable prolific; he contributed articles to various publications and authored his own books, particularly on cricket technique. For a few years at the start of the twentieth century he had a regular column in the Daily Express, writing about matches in which he was playing (including the 1902 Ashes series). Although he was not alone in doing this, it was frowned upon by the establishment. In later years, he contributed to magazines, including ones aimed at boys — notably The Captain — and in 1904 became the editor of a new publication named after him — Fry’s Magazine. This often featured articles which reflected Fry’s own interests, such as motoring or flying, and promoted the virtues of sport. His involvement in the Boy Scouts movement— he was a friend of Robert Baden-Powell — also prompted him to argue that Britain should focus on sports with greater military value, such as shooting. Although not an especially unusual belief at the time, Fry’s advocacy of militarism did not escape attention — and occasional ridicule. He later reduced his commitment to magazine when the TS Mercury took up more of his time and resigned as editor in 1910. He continued to write occasional articles but the magazine ceased production when the First World War began. Not for the first time, Fry had dabbled in a new world but failed to emerge quite on top.

His other literary achievement before the war was a novel, written with his wife, called A Mother’s Son. The book was well-received by critics and praised by some of Fry’s admirers in later life, but seems to have been horribly cliched and dripping in purple prose. Wilton said of it: “The book can only be regarded as a page-turner on the basis that readers will want to escape some sections, which are cringe-inducingly bad.”

After the long seclusion caused by his mental illness in the late 1920s and early 1930s, Fry returned to journalism. He began to write for the Evening Standard in time for the 1934 Ashes series. The newspaper had also signed Douglas Jardine for that summer. The latter was to write the “straight” reports on the matches while Fry was to write something more idiosyncratic, producing columns supposedly in an impressionistic, “American” style. The result, a column called “C. B. Fry Says” proved very popular. He made an impact in the press box too, arriving by chauffeured car and sharing his enormous lunch from a hamper. He opened his first column with: “Full of people, all talking. No interest in Bradman’s broken shoelace at Suez. Or Woodfull’s fall on the deck at Crete. It’s just the age-old love of cricket and expectations.” It was in this column that Fry first called Bradman “The Don”. He wrote of him in the 1934 series: “He smashes with a sort of sardonic smile in his strokes.” “C. B Fry Says” was perhaps his greatest achievement away from the field of play, but even in this success there was controversy, because he felt the need to score points.

He managed to alienate the Australian cricket team on several occasions. For example during their match against Cambridge in 1934, he wrote: “Australians seem to be quite nice people. We, the elite, stay at the famous Bull. The actual players are at the University Arms.” His biographer Ellis noted that his articles often contained “subtle taunts.” He irritated the 1938 Australian team by suggesting that they were unsporting and took the game too seriously. And he often commented on the education of Australian players, lamenting that only a couple had been to public school, and made snide comments about their occupations away from cricket. Given the ruptures caused by the Bodyline controversy of 1932–33, and the exaggerated care taken by the MCC to avoid giving offence to the Australians in the strained aftermath, Fry’s careless snobbery and taunts must have raised a few eyebrows at Lord’s.

C. B. Fry (extreme right) and Ranjitsinhji (centre left, in profile) at the League of Nations (Image: C. B. Fry: An English Hero (1999) by Iain Wilton)

Fry’s politics probably killed any last chance of admittance to the Lord’s establishment. He began respectably enough. In the early 1920s, he worked with Ranjitsinhji at the League of Nations, although he was thought to be behind several incidents where his employer made complaints about the lack of deference according to him. It was during this time that Fry was supposedly offered the throne of Albania, an episode he described at length (and with uncharacteristic restraint, suggesting that for once he was being accurate) in his autobiography. He believed he had a good chance, but would have needed Ranjitsinhji to support him to the tune of £10,000 a year, which the latter was unwilling (and realistically unable) to do. There have been various explanations of this, from an elaborate joke by Ranjitsinhji that got out of hand, to something entirely fabricated by Fry. But most writers, most notably Alan Gibson who dug into the story in some detail, have concluded there was some truth in the tale, and the Albanians were undoubtedly looking for a king in this period.

Fry’s supposed interest in social issues such as public health meant that he was of interest to political parties and there were occasional suggestions during his cricketing days that he would enter parliament. After the First World War, he stood as a Liberal candidate in three elections, adopting unconventional tactics such as campaigning on horseback. Hampered by his political inexperience and an unfamiliarity with the Liberal manifesto, he lost fairly convincingly at Brighton in the 1922 General Election, narrowly at Banbury in the 1923 General Election and then again at Oxford in a 1924 by-election. In the latter two elections, he was affected by split votes lost to the Labour candidate. At Banbury the stresses caused his health to break down and he missed the declaration. He made no mention of these episodes in his autobiography, and his entry into politics is usually explained as him attempting to conquer a new world having finished with sport. But the question remains: why did he stand in three elections? Did he look at the achievements of those with whom he went to university, or against whom he played cricket, and feel that he needed to prove himself as more than a sportsman? In that case, his choice of the Liberal Party may have been a mistake. Although Fry was far from the only cricketer to enter politics, the natural sphere of the MCC was the Conservative Party and it is unlikely he did himself any favours associating with the Liberals. Yet the final nail in the coffin of Fry’s establishment status probably came through his later association with right wing politics.

Unlike modern readers, Fry’s contemporaries would not have batted an eyelid at his association with Robert Baden-Powell or Abe Bailey, both men were unashamed imperialists and white supremacists. Nor would Fry’s push in his writing for a more militaristic focus in Britain have been seen as necessarily wrong. And leading members of the cricketing establishment, including a captain of England, flirted with fascism in the early 1920s without any detriment to their status. But Fry became associated with the extreme right when it had lost a lot what little lustre it had after revealing its true colours in Italy and Germany. Showing tone-deafness that was one of his defining characteristics, on the eve of the Second World War, Fry devoted a whole chapter of Life Worth Living to a meeting he had with Adolf Hitler in 1934.

The background was attempts in Germany to cultivate links between the Hitler Youth and the Boy Scouts movement. When the approach failed, Fry — who had long been a supporter of Boy Scouts and had almost been the figurehead when the movement was launched — was invited to Germany. When he arrived, he spent time at the Ministry of Propaganda and met Hitler for around an hour (which Fry had insisted was a condition of his agreeing to visit), listening to his “vision” and his view of the threat of Communists and Jews. Fry was impressed, which might have been seen as unfortunate but not unforgivable in 1934. But what Fry said in 1939 was highly questionable, then and now. He wrote favourably of the devotion of the German people to Hitler and the discipline in the atmosphere. He liked this version of Germany, and openly said so: “Herr Hitler and his men genuinely wished to be friends with us.” And he liked the man himself, writing that he “gave the impression of effective grip” and admitting that he was “attracted by him”. Even when the true nature of Nazism had become apparent in 1939, Fry still was happy to conclude that the effect it had produced in Germany was a good one; he said that the way Germans “did face and outride” the “storm” of “Communism and its corollaries” which “are a turgid curse of mankind” was “a tremendous feat of national character”. He was still in favour of building links in the respective youth movements. Nor was this a one-off for his autobiography; he wrote in the Sunday Express in 1940 of his continued admiration for Hitler.

Fascism clearly had an appeal to Fry, and it was one he explored after visiting Germany. Although he was not a member of any fascist party — and he would not have been the first cricketer to join one — he attended a meeting of the British Union of Fascists as a guest in 1934, allowed members of the Hitler Youth to use the Mercury and watched film of the Berlin Olympics at the German Embassy. After the war, he downplayed his support, suggesting that he told Hitler that he should not invade England and instead recommended that Germany take up cricket.

But perhaps the damage was done. Fry would never have been entirely acceptable to Lord’s: a journalist; a difficult personality; an unapologetic snob; someone who loudly insisted on the deference he felt was his due; a man who exaggerated and blustered his way though conversation and writing; an overly garrulous, oddly dressed eccentric who had suffered from prolonged mental illness; and a supporter of Hitler just before the outbreak of a terrible war. No number of runs could quite compensate to the people who mattered.

C. B. Fry receiving his “big red book” from Eamonn Andrews when he was the subject of the TV programme This is Your Life in 1955 (Image: Big Red Book)

None of this makes Fry an appealing character. Much more could be said about his life, about his interests and the varied spheres in which he worked and moved. Others have done so at great length. But underneath the surface, there is something uncomfortable about the man. One of the most insightful pieces of writing on Fry — before the warts-and-all biographies by Ellis and Wilton — came from Alan Gibson. In his 1979 Cricket Captains of England, he said: “A business partner of Fry’s, Christopher Hollis, wrote to me … that C.B. ‘had a great capacity for living a fantasy life’. He went on, ‘It pleased him to tell the story [about the offer of the throne of Albania], and by the end I fancy that he did not know himself whether he believed it or not.’ While one does not doubt the truth of this, it would be a mistake to think that Fry was a fantasist, in the sense that Walter Mitty was. His fantasies were no more than embroideries on what was already the finest silk. His achievements were real.” Gibson wrote admiringly of Fry but noted that his character contained “not exactly an acidity, but a certain mordancy, a classical disdain”.

Another viewpoint was that given by his wife — who died in 1946 and left him free to become a genial celebrity around the radio and television circuit — that his mental illness of the 1920s was caused by “thwarted genius”. Perhaps he spread himself too thinly and never achieved what he believed what he was capable of. While his contemporaries, cricketing and otherwise, went on to bigger and better things, he stagnated. And maybe Gibson realised this, telling a story of how one of his Oxford contemporaries, F. E. Smith who became Lord Chancellor, visited the TS Mercury: “[Smith] was duly impressed, and ended by saying ‘This is a fine show, C.B., but, for you, a backwater.’ Fry replied, ‘That may be, but the question remains whether it is better to be successful or happy.'”

Was Fry happy? His marriage was undoubtedly not, nor did he really have a role in running the Mercury, which was the domain of his wife. His character betrayed defensiveness and his writing a desire to magnify his achievements and promote a vision of infallibility. If his “life worth living” was a constant search for fulfilment — in sport, or literature, or politics, or conversation — the evidence suggests that he never succeeded in finding it.

“A far greater force than his records would suggest”: The Cricket, Captaincy and Innovation of P. G. H. Fender

Percy Fender in 1922 (Image: Wikipedia)

Perhaps the cricket world was never quite big enough for Percy Fender. Unlike others of his class and status — an undeniably wealthy amateur who supported himself purely though his own business, and a prominent member of English “Society” between the wars — he thought deeply about the sport. Although he does not stand out statistically as a first-class cricketer, his value was reflected by the quality and timing of his contributions rather than their consistency or volume. But it was his captaincy which lifted him well out of the ordinary. His unorthodox tactics and aggressive brand of cricket took a mediocre Surrey team close to the County Championship several times in the early 1920s with ideas decades ahead of their time. Given that he was unquestionably the best captain in England for much of that decade, and one of the best all-rounders in county cricket, why did he never captain England? And why did he play just 13 Tests at a time when good amateur cricketers (always favoured by selectors) were hard to find? While England cycled through a series of mediocre captains in the early 1920s, Fender inspired his Surrey team and cultivated a legion of admirers among the press and public. As so often, the explanations lie not in sporting ability but behind the scenes.

Percy George Herbert Fender, born in Balham in 1892, was the son of Percy Robert Fender and Lily Herbert. His father ran a stationers and his mother’s family were keenly involved in Brighton Cricket Club; it was from the latter whom inspired Fender in his love of the game. Fender followed the usual route for the middle and upper-middle classes in this period, attending a public school — in his case, St Paul’s School, London — and establishing himself as a promising cricketer in the process. But even then, he was ahead of those around him and was prepared to risk the wrath of his teachers by challenging orthodoxy. For example, he was rebuked by a housemaster of St George’s College in Weybridge — which he attended before St Paul’s — for heading a winning goal in a football “house match” (“That sort of goal is a professional’s trick, Fender; no proper footballer scores a goal with his head”). As a cricketer at St Paul’s, he received no credit for scoring a century because he bowled lobs in a successful attempt to force a win against Bedford School. Even Fender would not push too far though: he was naturally left-handed and scored his first century, in a boys’ club match, batting that way. But a long-standing bias against (and even distrust towards) left-handedness predominated Britain at this time, and his maternal uncles persuaded him to switch around the age of twelve.

Fender left school in 1910 and when time permitted, played as an amateur for Sussex — for whom he qualified as he spent his summers living with his maternal grandparents in Brighton — until 1913. He wanted to be a barrister, but the costs were beyond his family. Instead, he entered his father’s business and began to learn about paper manufacturing, which limited his availability as a cricketer. Only in his final season for Sussex was he able to play regularly, and passed 1,000 first-class runs. He made enough impact to be selected for the Gentlemen against the Players at Lord’s and the Oval, the first two of his 28 appearances in that fixture. That winter, he moved to London for business reasons and began to play for Surrey, for whom he was qualified by birth. Until then, his father had allowed him to play cricket but did not believe it was a long-term option as it would impact upon his business career; Fender disagreed, and eventually persuaded his father that it helped him to make helpful contacts. In his first season with Surrey, he established himself as a key part of the team, which won the County Championship in 1914, with 820 runs and 83 wickets; Wisden noted: “As a match winning factor he is a far greater force on a side than his records would suggest.” This remained the case throughout Fender’s career.

When the First World War began in 1914, Fender enlisted immediately, initially as a lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers then transferring to the Royal Flying Corps. Shortly after being posted to India in 1916, he contracted dysentery and spent the rest of the war recovering. Then at the end of 1918, he broke his leg badly while playing football; this prevented him playing any cricket in 1919 and probably was the reason his application to Caius College, Cambridge, was rejected (as he would have been unable to play much sport). Many amateur cricketers attended Oxford or Cambridge, and this gap in Fender’s CV doubtless counted against him in later years. When he returned to the Surrey team in 1920, he became the captain by default; only amateurs were thought to be capable of leading a first-class team and despite his lack of experience, as the only amateur guaranteed a first-team place on merit, he led Surrey in the absence of the official captain Cyril Wilkinson. He made such a success of this that he took over permanently the following season.

Until this point, Fender had been a good cricketer who had done well without making a huge impact. But the captaincy was the making of him as a cricketer: his adventurous, even experimental, approach with bat and ball was best utilised from a position of authority, with an eye on the overall tactical position. And as it transpired, his most important and effective role as a cricketer was as a captain. From the outset, he showed tactical flair and inspirational qualities that none of his contemporaries could match.

Before Fender led Surrey, there was a tongue-in-cheek but not entirely jocular notion that the only job of a captain was to win the toss. Few, if any, captains operated with any overall plan and although there were exceptions who studied field placings and bowling changes, the role was often mechanically performed and concerned more with discipline than tactics. A turning point came with the arrival of Warwick Armstrong’s Australian team in 1921. Armstrong’s captaincy opened many eyes to the impact a captain could have, not least because he always had a clear strategy on the field, switching between attack and defence as necessary. One of his biggest admirers was Fender, who wrote about Armstrong’s tactics in The Cricketer Annual 1923–24 and spoke them at length to his biographer Richard Streeton (whose P. G. H. Fender, published in 1981, is still one of the best cricket books). According to Fender, Armstrong used his two fast bowlers — Jack Gregory and Ted McDonald — as a “shock attack” at the beginning of an innings; quite literally a shock as their short-pitched bowling unnerved many English batters. If no breakthrough came, he used his steadiest bowlers (including himself) to dry up runs at one end while he probed at the other with the dangerous (but often expensive) leg-spin of Arthur Mailey. If a wicket fell, the new batter was attacked, usually by bringing back one of Gregory or McDonald.

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The Surrey team in 1925; Fender is at the centre of the front row

Fender absorbed these lessons but had already established his ability as Surrey captain, attracting attention and praise; even in 1920, he challenged orthodoxy and he refined his ideas after facing Armstrong. The results were astonishing because if Surrey were traditionally one of the leading counties, Fender had inherited an extremely unbalanced team. Although the immensely strong batting — consisting of men such as Jack Hobbs, Andy Sandham, Andy Ducat, Thomas Shepherd and Douglas Jardine — could be guaranteed to score enough runs, the bowling was weak. Tom Rushby, who had done well for Surrey before the war, ended his career in 1921. Fender’s only other fast bowler of any class, Bill Hitch, was past his best by the 1920s. The only other regular bowler to take wickets was the gentle medium-pacer Alan Peach, who toiled away for 13 seasons for Surrey without achieving much, with back-up from the unthreatening occasional medium-pace of Thomas Shepherd. It was hardly an attack to inspire fear. So Fender chose to fill the gap himself in any way he could.

At school and when he played for Sussex, Fender had mainly bowled medium pace, but he switched to leg-spin when he moved to Surrey. It was as a leg-spinner that he began taking wickets, and it was for mainly because of this skill that he was picked to play for England in the 1920–21 season. When he became captain, Fender was often the only spinner in the team and although he was more suited to an attacking role, he often used his own bowling extensively, operating as a stock bowler to keep down runs when the situation required. This meant that he had to bowl far more than was ideal, and his figures suffered as a result. And he tried to compensate for the shortcomings of his team-mates in other ways. Ronald Mason wrote in Sing All A Green Willow (1967) how Fender led the Surrey attack:

“Surrey in the 1920s were a very job lot of attackers indeed … A succession of friendly medium paced seamers made do for the time being; the agreeable Peach was converted by necessity into a new-ball bowler of immense loyalty and energy and limited penetrative powers; honest Tom Shepherd compensated by accuracy and pertinacity for an almost total lack of variety and a bite. In ordinary circumstances an attack like this, varied and gingered very occasionally by fleeting University elements, would have been hard put to it to get any side out once on that Oval wicket, let alone twice; and so often the pattern of a match would recur on the lines of a first innings of 550 by Surrey, followed by a mediocre first reply by their opponents, say 280, with the inevitable recovery in the follow-on, 320 for four, with a severe limitations of the Surrey bowling exposed and humiliated; and as often as not the only reason that they had ever been got out at all was the untiring resource of Percy Fender.

He shrewdly saw that the only available way to compensate for the absence of four bowlers of differing styles was to provide them all himself; he could behave in the course of twenty minutes or so as if Groucho [Marx] was suddenly to impersonate of his brothers in turn, operating successively as a quickish seam-bowler, a leg-spinner, an off-spinner, and a highly effective master of the googly, varying the mixture with medium paced off-cutters and an individual offering of deliberate high full tosses to disturb the batsman’s concentration.”

Almost through force of will, Fender took over a hundred first-class wickets in seven out of nine seasons between 1920 and 1928 (the exceptions were 1924 and 1927, seasons in which he took over 80 wickets). His most successful and frequently used bowling persona was a wrist spinner; from a short run, he delivered the ball from high up and spun it sharply. He also used the width of the crease and tried to deliver each ball from a slightly different place to confuse the batters. Mason related how, in combination with his use of the team’s other bowlers and shrewd setting off a field, he “held Surrey’s variegated resources in a dizzying balance like a juggler spinning plates. By sheer force of personality and performance he hypnotised his opponents into the belief that they were confronted not by a bowler and a half but by the hosts of Midian and all their camp followers.”

One example of Fender’s approach was his use of occasional bowlers, either to unsettle the opposition batters or to take advantage of their unfamiliarity to the leading players on the other side. And he was happy to employ other tactics. Talking to Richard Streeton, Yorkshire’s Bill Bowes recalled one game in which he was sitting alongside Wilfred Rhodes on the balcony watching Yorkshire bat:

“Yorkshire were doing fairly well when P. G. put himself on and his third ball was a high, slow, full toss down the leg-stump area. The batsman pushed it out to the vacant forward square-leg position for an easy single. P. G., like a contortionist, began to massage his right shoulder blade, implying that he was very stiff. In the second over he bowled another of these slow, full tosses and again the proceedings were as before. A fleeting smile appeared on the face of Wilfred, who was sitting on the players’ balcony. Addressing no one in particular, he said: ‘Aye. In’t next over yon fieldsman [he nodded in the direction] will go to mid-on and there’ll be no more slow, full tosses. He’s a shrewd ‘un.’ Sure enough in the next over, a man at three-quarter deep mid-on and wide, went up to mid-on and there were no more slow, full tosses. They had been bowled deliberately in the hope of a mis-hit or rush of blood by the batsmen and not to give him a simple run. If Wilfred said he was shrewd, that he was.”

A key part of Fender’s approach when Surrey were batting was to attack at all times; this made his teams popular to watch but also had a tactical aspect. His bowlers needed more time to dismiss the opposition than other attacks. In particular, he instructed those batting at six, seven or eight to slog under all circumstances, his reasoning being that if the earlier batters had done their job, this was applying the coup-de-grace, but if there had been a collapse, such hitting would seize the initiative and return the pressure onto the opposition. Fender often led the way with this approach, generally filling one of those positions himself. He was a front-footed, wristy batter whose two main shots were the pull and an off-side drive. He almost always hit out, and scored at an unusually rapid pace for that period; his most famous innings was his 35-minute century against Northamptonshire in 1920 (scored from between 40 and 46 deliveries and still the fastest official century in first-class cricket in terms of time) but there were many occasions in which he scored quickly. For example, in 1922 he scored 185 in 130 minutes against Hampshire and 137 in 90 minutes against Kent. He reasoned that because Surrey had several very good orthodox batters, led by Jack Hobbs, he could offer more value to his team as a hitter rather than through emulating their approach. Nevertheless, on the rare occasions that defence was required of him, he could play that game. Fender’s approach meant that he was never consistent with the bat, but he still scored over 1,000 first class runs seven times between 1921 and 1928, usually at a more-than-respectable average of around 30. It was the strategic rather than numerical value of his runs which helped his team, and in his case statistics never quite told the full story.

Fender leaving the field after captaining Surrey to a victory over Yorkshire at the Oval in 1920 (Image: Daily Mirror 25 August 1920)

Unlike many of his fellow captains, Fender was not afraid to make an aggressive declaration, even when his team was behind, if he thought it might produce a result or induce over-confidence in the opposition. During one match in 1922 — a story which grew into something of a legend — Leicestershire had declared at tea one final afternoon, supposedly at the prompting of Fender who made the Leicestershire captain aware, with the game drifting to a draw, that Surrey had a long journey ahead of them in the evening and his tired team would appreciate a rest. Surrey chased down the 150 needed with ease and Fender scored 91 not out in 50 minutes, finishing the game with a six; Wisden observed that Leicestershire had declared “very rashly” and the win was chalked up to Fender’s machinations. Such was his reputation that when the Hampshire captain Stephen Fry inexplicably declared behind in 1931 (when Hampshire were 131 for none in their first innings on the last day, chasing Surrey’s 245 and heading comfortable for first-innings points in a match affected by rain), Phil Mead of Hampshire was driven to despair in the belief that “it’s that Fender — he’s diddled us!” The game was drawn and Fender later denied any bearing on Fry’s strange declaration; instead he recalled that both captains merely wanted a positive result, in a season which had more than its fair share of odd declarations.

As captain, he looked for every advantage he could find, such as changing the design of the Surrey cap to have a larger peak to provide shade from the sun. He even used a baseball coach to improve the throwing method of his doubtless bemused players. This kind of thinking was too advanced for the 1920s, so it was regarded merely as an eccentricity to be smiled at, accompanied by a shaking of the head and a comment along the lines of “Fender is at it again!”

But his combination of aggressive tactics, bold attacking and fiendish alchemy was incredibly successful. Driven by Fender’s inspiration, Surrey, despite their well-documented weaknesses, regularly challenged for the County Championship in the first half of the 1920s, finishing second in 1921 and 1925 and never falling lower than fourth in the seasons in between. The crowds loved him, and they loved the way his Surrey team played. But if the press and his fellow cricketers admitted that Fender worked miracles with his team, and if his players loved him and his approach, Fender’s methods brought him into frequent clashes with authority. Because if he was a shrewd and challenging opponent, he could be a stubbornly difficult one when the game was going against him.

He had a reputation for what was known as “sharp practice”. If he never broke the laws, he often stretched them. Among Fender’s less sporting gambits were occasions when he persuaded umpires to delay restarts until conditions favoured his team. On another occasion, when he made his fielders to tread down the pitch after rain at the Oval to make it easier for batting when it dried out over the weekend, his opponents Lancashire made a protest; Fender challenged them to find anything in the regulations which prohibited the action, and the umpires took his side. In a game against Hampshire, when Fender was frustrated by a delayed declaration, he bowled lobs and slowed down proceedings to the extent that one over took 12 minutes — even rebuking Sandham when he hurried to his fielding position. Such practices as he adopted were seen as “professional” at a time when such a description was derogatory for those running the sport; today pushing the rules barely raises an eyebrow but for an amateur to do this in the 1920s was shocking.

Even more shocking to contemporaries was Fender’s treatment of professionals. Rather than enforcing the conventional separation of amateurs and professionals, Fender insisted that they ate together and entered the field together (at a time when separate gates were used by the different “classes”). He even planned to end the use of separate changing rooms until persuaded by his professionals that they liked the space to talk freely. Today, such measures seem obvious, and the earlier practices ridiculous, but such moves by a county captain were revolutionary at a time when the cricketing establishment was increasingly wary of professionalism and changes in society at large. Lord Harris in particular found Fender’s actions unpardonable and on one occasion summoned him during a game at Lord’s to berate him. Fender also clashed with Harris over the qualification of Alfred Jeacocke to play for Surrey — he had moved outside the county boundary and therefore his qualification by residence lapsed on a technicality, a loophole in the regulations that was subsequently closed. Most damagingly, Fender publicly contradicted Harris over the matter of unofficial covering of pitches during MCC matches, pointing out that Harris, despite his denials, knew that pitches were sometimes covered illegally. The end result was a furious confrontation and the likely ending of any hope of captaining England: his lordship was the treasurer of the MCC and one of the most influential figures in English cricket.

For all the praise of his leadership, Fender’s unorthodoxy — in tactics and ideas — made it almost impossible for him to have been appointed as England captain. Even so, he came close on occasion. Frederick Toone, the England manager during the tour, proposed that he replace J. W. H. T. Douglas mid-way through the 1920–21 series; and he was the vice-captain to Frank Mann in South Africa in 1922–23, although he never led the team on the field. Even in 1926, when rumours swirled that Arthur Carr was to be sacked, Fender’s name was still being put forward to take over. But his time, such as it was, had already gone. Even in the chaotic summer of 1921, when the 49-year-old C. B. Fry was seriously considered as a candidate to lead England, Fender never was given a chance. There were too many marks against him. Many writers have argued that another issue was his ethnicity; as described in an excellent 2021 article by Daniel Lightman, there was a widespread belief that Fender was Jewish, although he denied having such a background. For what it is worth, Fender never thought that antisemitism played a role in the thinking of selectors anyway.

Nor could Fender be sure of the support of his own Committee. He often opposed the desire of the Surrey President, H. D. G. Leveson Gower, to play as many amateurs as possible; Fender preferred to keep a settled team with every man earning his place on merit, not through his connections or status. Eventually, he was messily replaced as captain by Douglas Jardine in 1932 (a decision Fender supported but was not a party to) and lost his place equally untidily in 1936; on both occasions, his poor relations with the Surrey Committee played a part.

A disappointed Fender, as drawn by Arthur Mailey, after J. W. H. T. Douglas left him out of the England team for the 1920–21 Ashes series. Fender used this image as the frontispiece for this book of the tour. (Image: P. G. H. Fender: A Biography (1981) by Richard Streeton)

One of the biggest marks against Fender, particularly in later years, was his forays into journalism and writing, which he pursued to supplement his income. His most controversial writing came during the 1920–21 tour of Australia, when he was one of the few effective players in the England side. He was chronically underused by the captain J. W. H. T. Douglas, who pursued an unsuccessful strategy based largely around pace bowling, but Fender impressed several Australians with his ability to turn the ball from the flat pitches. To offset his expenses on the tour, Fender (and his fellow amateur Rockley Wilson) wrote for an English newspaper — in his case, the Daily News — but some of his writing, and more particularly some of Wilson’s criticisms of barracking, meant that the two amateurs were targeted by the crowds in later games. Their particular method against Fender was to make a play of his initials P. G. H. by chanting “Please Go Home Fender”; he joined in by pretending to “conduct” the calls. But the ensuing controversy meant that in future, England players were forbidden to write about games in which they were playing, ending a long-standing practice.

When a combination of lack of form and the disapproval of Lord Harris and the establishment meant that Fender lost his England place, he took up writing more regularly. He accompanied Percy Chapmans’ team to Australia as a journalist in 1928–29, and wrote about the Ashes series in England in 1930 and 1934. His writings were collected into very well-received books (as was his writing on the 1920–21 tour) which departed from the usual form in several ways. First, they were very analytical, particularly in terms of tactics. For example, he had plenty to say about Percy Chapman’s mistakes in 1930 and believed that the Australians pursued a strategy to force the final Test of that series to be timeless, a format with which they were far more familiar than the home team. Many other writers, such as Pelham Warner (who also worked as a journalist in 1930 and produced a book) discussed these things but Fender was far more insightful. However, he did not always get everything correct, most notably when he said that Donald Bradman, after the 1928–29 tour, would not be a success in England owing to a flaw in his technique. When Bradman first visited England in 1930, among his mountain of runs was a very pointed unbeaten 252 against Surrey, watched by Fender in the field. Fender was never entirely convinced by Bradman even after that, noting that he was not effective on sticky wickets in comparison to batters such as Hobbs or Wally Hammond. And although suggestions that he was the secret mastermind behind “Bodyline” in 1932–33 are wide of the mark (and misunderstand the nature of English cricket at the time), it is certain that Fender was able to supply Douglas Jardine with information from Australia about some of Bradman’s struggles against pace and certainly discussed the idea of leg theory with him.

His other main innovation as a journalist was a comprehensive use of statistics. His books contained in depth analysis, such as how many deliveries each batter faced from each bowler and how many runs he scored from them; he argued that this gave a much fuller picture of the effectiveness of both batters and bowlers. He wrote in The Tests of 1930: “For years now … it has been the custom to judge the speed at which a batsman scores, by the number of runs he gets per hour in the time during which he is at the wicket. In my opinion, that is a very misleading method. A batsman may well be at the wicket for many minutes without receiving a ball, and if he does not receive the bowling, he cannot score runs.”

Fender was a favourite subject of the cartoonist Tom Webster; this example from 1922 depicts Fender scoring a century against Hampshire the first time he wore glasses on the field (Image: Wikipedia)

After 1925, neither Surrey nor Fender were quite as effective. The team dropped down the table and Fender, even if he regularly played in the Gentlemen v Players match every year (apart from 1927) until 1929, was never quite the same player, possibly owing to over-work. By then, he had established his own business, a wine merchants, in which he was involved for the rest of his life. And he had also in many ways transcended cricket. Even among the non-sporting public, Fender was a well-known figure. His distinctive appearance — including a resemblance to Groucho Marx — and eccentric attire — his (deliberately) long sweaters and his (unnecessary) glasses — made him a figure beloved by cartoonists such as Tom Webber and one recognised wherever he went. He was a well-known figure in London “society” and a patron of the theatre. In fact, he had a “society” wedding in 1924 when he married Ruth Clapham, a socialite and daughter of a jeweller. That they met in Monte Carlo tells a lot about Fender’s lifestyle. They had two children, but Ruth died in 1937. Fender married again in 1962 but that marriage was also ill-fated. Susan Gordon died in 1968.

Fender died in 1985 at the age of 92, having briefly returned to the news in 1983 when his 35-minute century was equalled by Steve O’Shaughnessy, although the contrived nature of this and similar innings when runs were being deliberately conceded eventually returned Fender to the top of the list unchallenged by anyone. Despite the loss of his eyesight in his final years, he remained a jovial figure and was the go-to for writers of many biographies in the 1980s. He can have had few regrets, despite his frequent clashes with the authorities — a group to which he should have belonged owing to his background, had he not so often followed his own path. Had those old men at Lord’s known the future of cricket, they would doubtless have been horrified; but Fender perhaps might have smiled to himself in the knowledge that he was, in many ways, several decades ahead of the game.

Illness, Suspicion, Defeat and Debt: The Fall of Herbie Collins

Herbie Collins photographed in 1925 (Image: Wikipedia)

Herbie Collins succeeded Warwick Armstrong as the Australian Test captain in 1921, having established a reputation as a good tactician who was capable of caring for and inspiring his players. But there are also indications that he had developed a worsening gambling problem, which one author has suggested originated in the trenches of Flanders during the First World War. On his two tours of England, with the Australian Imperial Forces team in 1919 and under Armstrong’s captaincy in 1921, he had become notorious for late nights and card schools. His players knew him as a man who would bet on anything. However, this never seemed to affect his cricket and he was undoubtedly successful as a dour opening batter in the years after the war. His highest point as a captain came when he led Australia to a 4–1 victory over England in the 1924–25 Ashes, a series in which he established his tactical ascendancy over England’s Arthur Gilligan. There was little question that Collins would retain the captaincy for the 1926 Ashes tour of England. He was 38 when it began, which was not old for a cricketer in the 1920s, and still one of the best batters in Australia, even if his defensive play might not have appealed to everyone.

One of his players on the 1926 tour was Hunter “Stork” Hendry, an all-rounder who missed most of the summer — and all of the Test series — with scarlet fever. As the last surviving member of Armstrong’s 1921 Australians, Hendry was a frequent interviewee in his later years; at the time of his death in 1988 he was the oldest living Test cricketer and never shy of an opinion. Ray Robinson’s On Top Down Under, a history of Australia’s Test captains, included one of Hendry’s stories. On the boat to England, Collins combined with other bookmakers among the passengers to organise betting on a ribbon-snipping championship involving many of the women on board. The favourite was a girl called Nancy, who was clearly better than the rest. Before the final, Hendry asked Collins: “How are you going, Nutty?” Collins muttered that “If Nancy wins, I’ll have to jump overboard.” But Nancy became flustered — ironically from the pressure of her supporters’ cheers — and lost after she dropped her scissors in the final. Hendry’s verdict: “Lucky Collins wins again.”

Overall, it was a happy tour. Throughout the English summer, the players became familiar sights at race meetings; and as the team contained nine single men, including the captain, they also took advantage of the tour’s social opportunities, staying out late at night or playing poker and baccarat into the early hours (though Collins never played his own men at these games as he was far too good for them and did not wish to take their money). The captain did not impose any restrictions and was happy for his players to enjoy themselves. But there was a negative side to this. Roland Perry, in Captain Australia, a 2003 book about Australia’s captains, said of the 1926 tour that Collins’ love of betting encouraged his players to emulate him, but several lost more money than they made, and possibly more than they could afford.

For all the good cheer off the field, it transpired that Collins’ team was not quite as strong as expected on it. They arrived with a fearsome reputation so that critics expected them to be as domineering as Armstrong’s men. Wisden noted that the team was “heralded — although of course no blame for the shouting and trumpeting attached to the players themselves — as a band of supermen”. But it did not quite play out that way, and Collins’ men proved to be very much mortal. Their record was nowhere near that of Armstrong’s team and 27 of the 40 games were drawn. Wisden said: “There clearly existed no such match winning ability as has generally characterised Australian teams in England. Moreover, the list of victories — twelve in number — was scarcely convincing.” A large number of these draws were caused by the bad weather in the early part of the tour, which was also disrupted by the General Strike. But even with this proviso, the tour was disappointing for the visitors.

Most importantly, the Australian team was in transition; several of the players who excelled on the 1921 tour (and on the AIF tour two years earlier) were nearer to the end than the beginning of their careers. The bowling was suspect. The two leading bowlers in 1921 had been Jack Gregory and Ted McDonald: the former had been struggling with injury and was no longer capable of the terrifying pace which intimidated English batters five years earlier; the latter had qualified to play county cricket for Lancashire and although he continued to take hundreds of wickets in the County Championship, he was unavailable for Australia. The bowling was in the hands of the erratic but sometimes devastating Arthur Mailey and the largely unproven Clarrie Grimmett, both of whom were leg-spinners. There was little pace bowling support, only Sam Everett who failed horribly on the tour. Wisden was disparaging in its assessment of the back up for Grimmett and Mailey:

“While Gregory and Everett — the latter called upon to play in no more than a dozen or so first-class matches and in none of the Test games —accomplished so little, [Arthur] Richardson, an off-break bowler, slightly above medium pace, got through a good deal of work and had days of pronounced success but, considering his style, he was far too prone to indulge in leg-theory … As a rule he had a fair command of length but in this respect he was not the equal of [Charlie] Macartney, whose accuracy of pitch was truly remarkable. Although coming here essentially as a batsman, Macartney was called upon to bowl a lot and by the middle of July had taken 45 wickets, but afterwards he rather lost his power of spinning the ball and met with scarcely any success, yet he could always keep the runs down. The fact that he should have been asked to do so much bowling emphasised only too clearly the limitations of the attack.”

An unforeseen problem for Collins was that the captain himself only played three of the five Tests that summer (the first of which was all but washed out, only fifty minutes’ play being possible). He was indisposed with neuritis and arthritis for the whole of July, missing the third and fourth Tests, during which Australia were led by Warren Bardsley. At one point, Collins spent time in hospital as the problem was so severe. The illness of Hendry, and the three-week absence of Bill Ponsford with tonsillitis in June, also affected the balance of the team. Therefore, despite the “supermen” publicity, Collins’ hand in this particular series was far less strong than it had appeared.

A cigarette card of Collins produced for the 1926 tour of England (Image: National Library of Australia)

Even before these weaknesses became clear, most critics had expected England to put up a much stronger fight than they had for some time, and they were overall a stronger team than they had been in any Ashes contest since the war. They also had a better leader, Arthur Carr, who as well as being socially anointed to the extent that he was always regarded as a future England captain, was arguably a better cricketer than anyone who had captained England for twenty years. And over the course of the summer, it became clear that the teams were evenly matched — even to the point of stalemate. The first four Tests were drawn, mainly because the three days allocated to them were insufficient for either side to dismiss the other twice (this was the last Ashes series in which three-day Tests were played), particularly as both teams were stronger in batting than bowling. Nervousness, particularly on the part of the England team and selectors, also played a part. For the final Test, the English selectors jettisoned their captain, Arthur Carr, and appointed the untried Percy Chapman, not least because Carr had struggled badly to cope with the pressure of expectation: England had not beaten Australia since 1912 and had lost 12 out of 15 Tests (winning just once) played since the end of the war, a sequence extended to having won just once in 19 Tests by the beginning of the final match of the series.

With the series level, the final Test was to be played to a finish, a so-called “timeless Test”. There was great excitement and tension — both the England team and the public believed that this was the home side’s best chance for 14 years — and the press attention was almost as constant and as intense as it would be in a modern game. After a fairly even first two days before huge crowds — the ground was not full on the opening day because potential spectators thought they would not get in, but it was packed on the second — England batted on the third after torrential overnight rain had ruined the pitch. It looked as if they would be bowled out cheaply and lose a third series since the war. At that point, Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe produced a century opening stand that would pass into legend. They hung on grimly while the pitch was at its worst and began to score as conditions eased. Their partnership of 172 — both men scored centuries — formed the backbone of a big England total; when more rain fell, Australia were left an impossible task in the fourth innings and were bowled out to lose by 289 runs. As a summary, the story reads quite simply but from that third evening onwards, the events of the game were analysed at enormous length and many tens of thousands of words have since been written on what happened when Hobbs and Sutcliffe were batting. And many of them concerned Collins and the Australians.

The pitch was not too difficult when the third day began but was drying quickly under the sun, conditions which quickly made batting almost impossible. Collins used Clarrie Grimmett — a leg-spinner — and Charlie Macartney — an occasional but effective left-arm spinner — initially before switching the latter for Arthur Richardson, an off-spinner. Hobbs took two fours off Richardson before he switched to bowling round the wicket to a leg-trap, which Collins reinforced as the pitch dried further and the ball began to spit and bounce. Several of those who were there — including Sutcliffe, who perhaps might not have been quite an impartial judge, and the umpire Frank Chester — thought it was one of the worst pitches they had seen, but the openers survived. Hobbs faced eight successive maidens from Richardson, leading to a persistent myth.

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Jack Hobbs (left) and Herbert Sutcliffe leave the field at lunch on the third day of the final Test of the 1926 series, played at the Oval. They had improbably batted through the first session in extremely difficult batting condition.

Monty Noble, Collins’ old captain, was covering the Ashes series as a journalist, writing for the Evening Standard. He suggested that Collins kept Richardson on “far too long” but that “Hobbs was responsible, for with consummate artistry he contrived to give the impression that he was in difficulties.” Others followed Noble, believing not unreasonably that he knew what he was talking about, but Hobbs and Sutcliffe both denied vehemently that this had been the case, nor that Hobbs had chosen to take Richardson’s bowling to protect Sutcliffe. Hobbs even said in a 1930 interview that, on the contrary, he had wanted to give the impression that he was not having any problems, when in fact he found batting extremely difficult. Patsy Hendren wrote in 1927 that he had joked with Hobbs during the Test, having seen Noble’s article; Hobbs simply told him: “Well, he’s wrong. Richardson was bowling well. I’d have scored if I could.”

Another suggestion made in later years was that Richardson would have been more effective bowling over the wicket, but as E. M. Wellings countered, bowling off-breaks (at medium pace) round the wicket to a leg-trap was an orthodox and often devastating tactic on sticky wickets. It was used in later years by bowlers such as Jim Laker, but the primary exponent in 1926 was George Macaulay, who regularly bowled that way on sticky pitches. Richardson himself later concluded that Hobbs was just too good. Another criticism — and the only one that Collins directly addressed when he wrote his “memoirs” for the Sydney Sun in 1941 — was the Macartney should have bowled more, as sticky wickets generally suited left-arm spin. Collins recalled that Macartney told him before the third day’s play that his knee was troubling him and if he was required to bowl, he would not be able to bat. Believing that Macartney’s batting would be essential, Collins said that he chose not to bowl him — perhaps forgetting that Macartney had bowled on the third morning. And yet another factor in the complicated equation was that the English players actually feared that Collins would bring on Gregory to bowl because Richardson’s medium-paced off-breaks began to kick at one point, indicating that the faster Gregory could have been a handful. But he never did.

The vital partnership of Hobbs and Sutcliffe was perceived to be the crucial factor in England’s win; had they not survived and thrived as they had, England would have been bowled out cheaply and Australia would have had no problem knocking off the runs (and the rain which affected the pitch for their fourth innings would have not been a factor). The consensus was that Collins was to blame through his faulty tactics, an opinion expressed at the time (to Collins’ clear annoyance in his memoirs) and ever since.

In more recent times, there have been darker mutterings about what lay behind the way Collins handled his attack. The main proponent of this particular argument has been Roland Perry. Rather than being a tactical blunder, Perry has argued that it was a deliberate choice by Collins to bowl the ineffective Richardson — who, he points out, had figures of two for 193 in the first four Tests — instead of Mailey or Macartney. The reason, according to Perry, was that Collins was trying to “throw” the game, and Perry said that some of his contemporaries thought so too: “[‘Stork’ Hendry] remained convinced that [the Test] was thrown yet could provide no proof. Former captain Monty Noble expressed his suspicions in private and was critical in public of Collins’s tactics. There was also concern about his incessant betting, which sometimes lasted long into the night, even during a Test. Yet the evidence against the Australian skipper remained circumstantial. He returned home with his bank balance apparently intact, but Collins was not conspicuous for his consumption after the tour.”

However, Noble did not quite attack Collins in the press in the way that Perry says: he was critical but was writing more in praise of how Hobbs had fooled the Australian captain. And Noble was never afraid to air dirty linen in public, such as when he revealed that Arthur Carr had been drinking during the fourth Test before a sudden (and slightly suspicious) attack of tonsillitis, so delicacy would not have prevented him from making hints. Nor are there any suggestions elsewhere that Noble had any suspicions. And Hendry, who seemed to enjoy the attention brought by his longevity, may have been exaggerating his story; as might Perry, who was writing at a time when match-fixing was a big story in Australia. But there are fragments of evidence which might indicate that it was not implausible for a player to manipulate the outcome of games at this time.

The first fragment is a story told by Arthur Mailey in his autobiography 10 for 66 And All That (1958). At Melbourne in the third Test of the 1924–25 Ashes, a “well-known racing identity” approached Collins on the sixth morning — when Australia needed two wickets and England needed 27 runs to win — to offer him £100 to throw the game. Collins turned to Mailey and suggested that they should throw the man down the stairs; the bookmaker (or whoever he was) left in a rush. But why would such a dubious figure think of approaching Collins at all? Did he approach others regularly? Or was Collins someone whom he thought would be pliable? The second piece of evidence is a letter written by Warwick Armstrong to the Australian Board of Control before the 1921 tour, co-signed by Collins, which suggested that in return for a share of the profits, the players would artificially lengthen the duration of games to increase the gate money, presumably by not trying as hard. And a final piece of circumstantial evidence is that Collins, by his own admission, enjoyed gambling: “On the racecourse, I took risks. And, in racing, I won a lot of money, and lost a lot, too! … But let me say that racing didn’t make me wealthy. The thousands I used to handle don’t exist now.” His recklessness in betting was in sharp contrast to his dour batting, but gambling excited him. In one of his Sydney Sun articles, he recalled “silly rumours” about how gambling affected his cricket: “People, I know, used to say that racing had such a grip on me that, during Test Matches, I would take a taxi from the ground, when I was out, to the racecourse for a quick bet. That was never true. As a first-class cricketer, both as player and captain, I gave everything I had to the game.”

It is just possible, if you try hard enough, to find sufficient evidence in this cloud of rumour to believe that Collins might have been capable of throwing a game to make money, perhaps to pay off gambling debts. And maybe there is just a hint, independent of Hendry, that there were rumours which brought together Collins, Test matches and gambling. But any evidence is no more than circumstantial and is not really compelling. Yet Perry suggests that the Australian selectors were aware of the rumours, which is why Collins was dropped after the 1926 tour; the Oval Test was his last at that level and he played no more first-class cricket after the end of the tour. But this is not entirely convincing as Australia did not play another Test until the 1928–29 season, by when Collins had not played seriously for two years, and he was not mentioned in any speculation about who would lead Australia in that summer’s Ashes series.

Collins working as a bookmaker in Sydney (Image: Campbelltown News, 28 Oct 1927)

But again, there are just a few hints of something else going on. Some writers — such as Chris Harte — have suggested that Collins was sacked as captain of Waverley and of New South Wales after losing the Ashes but other sources — such as the Australian Dictionary of National Biography — say that he retired. There are a few contemporary hints. The Sydney newspaper Freeman’s Journal reported in November 1926 that Collins’ club Waverley planned to drop him, for unspecified reasons. While the publication ridiculed the suggestion, a week later it said that Collins had “taken matters into his own hands” and taken a job working at a Melbourne sports depot. From that point, he was done as a player. There were suggestions in May 1927 that Collins planned to move to England and work as a bookmaker there (he would not even tell Arthur Mailey the purpose of his planned visit). But in October 1927 it was reported that he was working as a bookmaker at Ascot in Western Australia. The most likely explanation of what was going on is that Collins had decided to retire from top-level cricket — which may be what lay behind the reported dispute with Waverley if he had told them he planned to take a new job — especially as his health had been suspect in England. There are no indications that he had any intention of continuing with Australia. When he returned to cricket in 1928, it was at a much lower level, for City Tattersalls, a social club for bookmakers.

By then, Collins was involved full-time in racing and bookmaking. He was a steward for a time at Sydney’s pony races. He held a bookmaker’s licence, but mainly worked as a commission agent; according to Jack Pollard (in Australian Cricket) he was “laying-off for bookmakers that were over-committed on certain horses [and] placing huge sums of money with ice-cold precision.” But it was far from plain-sailing. Perry records how he made two fortunes from betting but lost both. Collins struggled to earn a living in the 1930s, particularly when he was supporting his ailing mother, and briefly tried to find work away from racing. He had lost quite a lot of money gambling by this time and the New South Wales Cricketers’ Fund assisted him; their minutes record after an interview with him in 1931: “He has an invalid mother who has no hope of recovering. So short has he been of money that on occasions he has not been able to buy the necessary medicine, and more infrequently they have been short of food.” Soon after, he found work as a stipendiary steward; but he often gambled away his earnings. Yet any suggestion that he was in some kind of cricketing disgrace is somewhat diluted by his election in 1936–37 as a life member of the New South Wales Cricket Association.

His mother died in 1939; his release into freedom might explain what happened next. In 1940, at the age of 51, Collins married Marjorie Paine, the 24-year-old daughter of a racing club steward. They had one son, Lawrence, but divorced after eleven years of marriage; she did not defend his petition. In 1941, Collins joined the Australian Imperial Forces, initially with the rank of sergeant. As he was based at the Victoria Barracks in Sydney, he was able to continue working as a commission agent at the weekend. But Australian newspapers suggested that he was quickly barred from operating as a bookmaker. He was a lieutenant in the salvage corps, but the authorities thought that continuing his civilian role stretched the rules which allowed officers a day off, as he was being paid for his military work. Perry suggests that he also resumed the gambling habits which he had largely given up. Perhaps that was why he wrote his memoirs in the Sydney Sun. In any case, he was transferred to the reserve by the end of the year.

Collins photographed in 1933 (Image: National Library of Australia)

After Collins’ divorce, according to Pollard: “He frequented the gambling clubs around King’s Cross, playing poker through the night.” Little else is known of his later life, and he died of cancer in May 1958. All but forgotten today, dwarfed by the stature of players around him like Armstrong and Macartney, or by those like Don Bradman and Bill O’Reilly who followed, he had a good record. In 19 Tests, he scored 1,352 runs at a very good average of 45.06 (and took four wickets), while at first-class level he scored 9,924 runs at 40.01 and took 181 wickets at 21.38. He captained Australia 11 times, winning five Tests and losing two; he won the toss in seven of those games.

A dour man with a quiet sense of humour, his greatest achievement (apart from his captaincy of the AIF in 1919) was probably his ability to extract the best from his players, and his gently caring attitude towards them. Few had a bad word to say about him, and Hendry was very much the exception in being critical. If the perception of him as a heavy gambler was fair, less acknowledged was his love of opera or how he sometimes sang at parties to which the teams were invited. But it seems incredibly unlikely that he was a match-fixer, and he deserves to be remembered for better reasons than that.

“One of Australia’s most successful cricket captains”: The Rise of Herbie Collins

Herbie Collins in 1920 (Image: Wikipedia)

The fifth Test of the 1926 Ashes series, when England regained the Ashes after years of Australian domination, almost immediately assumed legendary status, not least for the manner in which it was won. For years after, the match was savoured like no other; the story was retold by several of the participants and featured extensively in other books and even today no history or biography from this period is complete without its anecdotes from the Oval in August 1926. Among the many hundreds of thousands of words written on the game, the consensus is clear that the crucial passage came on the third morning, on one of the stickiest pitches imaginable, during a partnership between Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe, a pair who everyone unanimously agrees batted unbelievably — even miraculously — well. Often overlooked though was the quiet, extremely respected figure who watched their batting with growing concern, quite possibly wondering if he had made a mistake and almost certainly accurately calculating the odds on his team winning as the runs mounted. Australia’s captain, Herbie Collins, was a dour opening batter and shrewd tactician whose excellent career at Test level would come to be overshadowed by his role in leading Australia to their first series defeat since 1912. He had taken over from Warwick Armstrong in 1921 and was coming to the end of his Test career, but those who played under him spoke very highly of his captaincy. Yet he was far from typical for an Australian captain.

Only one full length biography of Collins has been written (by Max Bonnell in 2015), although he is the subject of several lengthy articles in histories of Australian cricket. Jack Pollard, in his exhaustive Australian Cricket: The Game and the Players (1988), began his entry on Collins: “One of Australia’s most successful cricket captains, some say the wisest, an introverted enigma of a man whose spiritual homes were the gaming tables of Monte Carlo, the dog and racing tracks where he fielded as a bookmaker, the sleazy gambling joints of Sydney’s King’s Cross and London’s Soho, a two-up school in Flanders trenches, and anywhere a game of poker was on. He gambled with his own fortunes but protected Australia’s cricket prestige with a Scrooge-like intensity. As a cricketer he considered all the factors carefully before he moved. As a gamer, he bet impulsively.” As a summary of Collins, this takes some beating.

Herbert Leslie Collins was born in 1889 in Darlinghurst, Sydney, the youngest child of Thomas Collins — an accountant — and Emma Charlton. As a schoolboy at Albion Street Public School, he showed talent at Rugby Union but shone as a cricketer and was soon playing for Paddington under the captaincy of the Australian captain Monty Noble. Although Collins’ hero was the inimitable Victor Trumper, from an early age he had his own idiosyncratic technique which favoured prudence over adventure: he had no real back-lift and scored most of his runs from safe deflections, preferring to take no chances. His only aggressive shot was the hook, but his lack of driving ability meant that he could be kept quiet with well-set fields and full-length bowling. On flat surfaces, he sometimes spurned batting gloves. He batted right-handed but bowled left-arm spin, although he turned his arm over less frequently as his career progressed. Bowling very slowly from a two-paced approach, he was more effective overseas: his two best seasons with the ball came in England in 1919 and South Africa in 1919–20.

Collins’ father died in 1908, aged only 45. It is not clear how the family adapted, but for the 1909–10 cricket season, Collins transferred to Waverley Cricket Club in Sydney. His somewhat dour methods were successful enough at his new club to earn him selection for New South Wales in December 1909 for their tour of southern Australia. Making his debut against South Australia, he batted at number seven and bowled 12 overs to take one wicket. Later that month, he batted at number six against Victoria and did not bowl, but 32 runs in four innings was underwhelming and he was dropped. Weight of runs in grade cricket brought another chance for New South Wales in 1910–11, playing four games under the captaincy of his hero Trumper. From the middle order, he managed two fifties and averaged just under thirty: his best score was 83 against the touring South African team.

Collins played just once in 1911–12, scoring 0 and 3 against the touring MCC team, but later said that he carefully studied the field placings of the English team (which defeated Australia 4–1 in that season’s Ashes series). In 1912–13, he played a full season and was a success. His maiden first-class hundred, an innings of 282 against Tasmania, which came at the end of the season, took his average for the year to 42. The following season, he scored two more hundreds and averaged just under 69 to place him among the best Australian batters. As a result, he toured New Zealand with an unofficial Australian team, and also toured Canada and the United States with a team organised by Edgar Mayne, but the First World War halted his progress on the field.

Collins enlisted in the Australian Light Horse in 1914 and was sent to France the following year. Initially he was a trooper in the Light Horse reinforcements, but later volunteered as a driver transporting shells to the guns. He also spent time in Palestine and eventually reached the rank of Lance Corporal. According to Roland Perry in Captain Australia (2003), it was while serving in the trenches that his love of gambling developed into an addiction, a suggestion echoed by Jack Pollard’s mention of “a two-up school in Flanders trenches”.

It was Collins’ association with the Australian Light Horse which presented him with his biggest opportunity. When first-class cricket resumed in England for an experimental 1919 season, the Australian military authorities in London agreed to the formation of an Australian Imperial Forces team, comprising men who were still on active service, to tour England and play the counties (taking over an itinerary which had been drawn up for an abandoned tour by a fully representative Australian team). The players initially elected Charles Kelleway, who was still suffering the effects of a leg wound received during the war, as their captain. But something was not entirely right, and after six games Kelleway — who had scored 505 runs at 56.11 and taken 18 wickets — was dropped. Wisden attributed this to “some disagreement” but the reason remains mysterious.

Ray Robinson, in On Top Down Under (1997 edition), attributed Kelleway’s removal to a “dispute about the list of games” but Pollard (in his entry for Kelleway) states: “After six matches [Kelleway] was replaced by Collins, apparently on the orders of Field Marshal Birdwood, GOC Australian forces. Collins said Birdwood told him Kelleway was a fine player but inclined to be quarrelsome. Kelleway attempted to take the field in the next match but team-mates refused to join him, and he went home on the next boat.” Collins wrote about Kelleway’s sacking in an article for the Sydney Sun in 1941. He said: “During an inspection of the wicket, [Kelleway] made a remark which offended a groundsman. This groundsman reported the matter to the Surrey committee. The committee took a serious view of the incident, and went so far as to communicate its views to the A.I.F. authorities. Later a meeting was held in the Australians’ dressing-room, and I was elected captain in Kelleway’s place. This was with General Birdwoods approval. Not long after Kelleway caught a ship back to Australia.”

Herbie Collins (second from right) leads out the AIF team at Sheffield in 1919 (Image: Australian War Memorial)

Collins, who was chosen to lead the team despite the presence of several men who held officer rank and despite his lack of captaincy experience at first-class level, was a huge success as captain and player. He scored 1,615 runs, with five centuries, at an average of 38.45, and took 106 wickets at 16.55. He was third in the team’s batting lists and headed the bowlers. For the first time, he began to open the batting regularly, and kept that position for the rest of his career. But it was his captaincy that made the biggest impression, not least when he led his team to victory over a strong MCC side. Pollard said of Collins in 1919 that he “played a major role in restoring our lost prestige with his unselfish leadership of the first AIF side”. As well as his tactical astuteness, he knew how to handle his players. One good example was related by Robinson. When the AIF played the South of England, Collins wanted an early finish so that the team could catch an early train from Portsmouth to London. He motivated the tiring fast bowler Jack Gregory by asking the wicket-keeper Bert Oldfield to stand up to the stumps. Enraged, Gregory increased his pace and bowled the AIF to that early win. Yet Collins also knew how to protect his players; he often promoted Gregory up the batting order to allow him longer spells of rest to keep him fresh. Robinson wrote of his captaincy in 1919: “As a contribution to Australian cricket nothing else in his career rivalled his nurturing and development of this side. His AIF team injected rich new blood to help make the 1920–21 Australian XI the best-balanced side any country ever possessed.” Nevertheless, Pollard related that Collins “sometimes looked drawn at the start of the day’s play after overnight sessions at the gaming tables.”

When the AIF team visited South Africa on the journey home after the 1919 season, Collins scored 607 runs at 50.58 and took 39 wickets at 16.43, cementing his place as a leading player. His best game was against a representative South African team at Johannesburg, when he took five for 52 and then scored 235. He followed this with 408 runs in four matches — three for the AIF and one for New South Wales — when he returned to Australia, averaging 58.28. Therefore, when the MCC toured Australia in 1920–21, Collins was an undisputed first choice as opener, not least after he scored a century for New South Wales against the visitors in the lead up to the Test series. Making his Test debut in the first game, he scored 70 (although he was dropped twice) and 104 to become the fifth (and at the age of 32, the oldest at the time) Australian to make a century in his first Test. Following up with an innings of 162 in 258 minutes in the third game, he finished the series with 557 runs, the best on either side, at 61.88 (fourth in the Australian averages). That season, he also became captain of New South Wales and led the team to victory in the Sheffield Shield.

However, Collins’ form and proven leadership skills caused a few problems behind the scenes. The Australian team was captained by Warwick Armstrong, a far from unanimous choice, and Collins served as his deputy. But there were strong voices which suggested that Collins would be a more suitable captain, despite Armstrong’s success, not least because of his superior form. Some of the grumbling was put to rest after Armstrong led Australia to a 5–0 win but there were similar calls before the selection of the Australian team which toured England in 1921. Armstrong held Collins in high regard as a player and captain, and had indicated to the press while deliberations were still ongoing — albeit a little unconvincingly — that he would have happily played under Collins. Nevertheless, Armstrong was eventually asked to lead the team in England, with Collins as his deputy.

One curious incident in the lead-up to the 1921 tour was Armstrong’s suggestion to the Australian Board, during negotiations regarding players’ fees, that if they agreed that the profits would be shared among the team, they would agree to prolong matches which otherwise would have finished in two days as opposed to the scheduled three, and therefore increase gate receipts and profits. The Board asked him to put the request in writing; he did so and Collins co-signed the letter. Although the proposal was rejected, Gideon Haigh — in Big Ship (2003), his biography of Armstrong (from where this information comes) — notes that this amounted to an offer to fix matches. If this may be a little strong a term, it does suggest that the players might perhaps dial back their intensity to increase profits.

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The Australian team which toured England in 1921

With the arguments and preparations out of the way, the tour got underway — after Collins led some of the players on a brief outing to the casinos of Monte Carlo during the journey to England. Armstrong’s team dominated the 1921 season in a way never seen before and rarely since. The counties were swept aside in a blaze of aggressive batting and intimidating fast bowling, and the England team was no match, being crushed in the first three Tests before poor weather and improved form allowed them to draw the final two. Armstrong’s team went into the final four games of the tour unbeaten, but lost their record when a team led by Archie MacLaren won at Eastbourne (before C. I. Thornton’s XI won the final game at Scarborough).

However, Collins’ part in proceedings was limited. Although scoring over 1,000 first-class runs at an average of just under 34, he played only a small part in the Test series. He broke his finger in the opening Test while catching Ernest Tyldesley at silly point; when he returned in the fourth game, Australia already held an unassailable lead. England had the better of that match, but Collins scored 40 in 289 minutes to avert the possibility of defeat on a rain-affected pitch. He also managed to find further ways to fulfil his growing gambling obsession during the English summer; when the team stayed at the Savoy Hotel in London, he found a nearby baccarat school.

Despite his limited opportunities in 1921, Collins remained a vital part of the team, and when the Australians visited South Africa on their way home, Armstrong was unwell. Therefore Collins took over the captaincy for the three-Test series. In matches played on matting pitches, unfamiliar to Australians, Collins’ team were dominant in the first two Tests, although they were held to draws in both, but they won the third. He scored 203 in 244 minutes at Johannesburg in the second Test, many of his runs scored behind the wicket from late cuts and square cuts. Despite the palpable weakness of the South African attack, Collins later recalled one bowler who troubled the team enormously when he wrote about the tour in 1941: “It was during this tour that I saw one of the most amazing types of bowlers in my experience. His name was [Jimmy] Blanckenberg, and he played in the South African Test team. Blanckenberg was a little above medium pace, but he could spin the ball both ways. And nobody in the Australian team could pick which way he was going to spin it. He wasn’t the ordinary bosey [googly] bowler as we knew it as he bowled with his fingers, not his wrist. His wrist never turned. Blanckenberg was one of the most extraordinary — and best — bowlers I have ever batted against.”

New South Wales team in January 1921. Back row: Bert Oldfield, Hunter Hendry, Jack Gregory, James Bogle, Alan Kippax, Charles Kelleway. Front row: Johnny Taylor, Tommy Andrews, Herbie Collins, Ernest Waddy, Warren Bardsley, Hanson Carter (Image: State Library of South Australia)

Collins continued to be a leading batter and a successful captain for New South Wales (his team won the Sheffield Shield again in 1922–23) over the following seasons. After averaging over 60 in 1921–22, he managed to average in the high thirties for the next two seasons, making him the leading candidate, after Armstrong’s retirement, to lead the Australians when the MCC toured in 1924–25. He was duly appointed to face an English team under the cheerful but naive leadership of Arthur Gilligan. It was perhaps the highest point of his career as he inspired his players and tactically outmanoeuvred his opposite number. Gilligan was hugely popular in Australia — although the public were unaware that he was very likely involved in establishing fascist groups in the country. Monty Noble, in his book about the series, Gilligan’s Men (1925) sang Gilligan’s praises, describing him as “the type of man who, in the most unostentatious way, can do more than all the politicians and statesmen to cement the relations between the Homeland and the Dominions.” Noble praised his sportsmanship, “cheery optimism” and “debonair countenance” while attempting valiantly to brush over his tactical and managerial shortcomings. But the consensus, even if the English press tried to play it down, was that Collins was by far the superior captain and that Gilligan made several errors. Perhaps the most illustrative was related by Frank Woolley, who told his biographer Ian Peebles how England had been on top during the third Test, with two well-set English batsmen facing a tiring Australian attack when there was an interruption for a light rain shower. Collins accompanied Gilligan and the umpires to inspect the pitch. According to Peebles: “Despite the almost non-existent effect of the rain [Collins] immediately turned to the umpires and said he thought it would be fit in an hour’s time. They nodded agreement, and Collins, moving off as though all was settled, said, ‘Suit you, Arthur?’ Arthur’s acquiescence meant rest and recovery for the bowlers and loss of touch for the batsman, all of which Frank believes could just have tipped the scale.” Australia eventually won by just eleven runs.

Collins was an effective captain throughout the series. For example, Robinson (relying on the memories of some players with whom he spoke) described how he insisted that his fielders had to look at him after every ball so that he did not have to attract their attention. He would adjust their positions with small hand movements. But he was perhaps more of an inspiring than an inspired leader. He was very popular with his players, several of whom later spoke of how he had helped them. For example, when Bill Ponsford made his debut in the first Test of the 1924–25 series, he joined Collins (who scored 114 and 60 in the game), who shielded him from the dangerous bowling of Maurice Tate until he was settled at the crease; Ponsford, according to Perry, later credited Collins for the fact that he went on to a debut century. He also knew when to use humour; Perry related how at Melbourne in the fourth Test, when the Bert Oldfield stumped Jack Hobbs spectacularly, Collins walked over to him to say: “How the bloody hell did you do it?”

But he was also tactically astute in a way that Gilligan was not. Robinson told another story from that series. During the second Test, after the England openers Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe had batted the entirety of the previous day for 283, Collins told the leg-spinner Mailey at the start of the fourth day that he would open the bowling that morning. Mailey’s first ball, to Hobbs, was a full toss. Collins altered his field to leave a tempting off-side gap; when Mailey bowled another full toss, Hobbs was bowled trying to hit the ball into the gap. When Frank Woolley scored a rapid 40 in the second innings, Gilligan sent a message telling him to bat more carefully; Collins took the opportunity to bring in the field and use the economical off-spin bowling of Arthur Richardson. Woolley managed just ten runs in the next hour before being lbw to Richardson. And sometimes his man-management and his tactical awareness came together very well, such as when he entrusted the often-erratic Arthur Mailey with the ball on the final morning of the third Test, which began with England needing just 27 runs; Mailey responded by taking the last wicket, that of overnight batter A. P. Freeman, for 24 to seal the win.

There are many other stories of Collins’ human touch. Bert Oldfield later spoke of how he “got to know his fellow men. He was just as close to a religious boy, Johnny Taylor, son of a clergyman, as he was to Nip Pellew, a lad of the village. He studied every player’s temperament and acted accordingly.” And Arthur Mailey said: “I learnt more of the psychology of cricket from Collins than all the hundreds of cricketers I met. Without being perceptibly diplomatic, he could carry the burden of responsibility yet transfer the credit to those he thought deserved it most.”

Hal Hooker in 1928 (Image: Wikipedia)

He encouraged players by showing faith in them. Robinson tells a story of how during Halford Hooker’s first game for New South Wales, in which he had taken some wickets, he had to go out to bat in a rush after the fall of several wickets. Collins, captaining the team, “gave no instructions, but clapped him on the shoulder, saying, ‘It’s your match — good on you!” Hooker stayed in two hours. Collins also had a wry sense of humour. When Roy Park had made a century for Victoria on a greasy pitch, Collins’ bowlers were unwilling to bowl with a slippery ball. When Park was dismissed, they were much more eager to take the ball, but Collins said: “Hold your horses, don’t worry about trying to bowl them out. From now on we’re going to run them out” (The Victorian team were notoriously poor runners). In another game, when Victoria’s Arthur Liddicut was bowling wide outside off stump to slow the scoring, Collins signalled for a new bat but rejected the three brought out, saying he needed something longer. And in a grade game, the slow bowler Oswald Asher begged Collins to take him off after he had been hit for several sixes; Collins responded: “No fear, I haven’t enjoyed anything like this for years.”

In the dressing room, he was often quiet. Robinson related how the players noticed after a day’s play that Collins often sat silently in a corner of the dressing room, still wearing his whites: “They assumed that he was replaying the game in his mind, studying the lessons of the day and applying them to the probabilities of the morrow. Everyone else would be dressed before he had a shower.” Although he was a heavy smoker, Collins never drank.

But there was always an undercurrent of Collins’ gambling addiction. Hooker recalled that he would bet on anything, such as how many trains would pass through a station while they were waiting, or how many carriages would be on the next one. On trains, he used to bet on which way a brass spinning top would land; the players would take turns to spin it. On one occasion, a player was out of work and reluctant to take part, but did not want to admit that he could not afford to gamble. Collins left the carriage when it was that player’s turn, so that he could be “banker” and therefore be spared having to use his own money. According to Pollard, Collins’ love of gambling was well-known among the players, but he would not play poker in the dressing room as he did not want to take money from them, knowing that he would have won easily as a superior player. Among the team, one of his nicknames was “The Squirrel”, because his eyes were brightest at night, according to Arthur Mailey.

He had other names. After wing three tosses in a row (and four in the series) against Arthur Gilligan in 1924–25, he acquired his most persistent nickname, “Lucky Collins”. Robinson tells the story of how, after Collins won his third straight toss, Gilligan knelt on the ground and pretended to check that the coin had both heads and tails. A legend grew among Australian fans that Collins had learned how to win a coin toss at “two-up schools” in France during the war. Robinson also says that he was known as “Nutty” — though “it’s an even-money guess whether this was because he used his nut or because he was a hard nut to crack” — and by Gilligan as “Horseshoe Collins”.

In the second Test of the 1924–25 series, Collins reached 1,000 Test runs in his 12th match and 18th innings, a record for an Australian batter at the time. But his form fell away after the first Test, and he scored just 294 runs at 29.40 in the series. He would probably have settled for a loss of form given that his team won the series 4–1 against an English team that was probably a lot stronger than the result would suggest. There was never any doubt that he would retain the captaincy for the 1926 Ashes series in England. But that was the series in which Collins’ luck finally ran out, and life was never quite the same for him afterwards.

“What’s he got against me?”: The Divisive Captaincy of Wally Hammond

Wally Hammond
by Bassano Ltd; half-plate glass negative, 10 September 1936
NPG x21815 © National Portrait Gallery, London

If Wally Hammond is universally regarded as a good batter, there is similar — albeit less complimentary — agreement about his captaincy. His overall record as a Test captain is poor: he led England 20 times, winning four games, losing three and drawing the rest. Worse than his record were the judgements against his leadership. Many journalists and many of those who played under him were scathing in their opinions. Yet a distinction should be made here. Hammond led England in three series before the Second World War and three after it. And it was the 1946–47 Ashes series which forced the conclusion that he was a poor captain. However, perhaps it is unfair to base judgement on a series when Hammond was mentally, physically and emotionally worn out, and he had a much better record (and reputation) as captain before the war. Perhaps his biggest achievement was to have led at all. He was the first professional cricketer to be captain England, although to do so he had to shed his professional status in a way which reflected poorly on Hammond and the system from which he emerged.

Hammond’s appointment as England captain was somewhat manufactured. Precedent, convention and outright discrimination meant that in this period, captaincy always went to amateurs. Although many arguments were trotted out to support such a position, the real reason was simple snobbery — the assumption that amateurs, who were almost always from the middle or upper-middle classes at this time, were superior to working-class professionals. Even at the time, many viewed such an attitude as outdated and there was growing opposition to the whole idea of amateurism. County captains were also generally amateurs, although there had been an abortive attempt to appoint Herbert Sutcliffe as Yorkshire captain (initially the plan was to have him “convert” to amateurism as Hammond did) in 1927 and Ewart Astill led Leicestershire as a professional for one season in 1935.

Therefore, in the ordinary course of affairs, Hammond, who for most of his career played as a professional (he played three games as an amateur immediately after leaving school in 1920 before signing a professional contract) had no chance of being appointed as England captain, even if he was by this time indisputably the best batter in the country. However, Hammond had social as well as cricketing ambitions. In his 1996 biography Wally Hammond: The Reasons Why, David Foot summarised the impression that Hammond gave his team-mates; he was always viewed as an overly ambitious social climber and an outright snob.

From his earliest days in the Gloucestershire team, Hammond had aspired to move up the social ladder and went to some trouble to “cultivate” influential amateurs. He preferred the company of the higher echelons of Bristol society to that of his working-class team-mates. According to Foot — in another of those passages where it is unclear how firmly rooted in historical fact we are — Pelham Warner suggested to him that he should find a job which enabled him to play as an amateur. Whether Warner would have been so open with a professional is perhaps doubtful.

Nevertheless, there were suggestions, as reported in the Daily Mirror in September 1928, that Hammond definitely planned to turn amateur. At the time, he was engaged to Dorothy Lister, whose father Joseph was a wealthy businessman. Perhaps Hammond hoped that Lister would support him financially, and the latter did not deny the truth of the rumours when questioned by the press. Yet following Hammond’s marriage in 1929, he continued to play as a professional. But his father-in-law’s wealth meant that he could afford to drive a car and wear fashionable clothes: in other words, to live an “amateur” lifestyle.

The Great Depression brought about the financial ruin of Lister, and meant that Hammond was unable to maintain such a lifestyle on the wages of a professional cricketer. In fact, he and Dorothy began to struggle, which cynics suggested as the explanation for why Hammond soon lost interest in a wife who no longer brought him financial benefit. At one point, Dorothy had to take a job, something which was still rare for married women. In 1933, Hammond was given a job as a sales promotion manager at the Cater Motor Company, a car manufacturer, for an annual salary of £1,000. The role was something of a sinecure and seemed to be more of a publicity stunt on the part of his employers than a substantial role. And as a salesman, he was not particularly effective. But it was a step in the right direction for Hammond’s social ambitions.

There were further rumours in August 1933 that Hammond would turn amateur if offered the England captaincy (as, according to the same story, Herbert Sutcliffe would have). The story appeared in an article written by “the Clubman” in the Daily Mirror (although the Gloucestershire Echo said that it was Lionel Tennyson who was the source).

And it seems that influential figures hoped to find Hammond a better-paying job which would allow him to do so. Foot suggests “a little coterie from the environs of Lord’s, headed by the unwaveringly loyal and effusive Warner, were busy sounding out people they knew in the City”, and that rumours were in full swing that Hammond planned to change his status. Even Gerald Howat, in his much drier 1984 biography of Hammond, hints at behind-the-scenes discussions: he suggests that business friends from Bristol, and his connections with men such as the Duke of Beaufort played a part. And he wrote how “influential members of the MCC” had approached Dunlop with a view to securing a directorship for Hammond to enable him to play as an amateur.

A photograph promoting Hammond’s appointment to the Board of Marsham Tyres
(Image: Wally Hammond: The Reasons Why (1996) by David Foot)

In the event, Hammond joined Marsham Tyres, a Bristol company, in November 1937. Advised by his business associates, he successfully held out for a place on the Board before accepting the role. His new job was widely reported in the press, as was the obvious follow-up that Gloucestershire had released him from his professional contract and that he would play as an amateur when the 1938 season began. Nevertheless, he dead-batted questions about whether he would be appointed England captain, even though it was clear to everyone what was going on.

Conveniently, this came at a time when the England captaincy was unsettled. After Bob Wyatt’s unsuccessful spell in charge, Gubby Allen led England against India in 1936 and against Australia during the 1936–37 Ashes, when England lost 3–2. Walter Robins led against New Zealand in 1937 but was not guaranteed a place in the Test team. Hammond had occasionally captained the Players against the Gentlemen, and had experience of leading Gloucestershire in the absence of the official amateur captain. Although he was generally considered to have done a sound job, he never stood out as an outstanding captain. His claims rested mainly on his status as the best batter in England.

Once Hammond entered the picture, most people therefore assumed that the role would be his. His only real rival was Gubby Allen; the latter made an effort to play regularly at the beginning of the 1938 season, something he did not always do. However, he was hampered by injury and when he was only made captain of “The Rest” during a Test trial at which Hammond was appointed as the captain of the England, he effectively sulked (although he claimed to be suffering from an injury) and pulled out of contention, not least because he was angry that Warner, the Chairman of Selectors, had not discussed it with him personally. Although he did not say so explicitly, E. W. Swanton was quite clear about what happened in his doting 1985 biography of Allen.

Therefore Hammond was named as captain for the 1938 series. He was the first former professional to captain England at home (although Jack Hobbs had taken charge mid-way through a Test during the 1926 Ashes when Arthur Carr was indisposed). The Establishment largely kept silent, although there were doubtless several eyebrows raised in private. Foot suggests that some critics were waiting to find fault with Hammond’s captaincy so they could blame his social status; he also records (without giving a source) one comment that “you couldn’t have a car salesman leading your country”, and another that Hammond “wouldn’t know which fork to use at the official banquets”.

Arguments were also rehashed about whether Hammond’s captaincy would be improved simply by his change of status. Hammond later betrayed some embarrassment at how the affair unfolded; Foot states that people who talked to him about the matter in later years got little out of him, and he “fidgeted without much comment”. In his own book, Secret History (1952), Hammond betrayed some confusion over his feelings towards amateur captaincy, suggesting both that it was illogical that he had been forced to turn amateur to captain England but also that all the best captains had been amateurs. But he later wrote that most amateurs did not understand the game in the same way that professionals did.

Unfortunately for Hammond, by the time he wrote those words, most critics had concluded that he did not understand the game either. By the time he left the role, a tired and disillusioned man, in 1947, his reputation as a captain had been ruined. But as with his batting, some distinction should be made between Hammond’s captaincy before the Second World War and after it. When he led England in Australia during the 1946–47 season, he was long past his best with the bat, rapidly became daunted by the scale of the task facing his underprepared team and was in the midst of intense personal strife as the failure of his marriage became public and the woman he intended to marry, Sybil Ness-Harvey, struggled to adapt to life in England while he was away. He was also palpably overweight, suffering from back problems and quite simply too old for the task. He came close to a breakdown and as such, was hardly in a fit state to captain. Although he should probably have retired beforehand, as long as he was available, he was the only realistic candidate to do the job. While the tour has its place in telling Hammond’s story, it should not in fairness form the basis of judgements on his ability as a captain.

Opinions on how he performed as captain before the war vary depending on how the person expressing them felt about Hammond. For example, E. W. Swanton wrote several disparaging pieces (mainly in later years) about him, but Swanton was extremely close to Gubby Allen. And even Swanton defended Hammond from criticism of his tactics during the 1939 series against the West Indies, in an article in The Cricketer that season. Charlie Barnett frequently tore Hammond’s captaincy apart in interviews, but the problems between the two men had far deeper roots than tactics.

Perhaps the fairest summary has been written by Alan Gibson in The Cricket Captains of England (1979) in which he observed: “[Hammond] won some praise for his captaincy before the war (not just conventional praise; [Jack] Fingleton, for instance, thought he was a good captain). After the war, he had some blame. Jim Swanton, in his later books, has been severe about him. I think it is fair to say that Hammond was not temperamentally well suited to the job.”

British Pathé footage of the first Test of the 1938 Ashes series, Hammond’s debut as captain

Hammond’s pre-war record was not too bad. He led England in three series in which he was undefeated: he drew 1–1 with Australia in 1938, defeated South Africa 1–0 in 1938–39 (on some horribly flat pitches) and won 1–0 against the West Indies in 1939. The latter two teams were stronger than they had been for most of the interwar period, and such results were not to be dismissed lightly. An overall record of three wins and one defeat from 13 Tests is very respectable. But even here, there were echoes of criticism.

Hammond’s biggest problem as captain was his inability to handle the different personalities within a team. Throughout his career, he had a reputation for being moody, difficult and unapproachable. He rarely gave advice or encouragement. In a team-mate, this was unfortunate but not disastrous; it was a source of regret rather than acrimony. But when he became captain, this was far more of an issue, particularly at Gloucestershire, where he replaced Basil Allen as captain for 1939. With England, he was surrounded by gifted players and, during home seasons, they were only around Hammond for a few days at a time. At Gloucestershire, a struggling county, he was with his team for six days each week. And many of his team-mates remembered his time as captain with considerable bitterness.

For example, A. H. Brodhurst, a Cambridge Blue who played for Gloucestershire in late 1939, was disconcerted when Hammond did not even speak to him as he was waiting nervously to bat in the middle of a collapse; nor did the captain offer any congratulations when he scored a fifty to rescue the team. George Lambert, Gloucestershire’s fast bowler, found Hammond difficult to play under. He told Foot how his captain would glare at him from slip if his line or length went awry, or if he conceded runs. Lambert also resented being over-bowled by Hammond, who would not allow him much chance to rest. He was heard to say several times: “What’s he got against me? When am I going to get a murmur of praise from him?” Barnett suggested in his own writing that Hammond was too curt and rude. Patrick Murphy, in his study of batters who scored a hundred first-class centuries, related how George Emmett once asked Hammond why he had been dropped from the team for a few games; the reply was: “Well, Emmett, you’re not a very good player, are you?”

And there are many more instances. Charlie Barnett suggested several times that Hammond would not accept advice from his team. F. R. Brown told Murphy that he thought Hammond was the worst captain under whom he had played: “He did everything by the clock, rotating bowlers at set stages.”

Not everyone was completely against him. The England wicket-keeper Les Ames had no complaints about his captaincy. Gloucestershire’s Reg Sinfield found him more approachable, and Hammond used to take him to inspect the pitch before the toss to ascertain his opinion over whether to bat or bowl. But even Sinfield’s reminiscences to Foot often ended with: “Such a great player — and such a bad captain.”

Perhaps part of the problem was that Hammond found captaincy difficult. He certainly felt the pressure as England’s pre-war captain; before Test matches, he went to stay with his friend and Gloucestershire team-mate William Neale to avoid the press, pacing up and down pondering selection problems and refusing to take phone calls. According to Foot, he also mentioned “feeling the strain” in one letter written before the war.

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Wally Hammond, the England captain (right) tossing the coin with the Australian captain Don Bradman (left) at the Oval in 1938, watched by the groundsman “Bosser” Martin (centre)

If the consensus was that Hammond could not really inspire or motivate his players, what about his approach on the field? There were varied opinions on his tactical ability, but the 1938 series raised one or two questions. In the first Test, he pursued a very unusual strategy. England scored 658 for eight declared (and Hammond rebuked Denis Compton for getting out after scoring a two-hour century), leaving Australia simply looking to avoid defeat. They scored 411, batting for more than 130 overs before being asked to follow-on. And in all that time, Hedley Verity, a big threat to the Australians, bowled 7.3 overs. The explanation offered in Wisden was that “the probability that he would be in a position to enforce a follow-on influenced Hammond to conserve Verity’s energies”, but in his absence from the attack, Stan McCabe scored a brilliant 232; it was Verity who finally dismissed him after a tenth wicket partnership of 77 (Hammond attempted to keep McCabe off strike, to no avail). And had Hammond been braver, McCabe might have made far fewer runs. When the Australian batter came to the wicket, Sinfield, playing his only Test, asked Hammond for three short legs; Hammond eventually agreed on two, but early in his innings, McCabe put the ball in the air to where the third one would have been positioned.

Australia batted out the game after following on, scoring 427 for six in 184 overs, of which Verity delivered 62 overs. Perhaps such tactics did not affect the result on a very flat pitch, but it may not have inspired confidence. The inevitable Charlie Barnett, who played in the game, later told Alan Hill, for his 1986 biography of Verity, that this was “appalling captaincy”.

The second Test featured a Hammond double century, but he had little influence on the game tactically, apart from possibly instructing his later batters to hit out in the first innings. But a careless dismissal in the second innings — a one-handed shot to a ball pitched outside leg stump — put England in danger of defeat until the later batters salvaged the innings. There was one other incident which some observers called astute captaincy but which the watching Bob Wyatt attributed to luck. Doug Wright had taken an early wicket and when Don Bradman came in, beat the bat with three out of four deliveries. Hammond then removed Wright from the attack and brought on Verity; not long after, Bradman pulled a wide ball from Verity onto his stumps and was out for 18. Wyatt, who argued that on a flat pitch Wright’s wrist-spin was more likely to cause problems, later spoke to Bradman and said that he was surprised to see him get out in that fashion and that he had been equally surprised to see Wright taken off; Bradman responded that he was “very relieved”.

But with the third Test rained off, the crucial game was the fourth, played at Headingley. The match, played on a difficult pitch, was a low-scoring one. Australia took a 19-run first-innings lead and then bowled out England for 123; Hammond made a first-ball duck. Needing 105 to win, Australia struggled; several critics, including Neville Cardus, thought that spin was the answer, and Wright took three wickets. But Hammond persisted with his fast bowlers Ken Farnes and Bill Bowes, and Australia won by five wickets. Cardus wrote: “Hammond’s faith in fast bowling rather exceeded his faith in the arts of Verity and Wright. The result was sad disillusionment.” Again, Barnett had plenty to say about this to Alan Hill; he said that Verity wanted to bowl over the wicket to aim at a patch of rough on leg stump but Hammond would not allow it. He argued that Hammond should have used Bowes at one end to dry up runs and allowed Verity to attack from the other. Bowes himself spoke of the matter over the winter, suggesting that Yorkshire would have adopted this approach; some newspapers interpreted this as a criticism of Hammond, prompting Bowes to instruct his solicitors to request an apology and to write a hasty letter to Hammond explaining what happened.

The final Test, at the Oval, was the game in which England scored 903 for seven and Len Hutton scored 364. Hammond had little to do as captain, but as the game was a timeless one (played to a finish however long it took), instructed his batters to take no risks. When Hutton, having reached three figures, began to hit out at one stage, Hammond gestured for him to continue playing safely. Aiming for a total in four figures, Hammond only declared after it became clear that Bradman would be unable to bat, having badly injured his ankle when bowling. England levelled the series, winning by an extraordinary margin of an innings and 579 runs, although Australia had retained the Ashes.

One other unusual achievement that summer was that when Hammond captained the Gentlemen against the Players, he became the only man to lead both teams in the fixture.

In the aftermath of a relatively successful season, Hammond’s captaincy was praised. In his notes for the 1939 edition, the Wisden editor Wilfrid Brookes wrote: “Hammond last summer showed unmistakably that he was well fitted for the post; indeed, having regard to his limited experience of leading an eleven before he took charge of the England side in all the Test Matches, he surprised his closest friends by his intelligent tactics. Undoubtedly Hammond proved himself a sagacious and inspiring captain.” This hardly suggests that Hammond did quite as bad a job as others subsequently argued.

Less has been written about Hammond’s captaincy in South Africa. This was the first time that England had sent a full-strength Test team for a series there, a reaction to South Africa’s 1–0 win in England in 1935. Usually, teams to South Africa were experimental, or rewards for long-serving professionals who would not otherwise have played Test cricket. But the 1938–39 team contained all the leading players. Even so, there was far less pressure than experienced during an Ashes series.

Les Ames told Foot that Hammond had captained “beautifully” in South Africa: “I spent a lot of time with the Kent amateur Bryan Valentine, on that tour. We found ourselves discussing Wally a great deal. And we couldn’t find any serious faults at all.” One anonymous member of the team told Howat that Hammond had on one occasion stepped between two bowlers, one from each team, and prevented an argument spiralling out of hand. And Bill Edrich, whom Hammond had persisted in selecting despite his complete failure in every Test until he repaid his faith with an innings of 219 in the final Test, said: “He was the perfect leader, perceptive and astute on the field and an ambassador of the highest order off it.” The South African captain Alan Melville thought he did a good job too, telling Howat: “[The fielders] kept their eyes on him and responded to slight indications by eye or finger.” South African journalists were generally complimentary. E. W. Swanton, writing for the Illustrated London News at the time said that he had been a “sagacious tactician”; however, in later years he was more critical retrospectively, saying that Hammond’s captaincy on that tour had made him “apprehensive” about how he would handle an Australian tour, largely because of his moods and frequent silences.

There was less scope for Hammond to display his tactical skills in a light-hearted and fast-scoring series against the West Indies in 1939. But his captaincy of Gloucestershire was praised in Wisden for his “enterprising cricket and a spirit of adventure”.

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Wally Hammond in 1946

Had Hammond stopped there, he may have retired with a good reputation as captain. Maybe not one of the best, but a respectable captain of England. But he continued, perhaps out of loyalty, perhaps out of desire to prove himself and beat Australia. His captaincy of Gloucestershire in 1946 was mixed: the team began well before running out of steam, and he missed several matches with back problems. This may have warned what was coming, but he continued as England captain: against India in 1946 (England won 1–0) and then for the ill-fated tour of Australia in 1946–47.

The tour was a terrible failure for Hammond. He proved a moody, unapproachable and uninspiring captain. He was distant from the players, travelling separately to games, and gave little useful advice when they were struggling. Even Wisden said of the 1946–47 Australian tour that he “was not the same inspiring leader as at home against Australia in 1938”. Criticised for his tactics by the press, he increasingly retreated into his shell. Part of the problem might have been the contrasting attitude between Hammond — who saw the tour as a goodwill gesture after the war and to be played on friendly terms — and his opposite number Bradman, who wanted to crush the opposition. This difference was made clear when Bradman was given not out after apparently edging to slip in the first Test, drawing an audible complaint from Hammond that it was a “fine fucking way to start a series” (although some versions suggest a “fine bloody way”). After that, relations between the teams deteriorated, Hammond became more and more withdrawn and defeated, not least as he could no longer bat in his old manner. And it was notable — as pointed out in Wisden — that when Hammond missed the final Test with ill-health, England played better under his vice-captain Norman Yardley, whose field-placing and tactics seemed better than Hammond’s. Even so, England still lost; realistically, an outmatched team had little chance against one of the greatest Australian teams to take the field.

But Hammond was universally judged to have made matters worse. Attacks came from everywhere. Brian Sellers, the Yorkshire captain who covered the tour as a journalist, was extremely critical of Hammond’s field-placing. Within the team, Denis Compton resented him and Paul Gibb felt that his presence in the team had a negative impact on him personally, as revealed in his tour diaries. It was, in every respect, an utter disaster and coloured all retrospective judgements of Hammond’s captaincy.

But perhaps it is unfair to use this tour as a way to judge Hammond as a captain any more than it would be fair to use it to assess his batting. He was not a great captain. But nor was he as terrible as history suggests.

The rest of Hammond’s life was a sad anti-climax. He moved to South Africa where he joined another car business, which later folded, and was forgotten, despite his long career and amazing batting record. That final tour cast a long and embarrassing shadow. His family — he and Sybil had three children — faced serious financial problems, and he took a job as a sports administrator at University of Natal. A serious car crash almost killed him 1960, and he never really recovered, dying of a heart attack in 1965.

“I am very strongly with the Fascist views”: The Double Failure of Arthur Gilligan in 1924–25

A. E. R. Gilligan leading the England team onto the field during the fourth Test match at Melbourne during the 1924–25 series. Left to right: M. W. Tate, E. H. Hendren, A. E. R. Gilligan, H. Sutcliffe, H. Strudwick, W. W. Whysall, J. W. Hearne, A. P. F. Chapman and F. E. Woolley (Image: Wikipedia)

Arthur Gilligan was appointed captain of the MCC team in Australia in 1924–25 (England teams overseas in this period played under the name and colours of the MCC except in Test matches) for several reasons: his social background, his experience of captaining Sussex and his status as one of the best fast bowlers in England. But his selection did not meet with universal approval as there had been questions over how he led England against South Africa in 1924, and there was a better candidate in the inspirational and tactically astute Percy Fender of Surrey. Even the selectors were not quite convinced, offering the captaincy at the last minute to Frank Mann, who was unable to accept. A final setback to England’s prospects was an injury to Gilligan which severely limited his impact as a bowler, instantly removing one of the biggest attractions for his captaincy. History records that Gilligan’s leadership was unsuccessful as England lost the series 4–1; it is much harder to find judgements on how well he did as captain. But perhaps more interesting than anything which took place on the field was what Gilligan did when he was not playing.

Although Gilligan was in charge of the English team on the field, much of the responsibility for what took place off it fell to the team manager, Frederick Toone, who had also held that position during the previous tour of Australia in 1920–21. Toone was the Yorkshire secretary and a capable administrator who kept the tour running smoothly and excelled in organisational matters. But he and Gilligan shared a secret; both men were members of the group known as the British Fascists.

It should be said that the British Fascists were never a major force in England, and were generally little more than an anti-communist organisation partially inspired by Mussolini in Italy. Their outlook was right-wing and traditional; their members included people from the aristocracy, high-ranking officers in the armed forces and at least one other cricketer — the Middlesex bowler F. J. Durston. There is little to indicate at this stage that they professed too many views which fascism later came to embody. Newspapers cheerfully reported on them with no hint that they posed any danger; one such report in the Gloucestershire Echo in December 1924 encouraged people to attend the “attraction of the season”, a fascist whist drive at Gloucester Town Hall. But there were occasional hints of trouble, such as a clearly anti-Communist parade by the Cenotaph in London that November, at which the leader of the movement, Major-General R. D. B. Blakeney claimed that the British Fascists simply aimed to “fight sedition and work for King and country.”

One of the early leaders made an explicit link with the Boy Scouts movement — upholding the “lofty ideals of brotherhood, service and duty”. The historian Martin Pugh, in a study of British fascism between the two world wars, writes that: “Historians have found it hard to take seriously the ‘British Fascisti’, as the organisation was initially known, regarding it as a movement for Boy Scouts who had never grown up.” Pugh suggests that “Many members undoubtedly joined in the hope of finding something mildly adventurous, but had only a superficial grasp of its politics”.

Gilligan (left) and Toone (right) holding commemorative plates presented to them in Sydney on behalf of the MCC team for their sportsmanship during the 1924–25 tour (Image: Sydney Mail, 4 March 1925)

Even so, there was some disquiet over the notion of fascism, and for the MCC it would have been undesirable for it to be widely known that their captain and manager were both members of a political organisation that, to say the least, was unorthodox and militaristic. Although neither man publicly acknowledged their membership before the tour, it is hard to believe that senior members of the MCC would not have known. And in any case, even their friends might have spluttered into their gin-and-tonics had they known what Gilligan and Toone planned in Australia.

Most of what we know of Gilligan and Toone’s activities was presented in a 1991 article in Sporting Traditions by Andrew Moore of the University of West Sydney. While in Australia, Gilligan and Toone came to the attention of the Commonwealth Investigative Branch, who had been informed by intelligence agencies in London that both men were members of the British Fascists. Although Moore cites a report written after the completion of the tour, there is strong circumstantial evidence that Gilligan and Toone arrived as fully fledged fascists with a plan to disseminate fascist literature and create local branches of their organisation. According to Moore:

“Shortly after the departure of the MCC cricketers, officers of the Commonwealth Investigation Branch became aware that an Australian legion of the British Fascists had been established in several of the capital cities. In Sydney, for instance, enrolment forms, internal memoranda and propaganda were uncovered. These were all printed in London, the contact address on the enrolment form being altered in hand-writing to a GPO Box Number…”

Moore notes that the British Fascists’ “Recruiting and Propaganda Department” instructed all members to “talk about the movement to everyone you meet” and “llways carry at least one enrolment form and one of each of the other pamphlets with you wherever you go.” The obvious conclusion — and one almost certainly formed by the original investigators — is that Gilligan and Toone brought the forms into Australia and were involved in the initial establishment of Australian fascist groups affiliated to the British Fascists. And subsequent inquiries were unable to uncover precisely how the groups had come into existence, despite the best efforts of the Commonwealth Investigation Branch and at least one journalist.

Monty Noble pictured in 1932 (Image: Wikipedia)

Although it is likely that much of the organisation was done by the disciplined and efficient Toone, it is hard to imagine that the MCC could have approved of their captain undertaking such activities while representing their club, and being the face of English cricket. The irony is that part of the appeal of Gilligan in Australia was that his uncomplicated character and apparent friendliness made him the ideal person to reinforce the imperial bonds which were such a strong part of British (and English cricket) culture at the time.

Because there is no doubt the Gilligan was extremely popular in Australia. Monty Noble, a former Australian captain who by then was a journalist, was not an easy man to please. But he was oddly enthusiastic about Gilligan in his book about the series, Gilligan’s Men (1925). He wrote that Gilligan was “the type of man who, in the most unostentatious way, can do more than all the politicians and statesmen to cement the relations between the Homeland and the Dominions.” Noble praised his sportsmanship, “cheery optimism” and “debonair countenance”.

Noble also thought that Gilligan was perfect in the role of “empire building”. There is some irony in one judgement: “In these days of national unsettlement and disruptive influences generally, Gilligan proved himself a splendid ambassador for his country. He typified the Englishman at his best, dignified, discreet, cautious, charming and optimistic in the face of all kinds of difficulties.” And in this period, an MCC captain abroad had to be involved in endless rounds of speeches, which required diplomacy and delicacy of touch. Noble praised this side of Gilligan’s captaincy: “His natural qualifications socially, his tactful speeches, and the soundness of his administration [in reality, this side of affairs was the responsibility of Toone] won more adherents to the Empire’s cause than the winning of a hundred test matches could have done.” There is no doubt that these considerations were part of the reason that the MCC had appointed Gilligan and overlooked Percy Fender, whom the establishment did not trust. Yet if their chosen man Gilligan could breeze through Australia and charm everyone, it was his sideline in promoting fascism which should have rung alarm bells at Lord’s, not Fender’s insistence that amateurs and professionals enter the field through the same gate.

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The MCC team which toured Australia in 1924–25, attending a mayoral reception in Melbourne. Back row: J. W. Hearne, R. Kilner, H. Howell, R. K. Tyldesley, M. W. Tate, W. W. Whysall, A. Sandham, H. Sutcliffe, E. H. Hendren, H. Strudwick. Front row: A. P. Freeman, J. B. Hobbs, J. W. H. T. Douglas, A. E. R. Gilligan, William Brunton (Mayor of Melbourne), F. C. Toone, F. E. Woolley, A. P. F. Chapman, J. L. Bryan

For all of Noble’s attempts to champion Gilligan, the latter’s primary goal as England captain was success on the pitch. Once we set aside imperial propaganda, Gilligan’s achievements were thin on the ground. But there remained a sense that he had done well, even though England lost the series 4–1. As late as 1979, Alan Gibson wrote in The Cricket Captains of England: “[Gilligan’s] tour was successful in everything but victory, and this was sensed by the English public, who assembled in large numbers to welcome the side home … He revolutionised the English fielding, a department in which they began to compare with Australia, for the first time since the war and possibly since the early 1900s. This had much effect on the England sides of the next few years. He was, and is, one of the most popular captains England have sent to Australia.” Gibson was being a little generous; one Australian newspaper estimated that England dropped 21 catches in the series.

The mainstream view was that reported in Wisden:

“There was never great probability that Gilligan, after the injury he had sustained in the previous summer, would prove effective in the long drawn-out battles into which Test matches in Australia resolve themselves, and, as things went, he accomplished little as bowler or batsman. For all that Gilligan proved himself a popular captain and set his men a brilliant example in fielding. How highly his efforts were appreciated in this country was shown in the welcome which awaited him on his return. Had he brought the Ashes with him he could scarcely have been received with more enthusiasm.”

In reality, Gilligan’s ineffectiveness with the ball placed a huge burden on a bowling attack which lacked depth. But most official sources of information are quiet on how the captain performed in any non-diplomatic role. Was he a good captain? How did his tactics influence the result?

Neither Wisden nor The Cricketer had much to say; nor did most newspapers. But several articles written after the tour are clearly addressing complaints that had been made about the captaincy, and it seems that Gilligan did not distinguish himself tactically. His biggest critic was once again Cecil Parkin, who writing from England in the Weekly Dispatch, argued that the captain should be replaced by either Jack Hobbs or Percy Chapman. In fairness to Parkin, this did not match his complaints from 1924; his point was more the excellence of Hobbs than the ineffectiveness of Gilligan; he did, however, drop the latter from his proposed team for the third Test. But Parkin had once again grabbed the headlines, particularly through his revolutionary suggestion that a professional should be captain. This brought condemnation upon him — not least from Lord Hawke, who was provoked into his infamous “Pray God no professional shall ever captain England” speech in January 1925 — and had the effect of shielding Gilligan from other criticism; no-one in the establishment wanted to be seen to agree with the loathsome Parkin.

Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe (Image: Wikipedia)

Maurice Tate (Image: Wikipedia)

Lost tosses in four of the Tests — all of which Australia won — and some bad luck with injuries ultimately doomed England to a 4–1 loss. But the diminishing margins of victory in the first three matches and a dominant win by Gilligan’s team in the fourth led to a general view that the result flattered Australia; it was argued that 3–2 would better have reflected the standing of the two teams. However, that overlooked how reliant the team was on three players: Tate bowled the equivalent of 421 six-ball overs in five Tests (eight balls per over were bowled in the series), taking 38 wickets at an average of 23.18; Jack Hobbs and Herbert Sutcliffe shared four century opening partnerships, including one in which they batted throughout a whole day and put on 283.

Despite this imbalance in the team, one criticism levelled at Gilligan by Noble in Gilligan’s Men was that there were too many players and therefore Gilligan was not able to give them enough time on the field to keep them in form. This is borne out to some extent by the experience of Roy Kilner, who was overlooked in the early part of the tour and did not play enough to force his way into the team until the third Test, when he immediately established himself as the best bowler after Tate. And Douglas and Howell, the supposed back-up pace bowlers, played one Test between them. But the lack of support for Tate in particular was a huge problem, exacerbated by Gilligan’s lack of impact with the ball. Throughout the series, despite having “too many” players, the English team struggled to bowl sides out cheaply.

Another incident — which Noble intended to use to illustrate a positive point about Gilligan — may have been frowned upon by those in England and in the MCC who believed that, for national prestige, England needed to win rather more than they needed to be good sports. With his team heading for defeat against Victoria in a match before the Test series began, Gilligan refused to attempt closing the game down through defensive tactics or time-wasting in the last five minutes, and the MCC duly conceded a doubtless morale-sapping defeat. Noble might have written that the team smiled and conducted themselves very well, but it was still a loss; international cricket had moved beyond sporting gestures and such an approach by the captain was something of a throwback.

Later on in his book, Noble stated:

“At the outset of the tour [Gilligan] could not have been described as a Napoleon of Cricket. But that was due wholly to inexperience … As captain, however, his improvement during the tour was astonishing. By the time the last Test was played he had learned many valuable lessons, and no experience was lost on him. His ability to use the correct bowlers for certain situations and for different batsmen increased with every match, and his placing of the field became so expert that it materially strengthened the attack, saved many runs, and steadied the rate of scoring.”

The problem, as Noble was doubtless aware, was that Gilligan had been the captain of Sussex since 1922 and had led England during the previous summer. Therefore, he should not have been making elementary mistakes early in the tour which might well have cost England dearly. Gibson, who noted without elaboration that “there were those who suggested that Gilligan was too easygoing on the finer points of law,” also mentioned how Gilligan — who was a capable batsman even at Test level — had been not out overnight at the climax of the third Test. England needed 27 to win with two wickets left, and Gilligan latest said that he had struggled to sleep; he was dismissed early on the last morning and his side lost by 11 runs. Gibson wrote: “I wonder if a harder man … might have slept better and got the runs.”

Some Australian critics thought Gilligan did a reasonable job though. Edgar Mayne, the captain of Victoria, wrote approvingly of how Gilligan spotted during the second Test that conditions would favour Hearne’s wrist-spin, and how he used Douglas to give Tate a rest. An article in the Brisbane Daily Mail defended Gilligan after some nameless authorities had blamed him for defeat in the second Test; while conceding that he was not a great captain, the writer even blamed others in the team, whom Gilligan was apparently consulting too often.

His own men were perhaps less convinced. Frank Woolley, a key member of the team, later told his biographer Ian Peebles that he believed England would have won the third Test “under a sterner captain than the genial, amenable Arthur Gilligan”. He told a story how England had been on top at one point, with two well-set English batsmen facing a tiring Australian attack when there was an interruption for a light rain shower. The Australian captain Herbie Collins went with Gilligan and the umpires to inspect the pitch. “Despite the almost non-existent effect of the rain he immediately turned to the umpires and said he thought it would be fit in an hour’s time. They nodded agreement, and Collins, moving off as though all was settled, said, ‘Suit you, Arthur?’ Arthur’s acquiescence meant rest and recovery for the bowlers and loss of touch for the batsman, all of which Frank believes could just have tipped the scale.”

But the English press would hear no wrong. At the beginning of January, even before Parkin’s article appeared, the Daily Mirror published an odd extract from what appears to be a telegram from Australia, discussing reaction there to Gilligan’s captaincy, which said: “[Gilligan’s] selection of the Test team was universally approved, his leadership very sound, and that he is largely responsible for the reputation our men have gained of being the best fielding team that has ever visited Australia.” The message concluded that even Noble or Warwick Armstrong, two of the more revered Australian captains, could have done no better. This was printed after England had conceded a score of 600, the highest in Tests until then, in the second Test.

In January, at the height of the Parkin-created storm over the captaincy, when everyone from Hawke to Pelham Warner came out to defend Gilligan, a letter-writer to the Birmingham Daily Gazette noted that it seemed forbidden to criticise Gilligan, who he argued could not be as ideal a captain as the establishment made out given that England were losing. A similar view was expressed in the Yorkshire Post soon after.

At the end of the tour, an article in the Aberdeen Press and Journal summarised the criticisms of Gilligan which other newspapers overlooked. Its biggest complaint was the he had not picked Kilner until the third Test, which left Tate overworked. And it also suggested that Gilligan should not have taken the new ball himself as his bowling merely served to play the batsmen in. A final issue was his repeated changing of the batting order, such as when he used two nightwatchmen in the third Test and opened with neither Hobbs nor Sutcliffe but W. W. Whysall.

Arthur Gilligan in 1930 (Image: Wikipedia)

Some of these issues were raised in a length interview that Gilligan gave to The Cricketer on his return to England. The gushing feature — possibly written by the editor Pelham Warner, who had contributed an article at the height of the Parkin row in which he disparagingly dismissed the idea that a professional could be a good captain — began:

“A. E. R. Gilligan, looking extraordinarily bronzed and fit, is back again in England, without having accomplished his great ambition of bringing back the ‘Ashes,’ but having brought back everything else. No more popular captain ever visited Australia, and though victory did not come his way, yet both he and his men played the game in a spirit which has endeared them for all time to the Australian public. Their reception, both on and off the field, was extraordinarily cordial, even affectionate, and when they returned home they met with a reception at Victoria Station that equalled, if it did not surpass, anything which they experienced in Australia.”

Less convincingly, the author suggested that the positive reception showed that “victory is not necessarily the main objective.” In fact, the feature is over-the-top in its praise of Gilligan and his jovial personality.

In the interview, Gilligan suggested that Australia’s more consistent batting — and the runs contributed by their tail — was the main difference between the teams, although he agreed that Tate had no-one to support him in the same way, for example, that Charles Kelleway could help Jack Gregory and Arthur Mailey simply by keeping a good length. But he made some interesting points about Collins, “a very able captain who leaves nothing to chance and who misses few, if any, points in the game.” He noted that Collins’ field-placing was extremely good and suggested that partly this was because of the scoring charts provided to him by the Australian scorer, Bill Ferguson; these early versions of the “wagon wheel” enabled Collins to work out the best field for each batter. Gilligan recommended a similar approach for the next time Australia toured England, and he was in favour of any “scientific” method which might help England in future.

Gilligan told The Cricketer that he had come to wish that he had played Kilner in the first two Tests but insisted that his form in the early part of the tour meant that others were ahead of him. Of his own bowling, Gilligan reported that he could move the new ball for a couple of overs but after that was powerless on the Australian pitches and bowling “did not greatly appeal to him”.

Gilligan also addressed some particular criticisms which had been made of his tactics in the second Test: promoting Woolley to number three ahead of Jack Hearne after Hobbs and Sutcliffe had scored 283 for the first wicket (he hoped Woolley would deal with Mailey, who was bowling, but he was dismissed for 0 by Gregory, precipitating a collapse) and why he switched the end from which Tate was bowling after he had reduced Australia to 27 for three in their second innings, after which they recovered to score 250 (Tate had been bowling into the wind and requested to switch; Gilligan said he always gave Tate what he wanted, but why would Tate not have asked for this at the start?).

Despite the nebulous nature of much of the discussion surrounding Gilligan’s captaincy, it seems clear that a better leader might have had a better result; many critics agreed it was a strong England team. And some of Gilligan’s decisions look to have contributed to the defeat. Certainly, the selectors were in future more discerning in their choice of captain and it was not longer enough just to be sporting and graceful in defeat; on the next Ashes tour in 1928–29, the apparently cheery and popular Percy Chapman ruthlessly ground Australia into submission by a policy of attrition that Gilligan would have scorned.

In fairness, Gilligan did later prove to have an analytical mind concerning cricket. Apart from his interest in Ferguson’s scoring charts, he championed using what today would be called the strike-rate of a bowler to determine their effectiveness. And his writings on future series, such as his book on the 1926 Ashes, Collins’ Men, were hardly superficial. In later years, he became a journalist and one of the earliest radio commentators after the Second World War. But as a captain in 1924–25, he was lacking.

However, his interview with The Cricketer — as well as other, shorter interviews with other publications — was not his final word on the tour. As he returned home, it became public knowledge that Gilligan was a member of the British Fascists. An article in the Sheffield Telegraph reported (somewhat inaccurately) that Gilligan and Toone were enrolled as members on the journey home from Australia, and he began to speak at events. For example, a letter from him was read aloud at a meeting of the British Fascists at Bognor in June 1925, in which he said “I am very strongly with the Fascist views”. Most infamously, he wrote an article called “The Spirit of Fascism and Cricket Tours” for The Bulletin — the publication of the British Fascists — in May 1925, in which he said: “In … cricket tours it is essential to work solely on the lines of Fascism, i.e. the team must be good friends and out for one thing, and one thing only, namely the good of the side, and not for any self-glory.” Gilligan was not the first to make such links — and it perhaps reinforces the notion that he held a “boy scouts” view of fascism — but those others did not enjoy his high profile as the England captain.

This article at least provoked a reaction in the Daily News, which openly mocked Gilligan:

“It is a little astonishing to find Mr A. E. R. Gilligan, the captain of the English Cricket Team, airing his views in the pages of a journal which describes itself as ‘the Only Organ of the British Fascists’; it is still more astonishing to see what he says. ‘In these cricket tours,’ declares the cricket captain in his most diverting sentence, ‘it is essential to work solely on the lines of Fascism.’ As a humorous writer Mr. Gilligan may be congratulated on the short essay in which he plays variations on this novel theme . He will, as the saying is, have his little joke. It was no doubt only lack of space which cut short even more fantastic flights of his imagination.”

The writer continued his theme, making sardonic suggestions that cricketers might take the field in black shirts, marching on to the sound of military drums, but cautioned:

“Yet perhaps it would be kind to warn Mr Gilligan, who has been away for some time, that jokes of this kind are a little dangerous, people take politics so very seriously and they may only fail to see what on earth cricket has to do with Fascism … Mr. Gilligan has been a very popular figure on the cricket field; one may humbly suggest that he may not be so welcome in the field of politics, or even in the field of humorous essay-writing.”

Gilligan played little cricket in the 1925 season, apparently because of injury, and so was not selected for the only fully representative game, the Gentlemen v Players match at Lord’s. Instead, Arthur Carr led the Gentlemen, which was an indication of where the selectors’ thoughts lay. It is interesting to speculate whether Gilligan’s open support of fascism might have counted against him had he played more often, but it is probably safe to conclude that it wouldn’t. Because he was one of the Test selectors for the 1926 Ashes series — although unlike Warner, the chairman, he was always silent about what went on at the meetings and does not seem to have rocked the boat too much — and led an MCC team in India in 1926–27 which, as we shall see, had far-reaching consequences. And in his wider life, his membership did not prevent him from being awarded the Freedom of the City of London in 1926.

Even when it became clear that fascism was a major threat in Europe, Gilligan’s views never seem to have been brought up. But if he and Toone had hoped to establish the British Fascists in Australia, their efforts were largely wasted. Although fascism did become established in Australia, it was not through the British Fascists. And that organisation did not last much longer either. In the history of fascism in Britain, they were soon eclipsed by the far more influential British Union of Fascists, and practically vanished after 1926. However, as late as 1927, Gilligan was still associated with them, giving a speech at an event in Ealing.

Gilligan’s first-class career continued intermittently until 1932, but after the 1924–25 tour, he was never in contention for the England team again. He did respectably well with the ball in 1926 and 1928 without ever approaching his form from 1923 and 1924, and he batted quite well, even scoring a thousand runs in 1926. But after 1928, he barely played. His last significant cricket came when he was selected to lead an MCC team in India during the 1926–27 season. And that is a whole other story…

“The most popular captain of the day”: How A. E. R. Gilligan was chosen to lead England

Arthur Gilligan in 1928 (Image: Wikipedia)

Most of England’s inter-war Test captains have had books published about them, whether biographies or autobiographies. But although Arthur Gilligan led England in a home series against South Africa and for an Ashes series in Australia, he has never been the subject of any full-length publication; he himself wrote several books but these were never about his own life. It is a curious oversight. And overshadowing any recent discussion of him is the knowledge that he was an active fascist in the mid-1920s, and his role in the D’Oliveira Affair in 1968. Those who knew him, though, spoke highly of him, and he has been credited with playing a leading role in the elevation of India to Test status. He was clearly a complicated man. Although his background might indicate that his rise to the England captaincy was inevitable, the story is not entirely straightforward. He was not the best candidate for the job and, after his appointment, even the selectors seem to have had misgivings, albeit only expressed behind closed doors. Far from being the “chosen one” like some of his successors, Gilligan owed his position to a particular combination of circumstances.

Arthur Edward Robert Gilligan was born in 1894. His background is utterly typical for an amateur cricketer in this period. His father, Willie Austin Gilligan, was a food broker; his mother Alice Eliza Kimpton was the daughter of a colonial broker (Willie was a partner in her father’s firm). The couple had four children, of whom Arthur was the second. His older brother Frank and his younger brother Harold also went on to play first-class cricket; they also had a sister called Alice. The family were wealthy enough to retain domestic staff; the 1901 census records two nurses (one of whom would have been for the four-week-old Alice) and a servant; in 1911, they employed a cook and a housemaid.

Gilligan went to Fairfield School and then, from 1906 until 1914, Dulwich College. At the latter establishment he excelled as a cricketer and by 1911 had reached the school’s First Eleven, where he played alongside his brothers Frank and Harold — all three were in the 1913 team — and was captain in his final two years. He headed both batting and bowling averages in his final season. Unusually for a public schoolboy, he was a fast bowler, and this rarity prompted Surrey to invite him to play for their Second Eleven in 1913 and 1914, doubtless connected to his father’s place on their Committee. He was also chosen to play at Lord’s for the annual match between the “Lord’s Schools” — those who played fixtures at the ground owing to their preeminence among public schools — and “The Rest”. Gilligan took four for 26 in the first innings and scored 53 for “The Rest”, and was picked to represent the “Public Schools” against the MCC in the next match. By the end of the 1914 season (when he was 19), he was among the leading schoolboy cricketers in England; E. B. Noel, writing in Wisden, observed that at Lord’s, Gilligan was “fast, keeping a good length, and with dangerous yorkers”; elsewhere, it was noted that he was also a “dangerous bat of the dashing type”.

Continuing on the well-trodden amateur path, Gilligan was admitted to Pembroke College, Cambridge in the autumn of 1914, but his education and his cricket was interrupted by the First World War, during which he served as a captain in the Lancashire Fusiliers. He returned to his studies at Cambridge in 1919, but in truth, did not immediately excel as a cricketer. Although he was awarded his “blue” during the 1919 season, his overall record was mediocre. However, he did display a knack for rising to the occasion, first with a century batting at number eleven for Cambridge against Sussex and then with a spell of five wickets for 16 runs in 57 deliveries in the University Match against Oxford at Lord’s. Although he retained his place in the 1920 team, he achieved little, and left Cambridge that year with a reputation as a fast but unreliable bowler. He joined his father’s business upon leaving University.

The obvious question is how such a cricketer became England captain? Even allowing for his wealthy background, and his attendance at Public School and University, there was little to make him stand out. Nor did he perform particularly well in county cricket. Playing for Sussex in 1921, he averaged over thirty with the ball, which was extremely high for a specialist bowler in this period. But despite a mediocre record, he was appointed the Sussex captain in 1922. If this seems extraordinary to modern eyes, it was common at the time. County captains had to be amateurs, for reasons of social convention, snobbery and class discrimination. A professional, no matter how tactically astute, would never been considered for the role in this period. The problem — which benefitted Gilligan at both county and Test level — was that amateurs were thin on the ground at the time. Therefore, Gilligan’s non-playing credentials made him the ideal candidate. Furthermore, even though he was not an outstanding bowler, he was at least worth his place in the team, which put him ahead of many amateur county captains. And the promotion was the making of him as a bowler.

The newly appointed captain took 135 wickets at 18.75 in 1922, a huge improvement on his previous form, which catapulted him to the forefront of national attention. He represented the Gentlemen against the Players and was chosen as a member of a somewhat experimental MCC team which toured South Africa in 1922–23 under the captaincy of Frank Mann (in this period, official touring teams representing England played under the name and colours of the MCC; only in Test matches were the teams designated as “England”). Gilligan was one of a number of promising amateurs in the team, including Arthur Carr, Percy Fender and Greville Stevens. He performed respectably without standing out, but made his Test debut during the tour.

Gilligan in 1922 (Image: The Cricketer Annual 1922–23)

When he returned to England, he had easily his best season as a cricketer, performing the double of 1,000 first-class runs and 100 first-class wickets for the only time. He and Maurice Tate, whose emergence as a pace bowler Gilligan had encouraged, formed an outstanding partnership with the new ball for Sussex. His 163 wickets at 17.50, as well as his great pace, made him one of the best bowlers in England. When the England selectors were looking for a man to lead the team in Australia in 1924–25, Gilligan was at the forefront of everyone’s thoughts. But even with his improvement as a bowler, Gilligan was not the obvious man to lead the Test team. Sussex were a middling team at best, and although Gilligan had raised their fielding standards, he had not stood out as a tactician.

However, in Gilligan’s favour was the simple fact that there were not many candidates for the England captaincy. There were few amateurs in 1924 who realistically could have been appointed, and just like at county level, the England captain had to be an amateur. J. W. H. T. Douglas had led the previous MCC team in Australia, losing 5–0 in 1920–21; he had not been the first choice then, and the selectors had no reason to go back to him. Hampshire’s Lionel Tennyson captained England as a short-lived experiment in 1921 but was not a Test batsman. The Middlesex captain Frank Mann had led the team in South Africa, but fell short of the required standard with the bat (although as we shall see, he remained a candidate). Arthur Carr, Nottinghamshire’s captain, was perhaps a touch too young. Other leading amateurs, such as Somerset’s Jack White, were not guaranteed a place on merit in a full-strength England team, and other county captains were unsuitable. For example, Lancashire’s Jack Sharp was 46 and Somerset’s John Daniel was 45; Yorkshire’s Geoffrey Wilson did not really deserve a place even in the Yorkshire team on merit; the injury-prone Kent captain Stanley Cornwallis owed his position as much to being an officer in the army and the son of a baron as any cricketing ability.

Percy Fender in 1922 (Image: Wikipedia)

Therefore, in effect there were only two realistic contenders to lead England in 1924: Gilligan and Surrey’s Percy Fender. Had the England selectors and the MCC made decisions purely on a cricketing basis in this period, it would not even have been a contest, because Fender stood out as the best captain in England. Rather like Gilligan, he assumed the leadership of Surrey through default as one of the few amateurs guaranteed a place in the team who was free to play, but from his first games in charge he was clearly exceptionally good in a way that Gilligan never was. Fender took over in the absence of the regular Surrey captain in 1920 and was given the role permanently in 1921. In this period, the county had a strong batting line-up, in which Jack Hobbs was dominant, but a threadbare bowling attack which struggled to dismiss the opposition on their flat home pitches at the Oval. But Fender somehow found ways to conjure wins from the unlikeliest situations through a combination of calculated risk-taking, aggressive tactics and cunning ruses which often lured the opposition batters (and captains) into making mistakes. He was not afraid to risk a bold declaration (even declaring behind on first innings which at the time risked losing points), offer up easy runs to provoke the batters into playing an injudicious shot, or bowling his part-timers to induce lapses in concentration. He even picked an underarm-lob bowler, Trevor Molony, as an experiment for three games in 1921. Between 1920 and 1923, Surrey finished third, second, third and fourth in the County Championship despite clear limitations in their team. This overachievement was recognised by the cricketing press, who credited Fender’s inspirational leadership. The Surrey players also appreciated his tactical genius and his ability to get the best out of individuals.

Fender was also a good all-rounder at county level. He completed the double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in 1921, 1922 and 1923, and was often Surrey’s only attacking threat with the ball, usually bowling leg-spin but sometimes mixing it up with medium-pace or something faster. He was also an aggressive batsman who scored very quickly when he was in form; in 1920, he scored a century in 35 minutes, still the fastest recorded at first-class level, but this was far from his only exhibition of big hitting. He could defend if he had to, but generally believed that attack was the best option in almost all circumstances and he encouraged his middle-order to play the same way. But the biggest question mark over his claim from a cricketing viewpoint was that he had rarely threatened to produce this form at Test level. His record in the ten Tests he had played before 1924 was mediocre: 326 runs at 19.17 and 24 wickets at 39.16 (Gilligan’s record was 68 runs and nine wickets in the two Tests he had played in South Africa). On the other hand, Fender had impressed the Australians during the 1920–21 tour, when he was badly underused with the ball, and he was always liable to make something happen.

However, the biggest problem for Fender was that his face never quite fitted. He was educated at St Paul’s School, which was never quite on a social par with the leading public schools, and never went to University like most of his amateur contemporaries. He did not come from an influential family, and could not afford to follow his ambition to become a barrister. Quite simply, his background was less attractive than Gilligan’s to the people who mattered. And Fender’s cricket did not quite fit, either. The English cricket establishment centred around Lord’s rather than the Oval, and influential figures did not approve of Fender. Not only did they raise an eyebrow at his disdain for tactical convention and his indulgence in innovation, they positively loathed his willingness to pick a fight. He publicly clashed with the hugely influential Lord Harris several times: in 1922 over an objection raised to Alfred Jeacocke’s qualification for Surrey, in 1923 over Fender’s revolutionary insistence on amateurs and professionals entering the field by the same gate, and in 1924 over rules concerning pitch covering. Therefore, Fender was not seen as a “safe pair of hands” and was never really accepted by Lord’s, although newspapers often championed him. Perhaps the widespread idea that he was Jewish (which he probably wasn’t) counted against him, although Fender did not think so.

The final nail in Fender’s coffin was that during the crucial period in 1924 when decisions were being made over the captaincy, his form collapsed utterly. He made a poor start to the season and lost his ability to spin the ball mid-way through it, becoming reluctant to bowl. His timing could not have been worse as Gilligan, who had already impressed in 1923, began the 1924 season in the best form of his life. His biggest attraction as a captain was that he was one of the leading bowlers in England. In the early part of the season, he and Tate bowled out two of the strongest batting line-ups in England for paltry totals: Surrey for 53 and Middlesex for 41. Even had he not been captain, Gilligan’s place would have been assured as the selectors imagined him and Tate bowling with similar effect in Australia. If Sussex’s results never remotely approached Surrey’s, if Gilligan’s captaincy was at best unremarkable and at worst uninspired, if Fender was indisputably a better tactician, none of this mattered if Gilligan could bowl Australia out cheaply.

Gilligan therefore became captain almost by default, setting the scene for what with hindsight was an unfortunate episode in the history of the England captaincy both on and off the field. He was given the 1924 series against a palpably weak South African team to prove himself. Neither he nor his team were extended as South Africa were horribly outclassed; their leading bowler failed, a reinforcement had to be called up from the Bradford League, and only weather prevented what would probably have been a 5–0 result. As it was, England won three Tests without breaking sweat. But even in such easy circumstances, some limitations were apparent in Gilligan’s leadership. The most damaging — although the aftermath was not Gilligan’s fault — came in his use of Cecil Parkin during the first Test.

Gilligan (right) at the toss with Herbie Taylor at the beginning of his first Test leading England (Image: Wikipedia)

England scored 438 before Gilligan, who took six wickets for seven runs, and Tate continued their devastating run of form by bowling South Africa out for 30 in 12.3 overs. Parkin unsurprisingly was not used in that innings. Following on, South Africa made a much more respectable 390. Gilligan took five for 83, to confirm his ability at Test level, and Parkin bowled 16 overs without taking a wicket. There was some discussion in the press regarding Gilligan’s reluctance to use Parkin, particularly as England’s bowling looked unthreatening for long periods of South Africa’s second innings. Gilligan’s captaincy and management of the bowling was nevertheless commended by Pelham Warner in The Cricketer. A few days later, an incendiary article appeared in the Empire News in Parkin’s regular column, under the headline “Cecil Parkin Refuses to Play for England again.” In it, Parkin criticised Gilligan’s captaincy, and wrote about his humiliation and the damage to his reputation caused when Gilligan used him so reluctantly in South Africa’s second innings. Parkin received little support from the press. Instead, there was widespread shock that a lowly professional would dare publicly criticise the England captain.

There were a few attempts at damage limitation. Parkin wrote a letter of apology to Gilligan and England’s Board of Control, which was responsible for Test matches. In a press statement a few days after his article appeared, he said that it “was not meant to convey any feeling of personal animosity against Mr Arthur Gilligan. Far from that, I have a great opinion of him as a sportsman and gentleman. My object was to protest against his policy in not asking me to bowl.” Although Gilligan sat out a potentially awkward encounter when Lancashire played his county, Sussex on 25 June, there was a public reconciliation later in the season between the two men when Lancashire next played Sussex: they walked onto the field together, and Gilligan put his arm around Parkin’s shoulder. Gilligan later contributed a foreword to Parkin’s Cricket Triumphs and Troubles in 1936 and professed no hard feelings, but Parkin unsurprisingly never played for England again.

Other than this, reports on Gilligan’s captaincy were largely positive. One thing in his favour — and this was a recurring theme — was articulated in the Birmingham Daily Gazette after the first Test: “His personal example of keenness and cheerfulness is an asset to the team.” Meanwhile Fender, although he continued to have his advocates in the press, faded from the picture and was dropped by England after achieving little in the first two Tests. He was not picked in the team which toured Australia.

Little other comment was made on Gilligan’s captaincy, either in terms of how he did in 1924, or the prospects of him leading a successful campaign in Australia. The only detailed critique of his leadership came in the review of Sussex’s season in The Cricketer Annual, which stated:

“He led the side with enthusiasm and was the most popular captain of the day as well as one of the very best, modifying his field and changing his bowling with rare skill. Towards the close, no doubt bothered by the wretched batting [of Sussex], he abandoned a regular order of going in and reverted to his 1921 habit of experiments in this direction, an injudicious method because all really successful teams have their accustomed order, but he himself showed his appreciation of this when successfully directing England. His example is so valuable and his zeal so great that what would not be noticed in a less capable leader must be criticised in his case. No one ever more richly deserved to captain a champion side.”

Nevertheless, his primary tactic as captain of England and Sussex seemed to be giving the ball to Maurice Tate and hoping for the best. Tate bowled over 1,400 first-class overs in 1924, 150 more than anyone else in the season. He had bowled over 1,600 the year before. In the 1924 Tests, he bowled half as many overs again as the next busiest bowler. With such a heavy workload, it was vital that Tate had support from other pace bowlers, and Gilligan had a crucial role in supporting him.

And here arose what became the biggest problem with Gilligan’s captaincy, one unconnected to his tactical or cricketing ability. In early July, an apparently minor incident had unfortunate consequences. Gilligan was captaining the Gentlemen against the Players in the relatively unimportant Oval match. The Gentlemen were swept aside on a lively pitch by the fast bowling of Tate and Warwickshire’s Harry Howell, and forced to follow-on. Gilligan scored a defiant 34 from number ten, but shortly before he was out, he was struck over the heart. Contemporary reports do not describe what exactly happened, as Gilligan carried on batting, but they imply — something which is attested in Gilligan’s Wisden obituary and other later sources — that the bowler was Frederick Pearson, who is usually described as a medium-paced off-spinner. Although Pearson was not a quick bowler, he was making the ball kick sharply from the pitch and it was a nasty blow. Perhaps all would have been fine, but despite still feeling the effects of the injury the following day, Gilligan chose to bat in the follow-on. From number ten, he scored a defiant but futile century; his team had no chance of avoiding defeat, and lost by six wickets. It was a gallant gesture, but it was a mistake, especially in a fairly meaningless game. Some combination of the injury and the effort of batting the following day left him with what can only have been some kind of heart strain. From that moment on, Gilligan was never even remotely as effective with the ball; he lost the pace which had briefly made him such a handful, and he seems to have become reluctant to bowl. He played in the third Test and captained the Gentlemen against the Players at Lord’s, but missed the fourth Test on doctor’s orders. The series had been won by then, and although the match was ruined by rain — leaving Jack MacBryan with the unwanted record of having neither batted nor bowled in his only Test — the sparse crowd was treated to the incongruous sight of Johnny Douglas as England captain for one more match.

In his Cricket Captains of England (1979), Alan Gibson cast doubt that the blow to Gilligan could actually explain his decline, particularly as he lived for another 52 years with no obvious health problems. However, Gibson wrote: “But there is no doubt that he was badly shaken up, and whatever the reason, the magic departed.” Perhaps the damage was psychological as much as anything; perhaps other injuries — and he had a few — played their part; or maybe, like other fast bowlers throughout history, the circumstances of body, pitch conditions and form only favourably coincided for a short time.

Frank Mann in 1924 (Image: Wikipedia)

But while this injury drama played out, there were some strange goings-on in the back-rooms of Lord’s. After the third Test, with England 3–0 ahead, the selectors chose their team for the tour of Australia. As usual, stories leaked out to the press as deliberations were underway. And it was reported that Frank Mann had been asked to lead the MCC tour. Little comment was made about this, but when the team was announced in the press on 23 July, Gilligan was named captain. Most reports included a single sentence which said that Mann had been asked to lead but had been forced to decline for business reasons.

This is very strange indeed. Mann certainly had a right to be considered, as he had led the MCC in South Africa (winning 2–1) the last time England had played overseas. But if he was the preferred choice, why did he not lead England during the 1924 series? There are two possibilities, neither of which reflect well on Gilligan despite the public praise. The first is that the selectors favoured Mann but had decided to give Gilligan a trial to see if he was a possibility; in which case they must have concluded, after the first three Tests, that Mann would be preferable. The other possibility is that something about Gilligan’s leadership — perhaps the problem with Parkin, for all the condemnation of the professional — worried them and they decided to fall back on the more proven Mann. The injury was not a factor as, at this stage, Gilligan seemed to have recovered and it was only after he had been confirmed as the captain that he sought medical advice and pulled out of the fourth Test against South Africa. The point was moot after Mann declined, and Gilligan was now the only realistic option. But the selectorial misgivings regarding Gilligan’s ability (or perhaps worries about his fitness) might be behind the decision after the fourth Test to add Douglas to the touring team as vice-captain.

Gilligan seemed to have recovered by the end of the season, and was expected to play a crucial role with the ball in Australia. But he was a shadow of his former self, and his reduced effectiveness left Tate with an even heavier workload. Over the five Tests, Tate bowled the equivalent of 421 six-ball overs (eight balls per over were bowled in the series) while Gilligan managed only 181. Tate took 38 wickets at an average of 23.18; Gilligan had ten wickets at 51.90.

The result was a badly unbalanced England attack. Although the team selected for the tour was probably as strong as possible, the bowling lacked depth. With one half of their pace spearhead ineffective, on flat Australian pitches England presented little threat unless Tate was bowling, and it was no surprise when Australia piled up a succession of huge scores. The only support for Tate in the pace attack, other than the neutered Gilligan, was Howell of Warwickshire — a 34-year-old bowler with a poor Test record who averaged 80 with the ball in Tests — and the 42-year-old Douglas — still effective in England but long past his best. Howell did not play a single Test, Douglas only one; neither man was effective in other games. The bulk of the bowling in the series was done by Tate and the spinners: A. P. Freeman and R. K. Tyldesley were ineffective and only Roy Kilner was a wicket-taking threat in the Tests. Back-up came from Frank Woolley’s left-arm spin (which was very much his second string by then) and Jack Hearne’s leg-breaks. Injuries also plagued England, including their hapless captain, who suffered a thigh strain during the third Test, and bowled little from that point. Possibly the two best bowlers in England after Tate both stayed at home: Cecil Parkin clearly was never going to be selected again, but George Macaulay had also upset the authorities with his combative attitude.

Therefore, the series was hard work for the English bowlers. Gilligan’s main appeal to the selectors — that he was a leading bowler — proved illusory. If his playing impact was negligible, England needed him to provide some tactical leadership on the field. He also had a diplomatic role off it; England captains were also expected to speak at functions, meet dignitaries and generally represent the MCC and show the whole of England in a positive light. In both of these roles, Gilligan fell short. But how far short he fell did not become known to the public for another 65 years.

“We played some indifferent amateurs”: Amateur Status Away from the Top

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The Somerset team which surprisingly defeated Middlesex at Weston-super-Mare in 1922 contained nine amateurs. Back row: A. Young, T. C. Lowry, M. D. Lyon, J. J. Bridges, S. G. U. Considine. Front row: E. Robson, W. T. Greswell, P. R. Johnson, J. Daniell, J. C. White, J. C. W. MacBryan. Only Young and Robson were professionals.

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the County Championship was dominated by northern teams. Apart from Middlesex’s titles in 1920 and 1921, the only County Champions between the two world wars were Yorkshire (twelve times), Lancashire (five times), Nottinghamshire (once) and Derbyshire (once). Kent and Surrey, although they never finished as champions, were always competitive; Sussex, like Derbyshire, were better in the 1930s, while Gloucestershire and Essex also had their moments. The remaining counties generally struggled. Glamorgan, Somerset, Warwickshire, Hampshire, Northamptonshire, Leicestershire and Worcestershire were often to be found battling in the lower reaches of the table and never mounted a realistic challenge for the Championship. There were several reasons for this, but the main ones were financial. Lacking the facilities of some of the bigger clubs and attracting far fewer spectators and members, these teams lived a precarious existence. On more than one occasion, some looked likely to fold completely and were often dependent on wealthy benefactors to keep them going. This had a lasting impact on the teams; they could not employ as many professionals as other counties, or offer terms attractive enough to prevent players seeking a better deal elsewhere, whether at another county or in league cricket. Those professionals who remained loyal received lower wages than their counterparts at the bigger clubs and received far lower sums if they were awarded a benefit.

The result was that these counties relied on amateurs who required the payment of nothing more than expenses. While other teams could afford to employ “shamateurs” — men who held that status in name only, receiving surreptitious payments to allow them to play for their counties (an issue that had been festering for many years) — the counties which were struggling needed genuine amateurs whom they did not need to pay. As many of these were only available some of the time, the result was often an unsettled and constantly changing team. In Gentlemen and Players (1987) by Michael Marshall, Glamorgan’s Wilf Wooller recalled: “We played some of our indifferent amateurs for economic reasons, and it has to be said that Maurice Turnbull liked to have a few cronies along with him as social companions.” This cannot have been easy for the professionals who were forced to make way.

The Kent accounts for 1930 provide some insight into the savings that could be made. The expenses claimed by amateurs amounted to just 11 per cent of the outgoings paid to players for Championship matches, even though over the season 37 per cent of the available places were filled by them. Furthermore, the Findlay Commission — a committee appointed in 1937 by the MCC, under the former Oxford and Lancashire player William Findlay, to examine the problems facing counties — revealed that over the three year period from 1934 to 1936, Somerset was the only county whose income (excluding the Test match profits shared between all the counties) was greater than their expenditure; Somerset usually played a higher proportion of amateurs than other teams.

The problem was that it was increasingly difficult to find amateurs. Fewer and fewer men whose social background precluded them becoming professionals — the upper-middle classes, the university graduates, the former public schoolboys — could spare enough time to play regular county cricket; their financial situations compelled them to have full-time jobs. In his excellent Cricket and England (1999), Jack Williams provides some statistics on amateurs between the wars. In 1920, 39 per cent of appearances in the County Championship were made by amateurs; this figure fell to 20 per cent by 1930 and 19 per cent by 1939. If the northern counties were almost always all-professional apart from the captain, southern counties had a much higher proportion of amateurs. In 1920, only two professionals appeared for Somerset in the entire season; only four played that season for Middlesex, the County Champions. It was a conscious policy at Sussex until 1928 that there should be four amateurs in every team. The contrast between north and south could be clearly seen in the percentage of amateur appearances at several counties in 1930: the figure was nine at Lancashire, 32 at Kent, 37 at Middlesex and 55 at Somerset. In 1939, the amateur percentage at Kent was 31, at Somerset 29 and at Worcestershire 25. And a final figure: in 1930, only 24 amateurs appeared in at least 20 County Championship matches. Given a limited pool from which to draw, it is unsurprising that the stronger teams quickly acquired the best amateur talent, leaving the weaker counties casting around desperately for whoever was left.

Aside from any financial considerations, an important factor in the desperation for amateurs was connected to captaincy. In this period, all teams were captained by amateurs. The reasons were largely based around class discrimination, no matter how contemporaries tried to dress it up. But this led to problems. The scarcity of amateurs who could play regularity meant that many counties had a rapid turnover of leaders. This even extended to the stronger sides: Yorkshire, where the captain was often the only amateur in the team, had seven captains between 1919 and 1939, as did Sussex.

Worcestershire’s team in the late 1920s. Back row: C. R. Preece, J. B. Higgins, C. V. Tarbox, J. F. MacLean, H. L. Higgins, H. O. Hopkins, L. E. Gale. Front row: C. F. Root, M. K. Foster, The Earl of Coventry (President), F. A. Pearson, Hon. J. B. Coventry (Image: A Cricket Pro’s Lot (1937) by Fred Root). Only Preece, Tarbox, Root and Pearson were professionals. Fred Root dated this photograph to 1927, although it appeared in Tatler on 28 May 1924 and shows the team which played Glamorgan at Worcester on 10–13 May 1924.

The effect was heightened lower down the county table. In the same period, Leicestershire had ten captains; Northamptonshire had nine. One-season captains were relatively common, as was the phenomenon of having multiple leaders in a single season: with no suitable amateur available, Leicestershire made no appointment in 1932 and were captained by six different men. And the lack of suitable amateurs for the weaker counties meant that some captains were very inexperienced. E. W. Dawson captained Leicestershire in 1928 as a 24-year-old who had graduated from Cambridge the previous year. At Northamptonshire, Alexander Snowden — who had first played for the county as an eighteen-year-old amateur in 1931 — led the team at the beginning of 1935, aged just 21. His Wisden obituary in 1982 stated: “Although [Snowden] won the toss in his first ten matches, he was not a success; he had insufficient confidence in himself and the side rather lost confidence in him. The experience had a disastrous effect on his form and in 30 innings his highest score was only 29.” The episode largely finished him as a first-class cricketer, but there was an unfortunate side-effect for his county. Snowden’s father was a local councillor and his donations had been instrumental in saving Northamptonshire from bankruptcy in 1931; at the end of the 1935 season he gave an angry speech at a meeting of the Peterborough and District Cricket League which blamed the Committee for the poor form of the county and his son that year. He hinted that all was not well within the team and indicated that the treatment of his son meant that he was ending his support for the club.

The need for amateur captains resulted in some other oddities. When the regular captain was unavailable at Northamptonshire in 1921 and in 1932, the team was captained by an eighteen-year-old. And many amateur captains had frankly appalling playing records and were included in the team purely through their leadership role. But stronger counties also fell into these traps; the permanent Lancashire captain in 1919, Miles Kenyon, had never played first-class cricket. Yorkshire, too, appointed some very inexperienced captains who were frankly out of their depth, resulting in the muddled attempt of the Yorkshire Committee to appoint Herbert Sutcliffe in 1927.

This is not the place to discuss the perception of amateurs, nor the contemporary conviction that they were essential to English cricket. While teams like Kent or Sussex favoured amateurs for stylistic, philosophical and social reasons, counties which were struggling financially simply needed to get eleven players onto the field without going bankrupt. The lack of suitable candidates led to some frankly strange selections.

Reginald Moss pictured in the Oxford University cricket team in 1890

Perhaps the most extreme example of the need for amateurs came in 1925 when Worcestershire selected the Reverend Reginald Moss, who was the Rector of Icombe — a village near Stow-on-the-Wold, between Cheltenham and Oxford — at the time. It was not particularly remarkable that he was a clergyman and although this was his only appearance in the County Championship, he had previous experience of first-class cricket, playing for Oxford University. The problem was that he played for Oxford between 1887 and 1890, and his last first-class appearances had been in 1893. When he played for Worcestershire, he was 57 years old, which makes him the oldest cricketer to play in the County Championship; the gap of 32 years between appearances is also a record. He had been a reasonable cricketer; apart from playing for Radley College and Oxford, he had played some minor matches for Lancashire in 1886, in the Minor Counties Championship for Bedfordshire between 1901 and 1909, and had played for Herefordshire. He had also worked as an Assistant Master at Malvern College. So apart from the minor inconvenience of his age, he was the ideal amateur in many ways.

It is not clear what particular circumstance prompted Worcestershire to play Moss because nothing about him stood out; his regular teams at the time were the Old Biltonians (he had attended Bilton Grange Preparatory School), Stow-on-the-Wold and Bourton Vale. His selection drew plenty of attention but Pelham Warner in The Cricketer was scathing: “Without wishing in any way to belittle the skill and enthusiasm of an experienced cricketer, we cannot help stating that it seemed a confession of weakness on the part of Worcestershire to include the Rev. R. H. Moss in their side against Gloucestershire at Worcester on Saturday last.” In any event, the game was underwhelming for Moss. He did not bowl in Gloucestershire’s first innings and batting at number nine in the first innings, he scored 2. In the second Gloucestershire innings, he bowled three overs for five runs and took the wicket of the opener M. A. Green. Batting at number eleven in Worcestershire’s second innings, he was the last man out, bowled by Walter Hammond for 0, as Gloucestershire won by 18 runs. Moss then faded back into obscurity; he and his wife Helen lived peacefully with their three children. He died at the age of 88 in 1956, but his obituary did not appear in Wisden until 1994.

The case of Moss was somewhat unusual as weaker counties were more inclined to try young amateurs just out of school in the hope of finding someone who could strengthen the team or prove to be a potential future captain. Very occasionally, a good player was uncovered; but most young amateurs of any talent, particularly those who went to Oxford or Cambridge, were attracted to the stronger counties. However, that is not to say that there are not some interesting stories to be uncovered. One of the more unusual is to be found in the tale of a fairly typical amateur experiment, a young player who appeared for Worcestershire in the mid-1930s.

Cyril Harrison in 1935 (Image: Daily Mirror, 11 January 1936)

Cyril Stanley Harrison was born on 11 November 1915, the son of George Harrison and his wife Winnifred Jessie Bradley. His father worked as a bricklayer with the Salt Union but later became a prominent builder and a member of Droitwich Council. Cyril had five brothers and three sisters; he was the fourth to be born. He attended Worcester Royal Grammar School, where he made a name for himself primarily as a batsman. He also played football and rugby. In short, he was an ideal candidate to play as an amateur for a county which struggled to attract more glamorous names.

It was not long before Worcestershire noticed him. In 1933, Harrison played for the “Gentlemen of Worcester”. The following year, at the age of eighteen, he played for the county second eleven (obviously as an amateur) early in the season. On 9 June 1934, he made his first-class debut against Lancashire on 9 June, batting in the lower-middle order and bowling slow-left-arm spin. Apart from taking three for 89 against Nottinghamshire, he did little to suggest that he was a good enough player through the course of June. But at the very end of the month, he had his one success as a first-class cricketer. In the fourth innings, Hampshire needed 122 to defeat Worcestershire after the home team lost nine wickets for 74 in their second innings. Harrison — the fifth bowler to be used — took seven for 51 to bowl his team to an unlikely win by six runs (Hampshire had one man absent injured). At one stage his figures were 4–3–1–3. The wicket had broken up, assisting his bowling, but he flighted the ball very well. When the last pair came together, Hampshire needed fourteen to win and scored half of them before Harrison bowled Len Creese, the top-scorer, for 28. The delighted home supporters carried Harrison from the field, and he was awarded his county cap; as it transpired, this was somewhat premature.

Harrison kept his place for the rest of the season, but never approached this form again. Apart from taking three for 83 against Yorkshire, he never took more than two wickets in an innings, and never scored more than 28 with the bat. He finished the season with 150 runs at 6.25 and 25 wickets at 36.92. Although some critics suggested that he needed to bowl a little quicker to be successful, he was viewed as a promising player in a team which lacked stars. But the key attraction was almost certainly that he was an amateur. So when he turned professional before the 1935 season, he immediately lost most of his appeal. We do not know why he made the change — as we shall see, he was studying to be a surveyor — but it effectively signalled the end of his first-class career.

Harrison only played twice more for the county; after conceding none for 101 in 17 overs against Sussex in his first match of 1935, and bowling only seven wicketless overs against Lancashire in his next, he was dropped from the team, never to return. The emergence of Dick Howarth and the success of Peter Jackson that season left little room for an inexperienced spinner, particularly one who now required payment without any guarantee of being effective. Had he remained as an amateur, perhaps they would have persisted with him a little longer.

Harrison therefore looks like another of the many cases of a young cricketer enjoying some early success before fading away and living the rest of his life in obscurity. But this was not quite the case. At the beginning of 1936, Harrison featured in the newspapers for reasons entirely unconnected to his cricket.

Away from the sports field, Harrison was a trainee surveyor with Worcester Corporation; he was an articled clerk to the Worcester town planner. On 8 January 1936, he was due to travel to sit an examination in London with the Chartered Surveyors Institute. He had arranged to travel by train with a friend — a colleague called Mr Dodd. Harrison’s fiancé, the 19-year-old Mary Baxter, accompanied him early that morning from his home in Droitwich to Worcester, where he said goodbye to her at the train station before heading to meet his friend on the train. He subsequently disappeared without trace. He never arrived for his examination, which was to take place over two days on 9 and 10 January, nor did he return to his family. His disappearance was reported to Scotland Yard, and his family put out a statement: “Cyril seemed fit and healthy, and very keen on his work. We know of no friends he might have visited outside Droitwich or Worcester. Mr and Mrs Harrison cannot explain his disappearance, and they are extremely worried.” Several newspapers, including the Daily Mirror, which printed Harrison’s photograph, carried the story.

After more than a fortnight, the mystery was solved when Harrison finally wrote to his parents to explain where he was. The Birmingham Daily Gazette told the story on 28 January; most other newspapers had forgotten him by then. A few days after Harrison’s disappearance, a man from Droitwich called R. C. J. Marvin, who had intended to look for work in London, wrote to his family from an address in Bayswater. Marvin’s family suspected that he was with Harrison, and contacted the latter’s family; George Harrison and Mary Baxter therefore travelled to the address to see Marvin on 12 January, only to discover that he and another man — whose description matched that of Harrison — had left the previous day. Shortly before the story was printed in the newspaper (no specific date is given), Harrison wrote to his parents from Southampton saying he was safe; at the same time, Marvin wrote to his own parents to say that he and Harrison had left London on 11 January after seeing the latter’s photograph printed in a newspaper. Marvin reported that “they had both had a good time and were looking for work.”

Kidderminster Cricket Club in 1951; Harrison is seated on the front row at the far left (Image: Sports Argus, 21 July 1951)

Unfortunately, the newspapers are silent on what happened next. We do not know if Harrison ever sat his examination, what prompted his disappearance or if he changed his career. The only clue comes on the electoral register for 1938–39, which reveals that he was still living with his parents in Droitwich. In mid-1939, he married Doris Mary Baxter in Droitwich. There is no clear evidence of him on the 1939 Register for England and Wales which might suggest that he had already joined the armed forces. Mary was listed living with her parents in Droitwich, but on the electoral register for this period, the newly-married couple share the same address.

Although details are scarce, Harrison seems to have served with the Royal Engineers during the war; there is a record of his promotion to sub-lieutenant in 1944. The rest of his life seems to have passed without incident. The couple had two daughters: Jean in 1941 and Valerie in 1948. Harrison continued to play cricket, appearing regularly for Kidderminster in the 1950s, but otherwise attracted no further attention from the world at large. He died on 28 May 1998, without an obituary appearing in Wisden; Margaret died in 2012.

Perhaps Harrison’s disappearance and his reasons for turning professional were connected in some way; it is equally possible that cricket played no part. But it is almost certain that he would never have played first-class cricket but for his background and the policy at many counties of playing amateurs at all costs. Without that desperation, we would not today know the unusual stories of men like Moss and Harrison.

“An Inadequate Nonentity”: Pelham Warner and the 1903–04 tour of Australia

A cartoon from 1903 illustrating the issues surrounding the captaincy of the 1903–04 MCC team, when MacLaren (left) was overlooked for the captaincy in favour of Pelham Warner (right); C. B. Fry is in the middle (Image: Archie (1981) by Michael Down)

With the benefit of hindsight, the MCC tour of Australia in 1903–04 was one of the most important ever to take place. On the field, there was some incredible cricket but the fact that it happened at all was a big turning point. It was the first time that the MCC had taken responsibility for a team of overseas cricketers, signalling the end of the era of privately-organised tours of English teams which had triggered the beginning of international cricket. The MCC continued to hold this role for the next seventy years: England teams abroad played under the name of the MCC (except in Test matches) until 1976–77 and in the club’s colours until 1996–97. But the tour almost didn’t take place at all and when the team was selected, critics vociferously complained that not only was it not strong enough to compete against a strong Australian side, but it was being captained by the wrong man — a nonentity. Yet with more than a modicum of luck, some outstanding, record-breaking performances and the international debut of the googly, England won the series 3–2, a result greeted with shock in Australia and elation back home. Such an outcome seemed impossible as the tour lurched into existence, against the background of a bitter feud among the most powerful figures in English cricket, in 1903.

Previous tours of Australia had been privately run on a commercial basis with profit the primary motive. The first teams, in the 1860s, were run by professionals and although amateurs became more involved in the 1870s, touring was largely a professional enterprise. The turning point came when a combined Victoria and New South Wales team defeated an English team in 1877 — a game retrospectively recognised as the first ever Test match. Later that year, the first representative Australian team toured England; by the 1880s, Test cricket was firmly established. Australian and English teams undertook reciprocal tours, but the latter were haphazard collections of individuals which made no pretence at being representative. At first, they continued to be run mainly by professionals, but amateurs gradually became more involved. By the 1890s, tours of Australia began to be funded by individuals such as Lord Sheffield or by the Melbourne Cricket Club and the English teams were led by amateurs instead of professionals. Overall though, the leading English amateurs declined to tour — being particularly reluctant to be tainted through association with professionalism — and Australia generally dominated at home, being victorious in three out of four series played in Australia (winning thirteen Tests and losing just six) between 1891–92 and 1901–02.

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  Benjamin Wardill c. 1895 (Image: Wikipedia)

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  Lord Hawke c. 1900 (Image: Wikipedia)

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  Francis Lacey c. 1896 (Image: Wikipedia)

A number of converging motivations in the late 1890s drove a change which culminated in Pelham Warner leading the MCC team in Australia during the 1903–04 season. Two men were largely responsible for the idea. The first was Major Benjamin Wardill, the Secretary of the Melbourne Cricket Club, who had been the manager of the 1886, 1899 and 1902 Australian teams which toured England. Many of the previous tours of Australia by English teams were organised by Melbourne but it was difficult to work efficiently when negotiating with a succession of different private individuals. Wardill believed that it would be easier to negotiate with one central body, for which role the MCC was perfect.

The other driving force was Yorkshire’s captain, Lord Hawke, who first suggested that the MCC should run what would today be called the England cricket team; it was no coincidence that Hawke sat on the MCC Committee. The result was the creation of a Board of Control, which held responsibility for Test matches in England from 1899; pay and playing conditions were standardised, while a committee of selectors was to choose future England teams. This ended the somewhat chaotic situation in which Tests were organised and teams selected by bodies from the ground on which each match was played, leading to some awkward situations and parochial decisions.

With the establishment of this greater stability, Wardill began negotiations with the MCC Secretary, Francis Lacey, from 1899 regarding the possibility of an MCC-organised tour of Australia. The Boer War put the process on hold, but by May 1901 Lacey proposed a series of conditions under which any MCC-sanctioned tour would take place. There was a possibility that an MCC tour would take place under the captaincy of Lord Hawke in 1901–02, but the idea foundered when leading amateurs proved unavailable; instead Archie MacLaren slipped into the vacancy left by the tour’s cancellation to organise one of his own, backed by Melbourne. Although the Test series was lost 4–1, MacLaren uncovered some new players who formed the spine of the England team for most of the decade. But he also angered Lord Hawke, who would not permit any Yorkshire players to take part; the subsequent feud between the two men may have caused some of the muddled selection that cost England dearly in the 1902 series.

Despite the negotiations between the MCC and Melbourne, it was MacLaren who was initially asked by the latter club to bring an English team to Australia in 1903–04. MacLaren, aware that Yorkshire would again refuse to allow their leading bowlers George Hirst and Wilfred Rhodes to take part, asked Sydney Barnes and Bill Lockwood if they would be interested, but they were not willing to tour. Therefore he asked Melbourne for a postponement for twelve months. Instead, Melbourne revived the idea of an MCC tour and once more made contact with Lord’s.

Therefore, the stage was set for the MCC to organise its first tour by an England team. As England had by then lost four successive series to Australia (with a record of played 20, won 3, lost 11 and drawn 6), it was imperative to assemble a strong team and find a good captain. The latter question caused a great deal of bitterness and debate. Lord Hawke originally wanted Yorkshire’s Stanley Jackson to lead the team; when he proved unavailable, Hawke chose the Middlesex vice-captain Pelham Warner rather than MacLaren, who had led England in three of those four disastrous series. Warner was offered the role on 4 June and accepted it around 20 June. The result was a highly public falling out which played out across English newspapers throughout the 1903 season.

After the appointment of Warner, discussion turned to whether or not MacLaren would play under the former’s captaincy. In mid-July 1903, MacLaren first said that he had not made up his mind whether to tour, but a few days later he said that he would not take part, issuing a rather opaque statement to the press: “Whilst he had not definitely declined the MCC invitation, he had finally resolved not to to Australia under the captaincy of Mr P. F. Warner. This is not, he states, on any personal grounds, but a matter of cricket etiquette.” Around the same time, a story emerged in the press that MacLaren had been offered the captaincy first, but MacLaren denied that this was the case.

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  Archie MacLaren c. 1905 (Image: Wikipedia)

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  Pelham Warner c. 1905 (Image: Wikipedia)

Over the next few days, it became even messier. An “official” announcement was made, originating from a Manchester newspaper, that Warner was willing to stand aside as captain in favour of MacLaren. The next day, Warner denied speaking to any journalists in Manchester and said that he had made no such offer. But he seemed to admit having a private conversation with MacLaren in an effort to resolve the problems — presumably with a view to encouraging MacLaren to tour. He said that his loyalty to the MCC was not in any doubt, and seemed to suggest that he had simply told MacLaren he would have been happy to tour under his captaincy had the MCC chosen him instead of Warner. This caused MacLaren to double down: he stated that Warner had told him he was willing to step aside and tour under his captaincy; furthermore, there had been many witnesses to the conversation who would be able to back up what MacLaren said. When Warner was informed of this, he was furious and told the press that MacLaren had no right to relate private conversations to the newspapers. MacLaren responded: “I have given the Press none of Warner’s private conversation. My statement re. the captaincy is true. Warner himself openly made statement re. the captaincy in our dressing-room. Amateurs and others present will bear witness. My statement was given only stop unfair criticism of Warner.” After this row, MacLaren was never going to agree to tour, although he was supportive of the team in the press. But given MacLaren’s impecunious state, it is possible that he could not afford to take any part anyway.

In the midst of this battle, the MCC issued a statement which stated that Warner had always been their first choice as captain and that MacLaren had declined their invitation. But the popular press seemed — a little strangely given his record as captain — to take MacLaren’s side and Warner was condemned as “inadequate” and a “nonentity”. The problem was that, from a cricketing viewpoint, these critics had a point. When the tour began, Warner had not played what anyone at the time would have recognised as a Test match. Retrospectively, two games against South Africa in 1899 were awarded Test status, and in the first of these he scored an unbeaten century, carrying his bat on his “Test debut”. But no-one at the time took these seriously; only games against Australia, and ideally those played in England, were regarded as “Test caps”. Warner, who celebrated his thirtieth birthday on the journey out to Australia, had come no-where near the England team despite making his first-class debut in 1894. Nor had he played regularly in the Gentlemen v Players match; at the time of his appointment, he had played twice in matches at the Oval (1897 and 1901) and once at Lord’s (also 1901). He was clearly not among the front rank of amateurs. Furthermore, his health was never the strongest and he at times seemed a somewhat frail individual, even in his youth.

Even more strangely, Warner was selected for the Gentlemen v Players match at Lord’s in 1903, after his appointment as MCC captain for the forthcoming winter, but played under the captaincy of MacLaren. Someone at the MCC was either very confused, or had a wicked sense of humour.

But neither was Warner a poor batsman; he scored over 1,000 first-class runs in each season between 1897 and 1901, and again in 1903. In 1900 and 1901 he averaged over 45, which was certainly the mark of a quality batsman in this period. And perhaps more importantly, he had a good record in the tougher fixtures: on several occasions he scored runs against Yorkshire, by far the best county team in the period, and had hit big centuries against Lancashire and Nottinghamshire. Also in his favour were his leadership qualities; he had taken part in several tours organised by Lord Hawke, including to the West Indies and South Africa (the latter where he made his “Test debut”), but most important was his role as captain of Hawke’s team which toured Australia and New Zealand on a non-Test-playing visit in 1902–03. His captaincy was praised on that occasion. He was not, however, the official Middlesex captain; he performed the role on occasion but the team was usually led by Gregor MacGregor.

There is one other observation worth making. In later years, Warner became extremely influential and was a dominant figure at Lord’s and the MCC. He was a Test selector for many years, but his power extended far beyond that. However, in 1903, Warner was a nobody who owed his position largely to the support of Lord Hawke, who appreciated his loyalty to the MCC. For example, during the 1902–03 tour, Wardill asked him if he would bring his own team to Australia in 1903–04; his response was that Wardill should approach the MCC as that was the “proper body”. Socially, in contrast to figures such as Hawke, he was even more negligible. Around the time of the tour, he became engaged to Agnes Blyth, the heiress of a wealthy family who were not certain that Warner had the appropriate social status. He had little money of his own, had abandoned plans to become a barrister and earned money from journalism. Even so, the family eventually accepted him, and a chaperoned Agnes accompanied the team to Australia over the winter.

It is also interesting the the cricketing establishment — such as The Times and Cricket — sided with Warner against MacLaren. There were several comments along the lines that MacLaren had no divine right to command, or that it was not unfair to move on from a captain as “unlucky” as MacLaren. And the regular front page profile in Cricket on 13 August was given to Warner, titled “The Most Abused Man of the Day”. Such pieces were generally favourable to their subject, but this one does have the appearance of an official piece of damage limitation.

In his book on the tour, How we Recovered the Ashes (1904), Warner brushed over the captaincy controversy, while still managing to justify his own position and make clear that he was blameless — a technique he would employ in countless books and articles over the next half century. After writing generously of MacLaren’s captaincy, Warner related something of their conversation at Old Trafford in July — that he had asked MacLaren if he could not join the team after all, to be told that he did not feel he could do so having captained England so many times before — and wrote: “It was a most unfortunate incident — deeply regretted by both of us, I am sure — that this conversation should have been twisted by certain newspapers into a statement that I had gone behind the MCC, and expressed my willingness to give up the conduct of the team. That, of course, I should never under any circumstances have done, and the mere suggestion naturally made me appear disloyal to the Club that had done me so high an honour.”

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  C. B. Fry c. 1905 (Image: Wikipedia)

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  Gilbert Jessop c. 1905 (Image: Wikipedia)

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  Reginald Spooner c. 1906 (Image: Wikipedia)

Warner now had to find players. He was effectively told by the MCC that he would have a veto over any players selected, and that his opinion would be respected. But, as with the captaincy, speculation was rife in newspapers over who would accept invitations and a great number of wildly contradictory reports appeared. As ever, it proved difficult to find amateurs willing and able to give up six months to tour. With Jackson out of the reckoning, the MCC approached C. B. Fry, who took his time to respond, attempting to find ways of funding his trip through journalism, but eventually he had to decline. Amid all the rumours and speculation, it was hard to keep track of what was going on, but the MCC — when confirming on 24 July that Warner was their first choice as captain — helpfully gave a list of who had accepted and who had said no. By then, nine of the final team had confirmed their availability; Fry was still to decide one way or another; and Jackson, MacLaren, Gilbert Jessop, Henry Martyn, Lionel Palairet and Edward Dowson (all of whom were amateurs) were unavailable. Another amateur, Reg Spooner, was a late possibility shortly before the team departed, but ultimately he too declined. Ranjitsinhji does not appear to have been invited as his name never appears in any lists of withdrawals. He would not have been able to accept as he planned to spend the winter in India pursuing his claims to the throne of Nawanagar, but it is likely that his reputation had not recovered from his terrible failure in the 1902 series against Australia.

When the full team was assembled by the end of the season, there were a number of reservations in the press. For example, after pointing out that the team’s batting looked weak in comparison to that of Australia (which included Victor Trumper, Clem Hill, Monty Noble and Reg Duff), Cricket said: “As far as appearances go there will have to be a good deal of luck if it is to pull through”. The same report also observed that only three of the team were in the top ten of the season’s batting averages, and just two in bowling. Warner himself wrote in The Sportsman that the team was “far from representing our best amateur strength but I very much doubt if the professional element could have been bettered.” For the establishment, this was not good — amateur cricket was viewed as far more prestigious and important than any concerns about professionals — and that only three amateurs, none of whom were leading cricketers, were in the final team would have raised a few eyebrows. But there are few absentees who could realistically have strengthened the team: C. B. Fry, for example, averaged 16.00 from eight matches against Australia at this point, and had only passed fifty twice; a quarter of the 411 Test runs scored until then by Gilbert Jessop (at 25.68) had come in one innings, his famous century at the Oval in 1902; Lionel Palairet had a first-class average in the low 30s and had failed in his only two Test matches; Martyn and Dowson never played Test cricket and had mediocre first-class records. Only Jackson, MacLaren and, to a lesser extent, Spooner might have substantially strengthened the batting and it unlikely they could have done better than those who played.

Another notable absentee was Sydney Barnes, who had taken 26 wickets at 16.23 in four Tests, and on the previous tour of Australia had taken 19 wickets in three Tests before injury cut his series short. Warner, in his book of the tour, related how he spoke to MacLaren asking for his suggestions for fast bowlers for the team: “MacLaren relied that though Barnes was undoubtedly the best man, if present form were considered, he was nevertheless temperamentally unsuited to a long tour, and almost certain to break down in health.” Barnes fell out with Lancashire at the end of the 1903 season and chose to play league cricket from the following season; his career looked to be over (although it most definitely was not).

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The MCC team on board the Orontes, en route for Australia. Back row: A. E. Relf, E. G. Arnold, W. Rhodes, T. W. Hayward. Middle row: L. C. Braund, A. Fielder, G. H. Hirst, H. Strudwick, A. E. Knight, A. A. Lilley. Front row: R. E. Foster, P. F. Warner and B. J. T. Bosanquet. On floor: J. T. Tyldesley.

There were also a few questions over the players chosen; the main two bowlers were Wilfred Rhodes and George Hirst of Yorkshire, but neither appeared particularly suited to Australian conditions. Warner revealed in his book on the tour that Ranjitsinhji had told him: “Well, no doubt [Rhodes] will make a good many runs for you, but in first-class cricket in Australia he will not take a dozen wickets.” Other critics suggested that Hirst would be useless with the ball as he would not be able to make it swing in Australia like he could in England.

The selections of the amateurs Bernard Bosanquet and Reginald “Tip” Foster were also quizzically received. Bosanquet’s record was unexceptional, and there were suspicions that he was only chosen because he played for Middlesex alongside Warner. The pair had toured together before, most notably on the 1902–03 tour of Australia and New Zealand. But the selection was certainly Warner’s; the potential of Bosanquet’s new delivery, the googly, had not been understood except in Middlesex. The other amateur, Foster had not played regularly since 1901, and had only played three first-class games in 1903. Although he had averaged over fifty in 1900 and 1901, he was still something of an unknown quantity.

Of the others, Tom Hayward, J. T. Tyldesley, Len Braund and A. A. Lilley were certain selections for any first-choice England team. Ted Arnold was an all-rounder who was a solid performer for Worcestershire, completing the double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets in 1902 and 1903. Albert Knight had a reasonable record in 1902 and a good one in 1903 and Warner chose him owing to his reputation as a very good hard-wicket batsman, the type of conditions everyone expected in Australia. The final two players, Albert Relf and Arthur Fielder, were less successful on the tour, and Warner — unsurprisingly — attributed their selection to the advice of others: C. B. Fry recommended Relf and MacLaren suggested Fielder.

Some of the critics had valid points, but owing to a combination of unusual conditions in Australia and a healthy portion of luck, the MCC team proved more successful than almost everyone predicted. One of the few to believe the team would do well, ironically, was MacLaren. Shortly before the team departed, C. B. Fry wrote an article in the Daily Express, for whom he had a regular column, addressed to Warner in which he offered encouragement, opinions on some of the players and advice on the best approach to take in Australia — which was a little rich as he had never played in Australia, nor would he ever do so.

While Warner went about assembling a team, the MCC continued negotiations with the Australian authorities. Most of their terms were accepted: an agreement to use the MCC laws, rather than the slightly different version used in Australian cricket (which would be a source of friction during the series); the team to take half of the gate money, as Australian teams had in England; the fixtures to be approved by the MCC, who retained complete control over the tour and team; and invitations to come from all the “Australian Cricket Associations”, not just Melbourne. But there was one sticking point. MacLaren had been unhappy with Australian umpiring in 1901–02 and before his proposed tour fell through, he had asked Archibald White, a leading English umpire, to accompany him. The MCC shared some reservations and proposed that the Australian Jim Phillips should accompany the team as its umpire, as he had done with Andrew Stoddart’s team in 1897–98. Since then, Phillips had become notorious for no-balling leading bowlers for throwing, a controversial subject at the time. Phillips, a more complicated man than history has remembered, had expressed his suspicions about two leading Australian bowlers, Jack Saunders and Monty Noble, in a letter to the Victorian Cricket Association. The latter association objected to Phillips’ appointment and therefore Wardill, who continued to head negotiations, stated that Australian umpires should be used. The MCC, slightly reluctantly, agreed. This too would have repercussions.

Around half of Warner’s MCC team departed for Australia on the Orontes, which sailed from Tilbury on 26 September 1903, and the remaining players joined the party at Marseilles. The three amateurs would have their expenses paid, the professionals would receive a fee of £300, plus expenses, for their services. If few commentators gave them much hope of winning against a strong Australian team, Warner and his team went on to prove them wrong over the course of six triumphant months…

The Forgotten Captaincy of J. H. Cameron

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The West Indies team in June 1939: Back row: W. Ferguson (scorer), G. E. Gomez, J. B. Stollmeyer, L. G. Hylton, T. F. Johnson, C. B. Clarke, H. P. Bayley, E. A. V. Williams. Middle row: G.A. Headley, I. M. Barrow, R. S. Grant (captain), J. M. Kidney (manager), J. H. Cameron, L. N. Constantine, E. A. Martindale. In front: K. H. Weekes, J. E. D. Sealy, V. H. Stollmeyer.

John Hemsley Cameron first made a name for himself when he took all ten wickets in a schoolboy cricket match at Lord’s in 1932. He cemented his reputation when he was the match-winner for Cambridge University in their annual match again Oxford University in 1935. But Cameron came from a much different background to most public school and university cricketers in England during the inter-war years. The son of a doctor who played for the 1906 West Indies team, he was born in Jamaica. When awarded his blue, he became one of the few non-white and probably the only black player (although to be accurate, he was almost certainly mixed race) to represent Oxford or Cambridge before the Second World War. Cameron also played for Somerset, making him the only black player to appear in the County Championship between the wars. While he certainly faced racism in England, matters became more complicated once he returned to Jamaica.

Cameron graduated from Cambridge in 1937 and having left the university, he lived in London for a time. In early 1938, he married Kathleen Cecilia Jones in Paddington. Having been living at 24 Porchester Place, Connaught Square in London, he departed for Jamaica on 3 April 1938, having accepted a job teaching at Cornwall College, a boys’ school in Montego Bay. David Foot suggested in 2000 that disillusionment with his lost bowling skill prompted his return home: “Dispirited by his markedly declining [bowling] tricks, he became a schoolteacher and returned to Jamaica.” But it is hard to imagine that someone of Cameron’s wealthy background would have remained in England simply to play cricket. Additionally, Somerset were already resigned to his departure after the 1937 cricket season and it is most likely that Cameron simply wished to get on with his life and career.

Incidentally, Somerset’s official history, written by Peter Roebuck in 1991, gives a different version of what happened which does not quite hold up. Roebuck said: “Sensitive to his colour, and suffering depressions, Cameron lost himself after leaving Cambridge with a blue and was found destitute by a friend in London. Brought back to Somerset and in need of a wage, he found himself as a teacher and courageously repaired his life.” But Cameron was already playing for Somerset and left England after graduating from Cambridge; and his teaching career did not begin until he returned home.

Within a few weeks of his arrival in Jamaica, Cameron was playing cricket; but his involvement in the game was hampered somewhat by his job, which meant that he lived some distance from the main cricket centres. During late 1938, two of his former teams toured Jamaica: a party from Taunton School and a combined “Oxford and Cambridge Universities” side. Cameron appeared against the latter team, alongside his brother, for Kensington Park, but after that he switched to play for the universities team against Kingston Cricket Club and then in two first-class matches against the Jamaica team. These were his first such games in Jamaica, and his only ones before the war. In the first he scored 62 and 44 not out and had match figures of five for 120.

But Cameron was soon catapulted back into the cricketing limelight. The West Indies were scheduled to tour England during the 1939 season, the team’s first visit since 1933. Selection for the tour involved as much politics as sport; Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados and British Guiana each expected the team to comprise a certain proportion of their players (although only one player from Guiana was selected, the other three colonies had five players each). But the most political decision — not that the selectors permitted any debate — was that of the captaincy.

In the early days of West Indies cricket, at a time when racism and prejudice were rife among the game’s administrators, captains were exclusively white. Not only was this the case for the Test team, but also for Jamaica, Barbados, British Guiana and Trinidad; the only exception before 1939 was when C. R. Browne captained Guiana in one match in 1922 before an objection to a non-white captain was unofficially raised by their opponents. To the game’s white rulers, only a white captain was acceptable. For the West Indies team, the first Test captain was Karl Nunes in 1928. After an untidy 1930 Test series against England when the team was captained by four different men, the next long-term appointee was Jackie Grant who led in three Test series — against Australia (1930–31) and England (1933 and 1934–35). The only time a black captain ran the team was when Grant briefly left the pitch against England in 1935 during the fourth Test; he asked Learie Constantine to lead in his absence, during which time the West Indies won the match and series. For the 1939 tour of England, Rolph Grant, the younger brother of Jackie, was appointed as captain.

A portrait of Cameron from 1932 (Image: Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, 13 August 1932)

As usual, there was a great deal of speculation over the composition of the team. Although Cameron had never played for Jamaica, because of his vast experience of English cricket, he was always a likely candidate for the tour. He was asked to play in the trial games organised to assist the selectors, but he was unavailable as he could not get time away from work. This did not count against him, and he was picked for the team, although there were still question marks over his availability. His selection was received with some surprise. There was even more at a report in the Barbados Advocate that Cameron had been appointed as the team’s vice-captain. This was followed up by the Jamaica Gleaner; one writer wondered if the West Indies were following the common practice of England in that both Grant and Cameron were former university blues. However, there was no official announcement that Cameron would be vice-captain, and while there is no doubt that he fulfilled the role on tour, it is unclear when the position was decided. Given the context of the times, this is quite an important point.

Part of the problem was that there was no clear candidate whom the West Indies Cricket Board would have viewed as acceptable. Both from a viewpoint of tactical know-how and playing skill, the obvious appointments to any leadership role would have been Learie Constantine and George Headley. In fact, either would have made a far better captain than Rolph Grant, but there was no way they would have been appointed given that both were black. It is also doubtful that the West Indies Board would have considered them suitable for the role of vice-captain, although Headley had led Jamaica in two matches played in preparation for the tour. But the dilemma for selectors who wished to maintain the status quo was that none of the white players had played any previous Test cricket, nor toured England before. The most likely vice-captain would have been Cyril Merry, who had toured England with moderate success in 1933 and had captained Trinidad. But Merry was omitted; he travelled to England anyway and played club cricket. Another potential candidate might have been the wicket-keeper Ivan Barrow, who had played ten Tests (making him the team’s most experienced player after Constantine and Headley), had toured England in 1933 and had scored a Test century. But Barrow was Jewish, which almost certainly ruled him out.

Given this background, Cameron was perhaps the best candidate as he had more experience of English conditions than any other players apart from Headley and Constantine. Not only that, he was a Cambridge blue and a member of the MCC. But even so, would the selectors have appointed a black player to the role? There had been previous occasions when they chose a white player with no cricketing credentials but a good social background to perform the role. As far as I can tell, no press reports named a vice-captain; if Cameron was appointed, he was done so with little fanfare.

Meanwhile, Cameron managed to get time away from work to take part in the tour. It is possible he resigned his position at Cornwall College; he took up a new job later that year. Kathleen accompanied him throughout the tour, which might indicate that they treated it as a holiday.

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The West Indies team at the start of the tour. Note that Cameron occupies a less important position in this photograph. Back row: G. E. Gomez, C. B. Clark, J. B. Stollmeyer, T. F. Johnson, H. P. Bayley, K. H. Weekes, E. A. V. Williams, L. G. Hylton, J. H. Cameron. Seated: E. A. Martindale, G. A. Headley, J. M. Kidney (manager), R. S. Grant (captain), L. N. Constantine, I. M. Barrow, J. E. D. Sealey.

For much of the tour Cameron, fulfilled the same role he had at Cambridge; batting at seven or eight and bowling regularly. After some early warm-up games, he played little part in the opening first-class match, when Worcestershire won easily. But in the second game, against Lancashire, his 45 helped the West Indies to a small first-innings lead. He followed with five for 23 in Lancashire’s second innings.

But this match brought the question of vice-captaincy into the open, and suggests that Cameron was given the role during, not before, the tour. In the game against Lancashire, Rolph Grant was injured while fielding in the first innings. The man to take charge of the remainder of the match was Learie Constantine. This may have been because Constantine was the senior professional in the team, but made little sense if Cameron was indeed the official vice-captain. However, Constantine instructed his batsmen to play for the draw on the final day rather than chasing 247 in three hours. For the following game, against the MCC at Lord’s — one of the most important games of the tour outside of the Tests — Cameron captained in Grant’s continued absence. Constantine did not captain again on the tour. The reason given to Constantine for what was effectively a demotion was that he had been too negative against Lancashire. Constantine, however, suspected that colour played a part; he wrote in Cricket in the Sun (1947): “To be brown-skinned, that is to say to have any trace of white blood in one [i. e. like Cameron], always gives a man an advantage in the West Indies.”

From that point, Cameron captained regularly in Grant’s absence — eight games overall, four which were first-class (in which he scored 196 runs at an average of 65.33 and took six wickets at 21.83). Did Grant and the tour manager J. M. Kidney promote Cameron during the tour? Did word get back to them that Constantine was not acceptable as vice-captain after the Lancashire game? Or was Cameron always the choice, and Constantine performed the role in that game as a courtesy to his position as “senior professional”?

In either case, Cameron became the first appointed (as opposed to stand-in) non-white captain of the West Indies team in first-class cricket. Yet here is another curiosity. The topic of captaincy of the West Indies team was a controversy that burned until the appointment of Frank Worrell in 1960. Yet in the many words written on the topic then and since, few have recognised that Cameron was not white. For example, Michael Manley, in his A History of West Indies Cricket, lamented (with good reason) that neither Constantine nor George Headley were considered for the captaincy in 1939: “In 1939 these were regarded as revolutionary notions or, worse, merely stupid. Hence, those who controlled the game selected R. S. Grant as captain and J. H. Cameron as vice-captain.” He continues to explain that Grant, although “a man of great decency and intelligence”, owed his position entirely to his influential family, but makes no further mention of Cameron. In his biography of Constantine, Peter Mason wrote of the decision not to give the captaincy to Constantine in 1939: “To his disgust, he was replaced a skipper for the next game loads by another white Cambridge man, the even more inexperienced [than Grant] John Cameron.” A 2009 article in the Guardian by Andy Bull, on the history of white players in the West Indies team, discussed the period of white-only captaincy, including the time under Rolph Grant, but made no mention of Cameron. No academic studies of the West Indies captaincy, or the role that race played in the history of the team seem to have paid much attention to Cameron. For example, Brian Stoddart, in an article written in 1988, wrote: “Quite simply, the cricket captaincy had been long regarded and preserved as the fief of the dominant white elite, a symbol of its control of matters West Indian.” But he did not mention Cameron.

Footage of the MCC v West Indies match at Lord’s, the first time Cameron captained the team; he can be seen fielding at slip

Partly, this may have been owing to his limited impact — as we shall see, he hardly set the world alight in 1939. Or maybe because he was not appointed “officially”. But perhaps it was also because Cameron did not quite fit into preconceived notions. He was clearly recognised as non-white when he played in England before the tour; for example, a review of university cricket by “A Country Vicar” in The Cricketer in 1939, observed that Cameron was “a West Indian by birth”. Worse, he was known by his contemporaries as “Snowball” and “Monkey”. If most reports of his time at Taunton, Cambridge or Somerset made no mention of his colour, it was occasionally highlighted.

Yet for the undoubted prejudice that he faced, his experience was hardly typical for black West Indian cricketers. As a public schoolboy and Cambridge blue, he tended to be categorised with white players, not least because he was light-skinned and — as Constantine put it — had “a trace of white blood”. Nor was he representative of the black majority. This may have made him more acceptable to white administrators than Constantine or Headley. Perhaps the closest parallel to his place in West Indian cricket was the experience of C. R. Browne, a qualified barrister from a wealthy background whose colour prevented him from a captaincy role for British Guiana or the West Indies.

But however he came to the role, and however his contemporaries viewed him, Cameron’s selection as vice-captain was a step forward for West Indies cricket. An even bigger one was taken when Headley was appointed as captain for one Test in 1948, but a hardening of attitudes after that meant that it was another twelve years before Worrell took the role.

Cameron was part of the tour selection committee in 1939, alongside Grant and the manager Jack Kidney; Constantine and Headley were also co-opted onto the panel. He scored 438 runs at 20.85, hitting a century while he was captain against Oxford University, and took 31 wickets at 21.41, with a best return of six for 57 in an innings win over Middlesex. These were solid, if unspectacular figures, but most critics thought he bowled well, and had improved considerably since his time in England. We cannot be sure precisely what bowling style he used. An article in early July by “County Amateur” (who was probably Charles Bray of Essex) in the Dundee Evening Telegraph — the thrust of which was that the West Indies team was not good enough to play Test cricket — stated: “The spin attack is negligible, only little ‘Snowball’ Cameron being able to control length as well as spin. When at Cambridge University this little man used to bowl leg spinners, but since he has been back in his own country he has taken to off spinners with an occasional ‘tweaker’ thrown in.” This matches what later sources said about his bowling, but is offset by reports in The Times and Manchester Guardian which continued to describe him explicitly as a leg-spinner and discuss his googly. While he may have used both styles, his improved accuracy may have been a result of his switching to orthodox off-spin for much of the time.

Cameron was chosen to play in the first two Test matches against England. He made his Test debut at Lord’s, scoring 1 and 0 but taking three for 66, largely through flighting the ball, out of England’s 404 for five declared. In his first over in international cricket, he bowled his former Somerset team-mate Harold Gimblett with a leg-break. That match was lost by an innings, but the second was a rain-affected draw: Cameron scored 5 and bowled just three overs for 22. That was the end of his brief Test career. Immediately after that match, he captained the team against his old county, Somerset. But a hand injury during the game — he split his hand while fielding — effectively ended his tour; he played just once after, in a non-first-class match against Wiltshire, and was unfit for the third Test.

R. C. Robertson-Glasgow wrote in Wisden after the season: “J. H. Cameron, who captained the side when grant was absent, showed a certain maturity of form. He was a most useful all-rounder, and had the advantage of an intimate knowledge of most of his opponents and their methods.” Elsewhere in the almanack, the main report on the tour was harsher: “Cameron, well acquainted with the game in England from experience similar to his captain’s as a Cambridge blue after being at school in Somerset, was not reliable with either bat or ball. He scored one of the three centuries hit for the side at Oxford, but did little else, and, except at Lord’s, his bowling seldom caused much trouble.” The review in The Cricketer annual described Cameron’s loss through injury as a handicap for the team.

As the threat of war grew, the tour was abandoned after the final Test. There was almost a tragic sequel. The team — apart from Constantine and Martindale who lived in England — travelled by train to Greenock to catch the first available ship, the SS Montrose, which departed for Canada on 26 August. Two days after their departure, the Admiralty recalled the ship to port, but six hours later reversed the decision and permitted it to continue. Had they returned to Greenock, they would probably have taken the next ship available, the SS Athenia. Two days after the Montrose arrived at Montreal, Britain declared war on Germany. Meanwhile, the Athenia left Greenock on 1 September. A few hours after the declaration of war on 3 September, the ship was sunk by a German submarine. Of the 1,418 on board, 117 were killed — mainly in incidents involving life boats.

From Montreal, most of the team travelled by train to New York. Cameron stayed there for a time, accompanied by his wife, while the others continued their journey. The early return of the team was met with some disapproval at home, both on the grounds that it looked like cowardice and that the cost of the circuitous route via North America was unduly extravagant. Gordon Scotter in the Jamaica Gleaner was particularly scathing.

When Cameron and his wife arrived back in Jamaica in mid-September, he refused to answer questions on the tour, perhaps feeling constrained by the presence at the dockside to greet him of N. N. Nethersole, a member of the West Indies Board of Control, who reminded him that he was still under contract. All he felt able to discuss was the trip home — and his visit to the World’s Fair in New York — and how calmly England had dealt with the incipient war.

Later that year, Cameron moved to a new job, working at Munro College in St Elizabeth. The next few years are a mystery, although he played for Kingston in local cricket with some success, whenever he was available; the distance from where he worked reduced his availability. He continued to work as a teacher, and appears to have been on the fringes of the Jamaica team. He and Kathleen had their only child, Geoffrey Vaughan Hemsley Cameron, in June 1940.

In 1946, Cameron made his only first-class appearance for Jamaica, when the Trinidad team visited to play a three-match series. Cameron played in the first game, but contributed little apart from returning three for 22 in Trinidad’s second innings. He missed the other games and was replaced by his brother Jimmy, who made his first-class debut. At the time it was reported that he had suffered an injury, but there might have been trouble behind the scenes. One of the opposition was Andy Ganteaume — who in 1948 scored a century in his only Test innings — and many years later he wrote in his 2007 autobiography he noted that Cameron had “abruptly” been left out of the team: “I have reason to believe that this was due to a disagreement on the field between the captain, Cecil Marley, and John after an over he had bowled. I could not help hearing John’s last remark because he was walking towards me.”

Millfield School, photographed in 2010 (Image: Brookie on Wikimedia Commons)

In late September 1946, Cameron and his family returned to live in England where he began to work at Millfield School in Street, Somerset, at the invitation of the eccentric headmaster, R. J. O. Meyer, another Somerset cricketer. There were expectations that Cameron would play for Somerset again, and he made three appearances during the school holidays during the 1947 season. He bowled just 32 overs (taking one for 101) and had a highest score of 38 not out. That was the end of his association with Somerset, although he continued to play occasionally for the MCC and in club cricket. He also made appearances for teams of West Indian cricketers playing in friendly matches. But he largely disappeared from the public eye.

However, there may have been something else going on behind the scenes. Meyer had been Somerset’s official captain in 1947 but was unavailable for much of the season. The Somerset Committee could not find a suitable replacement for 1948 and took the unprecedented — and rather strange — decision to appoint three people to the role, on the grounds that they could not find a suitable amateur — and a professional was unacceptable. According to some versions of what happened next, Cameron offered to take on the captaincy, but the Committee declined. The suspicion, then and later, was that his colour was the reason. This is the line taken by Somerset Cricketers 1919-1939 (2017) by Stephen Hill and Barry Phillips. Robert Brooke, in Cameron’s Cricketer obituary, made no mention of any such episode. Perhaps the most definitive statement came in his Wisden obituary: “[Cameron] unsuccessfully applied to be both Somerset’s captain and secretary.” But David Foot said, in Cameron’s obituary in The Guardian: “It was sometimes implied that Cameron was the victim of the colour bar and that his supposed application for the Somerset job of secretary and captain on his post-war return to England was turned down because of it. ‘Not at all true. I’d come to carry on with my teaching and had no intention of going back fulltime into cricket,’ he told me.”

From reports in the local press, it seems that he was asked to play for Somerset in August 1948 but a thumb injury meant he could not play. Instead he played for Street purely as a bowler who was scheduled to bat at number eleven; he took four for 101, coming under heavy punishment from a batsman called J. Illes who struck ten sixes in his century, six of which came from Cameron.

But perhaps the fact that he never played for Somerset again after 1947 might be the strongest indication that something happened to sour the relationship. Later, he moved to Essex where he taught at Chigwell School where he worked until he retired. His Wisden obituary stated: “He was much liked, but as David Foot wrote: ‘In private moments, he would confide his unhappy experiences at the wrong end of the colour bar.'” Foot also related that he was somewhat worn down by his experiences and subject to bouts of depression. The obituary in The Cricketer went further: “[He] encountered mixed fortunes off the cricket field and was once found destitute in London.” It may be that this period of destitution never happened — it seems to be based on the questionable story told by Peter Roebuck, where the chronology does not quite match what happened in the 1930s, and is not mentioned by any other source. But perhaps something similar occurred at some time, and Cameron’s life may have been difficult. Nor can it have been easy when his son Geoffrey died in 1994 at the age of 53.

After his retirement, Cameron moved to Chichester. He died in March 2000 at the age of 85 — according to Foot, “surrounded by his cricket books and his classical and big band records.”