109. Memory, a Long and Winding Lane: The Archaeology of a Box (14)

Memory, a long and winding lane, springs surprising little by-ways.

Now from my box of treasures I pull out an envelope of photographs of me in sports teams, school teams mostly. The recollection of my sporting heroics triggers recall of the sports heroes of my youth. Some are people I played with or against and some are heroes shared with other sports addicts of my generation.

On their retirement sporting heroes in the public eye are often expected to offer pithy, moralistic comments as to the secrets of their success, secrets presumed to be appropriate for transfer to life itself. Why anyone who has spent ten or twenty years or more hitting golf or tennis balls or swimming endlessly up and down pools should have anything of particular value to say about life in general has always escaped me. It is a tradition nicely parodied by the baseball pitcher Satchel Paige (1906-1982) who, after dominating the black leagues for 20 years, put his success down to observing six golden rules, rules that he claimed could make anyone great:

1.  Avoid fried meats which angry up the blood. 

2.  If your stomach disputes you, lie down and pacify it with cool thoughts. 

3.  Keep the juices flowing by jangling around gently as you move. 

4.  Go very light on the vices, such as carrying on in society. 

5.  Avoid running at all times. 

6.  Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you.

Satchel Paige is now more famous for his quotes than his pitching.

The earliest photograph I have of me in an organised sports activity is from the Wells Cathedral Junior School Sports Day.

To find me look up from the flag in the centre foreground and slightly left to the boys in the back row. I have a boy of my height on my right and three shorter boys on my left. This photo would have been taken in 1950 or 1951 so I would have been 10 or 11. Clearly I am of average height and weight for my age, which, as we will see in later photographs, was not always the case. [ For the significance of this and later observations here about my physical development, go to blog 21, "Why Me? The History and Mystery of My Bronchiectasis", December 2011.]

Sports were compulsory at Wells and boarders played every day after school (apart from the choristers who went to the Cathedral for evensong). If pitches were unplayable because of rain we all had to go off on a run, something I hated even though I could happily run all day if there was a ball to chase. I played organised games of soccer and cricket in the junior school and, after moving up to the senior school in September 1951, rugby, cricket and hockey. At rugby I played fly half in the school under-14 team (aka stand off half, second five eighths, number 10) primarily because I had a good pair of hands and could kick with both feet. But I didn't like to tackle, was not a try scorer nor the team goalkicker. 

My eyesight deteriorated through my teens and I switched to hockey as my primary winter sport; I played right half. I continued to play rugby at fly half in house cup games, and I wheedled the sports master Mr Lewis to nominate me as linesman for the First XV so that I could go to away games and enjoy the after match teas. When I was in the sixth form I also played badminton and caddied for the Headmaster and the Maths teacher on some of their weekend golf games, invariably having a hit at the par 3 holes.

There were informal games of soccer and cricket as well, particularly after dinner on the long summer evenings. Sometimes this was a chance for extra practice in the cricket nets but often it would be a game of soccer, much to the disgust of the Headmaster when I sustained a minor injury that led to me being unavailable for a First XI cricket match. He also growled at me for playing with boys younger than myself saying it would undermine my authority as a prefect (not that I had much anyway!).

The next photo was taken in 1953 when I was captain of the Under-14 cricket XI. Again I look to be of normal build.

But the next two photos are from 1958, my final year at school, so I would have been 17, turning 18 in June. As you can see I am relatively short in the upper body and pretty skinny. And what the school barber has done to my hair I hate to think. (That's Mr Lewis the sports master in the hockey photo.)

When I was playing for the school Under-14 side I was a big fan of our First XI captain, Don Perkins, who had scored a century in one of the matches. In contrast, when I was captain of the First XI I was a fan of our Under-14 captain, Malcolm Nash. Malcolm, a left arm bowler, played a number of matches for the First XI but was presumably in the Under-14 team photograph. He was the outstanding player of my time in the school and went on to become a professional cricketer.

From 1966 to 1983 Malcolm played for Glamorgan in the County Championship and captained the side in 1980 and 1981. When they won the county championship in 1969 he took 71 wickets in 21 matches at an average of 18.98 and, over the whole of his professional career, 993 wickets at 25.87. His best figures in the county championship (9 for 56) were in Hampshire's first innings in 1975 when he took 14 wickets in the match. In 1968 he took 7 for 15 to dismiss Somerset for 40. His top score was 130, made in 76 minutes against Surrey at the start of the 1976 season and he made 124 against Leicestershire in 1978. Malcolm was no less successful in limited overs matches for Glamorgan, his best bowling being 6 for 29 against Worcestershire in 1975 when he took the last five wickets for 2 runs, including a hat-trick. His best batting was a century in 61 balls in 1976 - 103 not out against Hampshire.   

Notwithstanding all this, however, Malcolm is best remembered for his part in 'the most famous over in First-class history'*. Playing for Glamorgan against Nottinghamshire at Swansea towards the end of the 1968 season Malcolm was hit for six sixes in one over by the West Indies and Notts captain Gary Sobers, my all time favourite cricketer. (There are detailed accounts of this event on the internet and a video of it on YouTube.) Malcolm normally bowled medium pace and had already taken four of the five wickets to fall in the Nottinghamshire innings but, inspired by the success of Derek Underwood in the England team, he was experimenting with slow left-arm. He later commented that Sobers 'quickly ended my slow bowling career. It was a short experiment'.

In 2006 the auction house Christie's sold the ball allegedly used in this famous over to an Indian collector of cricket memorabilia for £26,400. The provenance of the ball sold is highly suspect and Malcolm Nash has said that it 'was absolutely not bowled by me.'**

After I left school I played no cricket until I went to Selwyn College Cambridge in September 1960. In the summer of 1959 I was working night shift at Wall's Ice Cream factory in Acton and in the summer of 1960 I went to Italy. [For details of these two 'gap years' see blogs 55 and 59-61.] 

By the time I returned from Italy the family had moved from Queens Park to the Enfield Highway. At Queens Park I had been a keen follower of the Chelsea football team. It was a bit of a joke back then but the ribald and humorous commentary from those on the terraces was worth the admission price. When Jimmy Greaves joined the side in 1957 from the Chelsea youth team he was still sixteen but in four seasons he scored 124 first division goals and went on to break all sorts of goal scoring records for his clubs and for England. In April 1961 he was sold to the Italian club A.C.Milan for £80,000. After a short and unhappy spell in Italy, he was signed by Tottenham Hotspur for a fee of  £99,999 and played his first match for them against Blackpool on 16 December 1961. And I was behind the Blackpool goal that day when Jimmy Greaves put a hat-trick past Blackpool goalkeeper Gordon West (who later played for England).

Now here's a surprising little by-way I have meandered into.

Like many before the days of Google I would often wonder about the history of something or the meaning of a word or what films and dramas an actor had previously starred in. I might ask Sharon or she would ask me and we would say "I don't know" and leave it at that. Currently we both play online Scrabble and Words with Friends and found that all sorts of words we had never heard of were in the approved game dictionaries. So now we say "I don't know, Google it." Writing of Jimmy Greaves scoring a hat-trick, it occurred to me to wonder what the origins were of an expression I had used all my life. I half expected it would have something to do with magicians pulling rabbits out of hats; but not so. Well, of course, it had to be cricket! The term hat-trick, according to the 1999 edition of the Extended Oxford English Dictionary,

came into use after HH Stephenson took three wickets in three balls for the all-England eleven against the twenty-two of Hallam at the Hyde Park ground, Sheffield in 1858. A collection was held for Stephenson (as was customary for outstanding feats by professionals) and he was presented with a cap or hat bought with the proceeds.

So there was an actual hat involved in the creation of a term first used in print in 1878. The following year Fred Spofforth of Australia took the first Test cricket hat-trick in a match against England. The term was eventually adopted by many other sports but only became popular in the USA in the mid-1940s in the context of matches in the National Hockey League. I don't know why Hallam had 22 in their team. [Google it?] It sounds more like Kilikiti, the Samoan version of the game I wrote about in blog 107, Cricket, Lovely Cricket in which anyone who turns up gets to play. 

At Cambridge I played cricket and hockey for the college plus darts with my friends at the local pub, the Hat and Feathers. College games were against Oxford and Cambridge colleges and local club teams. It snowed during one of the cricket matches. Against the Royston club we played against the seventeen year old Keith Fletcher, later captain of England. He scored his first club century that summer and I have a feeling it might have been against us.

One of the features of the Selwyn College cricket schedule was a tour at the end of the summer term. In 1961 the tour was to Dublin for a week. We played four or five matches against local club sides in the Dublin area and finished with a final match against Trinity College, the University of Dublin team. Irish hospitality being the legend it was, each club game was followed up in the clubhouse into the early hours of the morning. We also enjoyed a tour of the Guinness brewery.

We won all of our club games, the first one easily but each subsequent one by smaller and smaller margins. We lost to Trinity College - perhaps they were better than us or the Guinness and late nights had taken their toll. Seated far right is John Walters who played for Surrey 2nd XI in the long vacation and on the far left Don Trelford. Don greatly impressed me by not only reading Wittgenstein but apparently understanding him too. He was editor and a director of The Observer from 1975 to 1993 and Chief Executive from 1992 to 1993. He has written pocket biographies of two cricketers, W.G.Grace and Sir Len Hutton and, like Mike d'Abo, become a father again in his seventies - and looks very happy about it.***

As you can see in the team photos from that tour I was now, according to my passport, 5' 11'.

The following summer our college tour was to Sussex and Hampshire and we played a series of matches along the South Coast between Brighton and Portsmouth. One of the scheduled games was against the Royal Navy at the County Ground Portsmouth but that was washed out. I would like to think that we also had a match at Arundel Castle, surely one of the most spectacular of cricket grounds, but I think that may be a flight of fancy.

My outstanding memories of the 1962 Selwyn College tour are not of the cricket but of the piano playing of one of our team, Mike d'Abo. At every after-match function with a piano in the bar or clubhouse we tried to persuade Mike to play his improvisations of jazz classics. He was a fine batsman and played for the Sussex Martlets in the long vacations but his fielding at mid-off was something of a mixed bag. His fingers were insured; nevertheless, probably wisely, he left alone any hard hit drive in his direction.

Mike never completed his degree. He was already part of A Band of Angels, a pop group from his schooldays, and left university to pursue his musical interests as a performer and song writer. In August 1966 he replaced Paul Jones as lead singer for Manfred Mann where his first big hit was "Semi-Detached Suburban Mr James". Later "Mighty Quinn" went to number one on the pop charts. One afternoon when I was riding on the top deck of a bus I spotted Mike in Lower Regent Street, striding along flamboyantly dressed with cape and feathered hat.

Manfred Mann disbanded in 1969. For Mike d'Abo's subsequent career as singer and composer check out Wikipedia and his official website www.mikedabo.com. I discovered that Mike is the cousin of Maryam d'Abo, the Bond Girl Kara Milovy in The Living Daylights (1987), that his song 'Handbags and Gladbags' is the song that runs at the end of each episode of The Office, and that Mike has continued his keen interest in cricket playing for Tim Rice's XI. On his website you can enjoy a video of him singing his song 'Tiny Miracles' to his twins, Ella and Louis, born in 2007.

In the university vacations I played for the MCC. No, not the MCC but a local Enfield team the Middleton Cricket Club. It was there one evening at net practice that I wrecked the cartilage in my right knee. I was bowling flat out on a wet run up and my foot slipped from under me in the delivery stride. I went down in a big heap. Next morning our GP came to view my hugely puffy knee and, to see how flexible it was, bent my leg. So then I had badly torn ligaments to add to my woes. Later I played some cricket with my knee heavily strapped but, after being embarrassingly run out when it gave way during a quick single, I decided I needed some surgery.

I had my cartilage operation back in Cambridge at Addenbrooke's Hospital. I recovered in a ward full of motorcycle and car crash victims in various forms of plaster and traction and heard all their gory tales of their accidents, or such of them as they could recall after 'going through a hedge and coming to in a field' or whatever. By the time I was discharged I was scared even to ride in a car. I also remember the endless playing on the piped hospital radio of Telstar, a monotonous hit by The Tornados that topped the charts in 1962. On a happier note was the gorgeous Hungarian physiotherapist who oversaw my daily exercises to strengthen my quadruceps. Determined to impress her I managed to raise my leg off the mattress on the morning after my operation. I guess that cycling everywhere as a student at Cambridge (wearing the compulsory gown) had kept me in pretty good shape.

I have only three physical mementoes of my sports achievements. Two of them are little medallions from the Middleton Cricket Club in 1963, one for best batting performance and the other for best average.

After I left Cambridge I entered a one year postgraduate programme at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) and, during the summer of 1964, I opened the batting for the LSE student team in the inter-collegiate competition of the University of London Union.  Our opening fast bowler was Keith Underwood, elder brother of Derek Underwood, and we won the Cup that year (medallion top right above).

I married at the end of that year and Pat and I rented some rooms in Wood Green before buying a two bedroom flat of our own in Finsbury Park. Since moving to Enfield in 1960 I had become an avid Spurs supporter. From our Wood Green lodgings I could walk to the Tottenham ground at White Hart Lane and our flat in Finsbury Park was a short walk to Arsenal’s Highbury Stadium. If Spurs were not playing at home, and Arsenal not playing a visiting team that had a good chance of beating them, I would go to Upton Park to watch West Ham and sing “We are forever blowing bubbles.” 

At the end of my LSE year I took a job with John Dale, a light engineering company. Located in Southgate, North London, the factory was easily reached on the Piccadilly Line from Wood Green and later from Finsbury Park. During the summer I played cricket for the company’s social club team, many of whom were West Indians. The 1950s and 60s were a period of massive immigration of West Indians to the UK, particularly to work on public transport. In the 1950s, because of post war growth and rebuilding there were major labour shortages in England, particularly for unskilled labour. Recruitment centres were set up in the West Indies to recruit bus drivers and conductors, and staff for the London Underground, the national rail companies and the National Health Service. For many, cheap sea passages were arranged and training programmes provided to familiarise new immigrants with British society – including instruction on “How to queue at a bus stop”. If our cricket eleven were short of a player or two someone would hightail it over to the underground station to see if they could recruit a fill-in from staff coming off shift.

Most of my cricket at that time was with the Alexandra Park club. My principal memory of my time there is of our home game on the afternoon of the 1966 FIFA World Cup Final at Wembley when England beat Germany 4-2 after extra time. We were fielding while the match was on and, at the end of each over, avidly catching up on the progress of the game on a transistor radio one of our players had in his pocket. [Jimmy Greaves, alas, was not selected for England that day.]

In the autumn of 1966 I joined the staff at LSE and played cricket for the staff side the following two summers as well as for Alexandra Park. Then in 1968 I changed job again and took up a research post with the Furniture and Timber Industry Training Board located in Wembley. The Board moved to new offices in High Wycombe the following year and, to reduce my commuting time, we moved to a new home in Carpenders Park. At that point I joined the Northwood Cricket Club.

Northwood CC mostly played matches against other clubs in the North West London area plus clubs from Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. Separate full day matches were played on Saturdays and Sundays with some mid-week games on Thursday afternoons. There was no touring but there was an annual cricket week. This made it possible to play nine consecutive games of cricket. Bliss! (And also consumed one week of my annual holiday entitlement.)

The Northwood Cricket Club dates back to 1878 and had, at the time I was playing in the late nineteen sixties early seventies, a number of interesting matches in its fixture list. These included games against The Honourable Artillery Company, the Cross Arrows, the Lord's Taverners and the International Cavaliers.

The Honourable Artillery Company is a charity incorporated in 1537 as well as the oldest regiment in the British Army. The central portion of Armoury House, the Company's headquarters, was built in 1735 and the east and west wings added in 1828. Their spectacularly located sports-ground in the City, a short walk from the Barbican and surrounded by buildings, must be one of the most valuable pieces of cricketing real estate anywhere, rivaling that of the Singapore Cricket Club founded in 1852. (The HAC wicket was a treat to bat on and I think I made some runs that day.)

[ Photos from Honourable Artillery Company website; for spectacular views of the surrounding City of London buildings go to Google Earth.]

[From Singapore CC website]

The Cross Arrows was originally set up for Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) staff and others working at Lords to play some cricket in the late summer after the main season was over. In the early days they were a wandering team that only played away matches in the London region. Prior to 1880 they called themselves the 'St John's Wood Ramblers Cricket Club' but discovered another club had a similar name so were on the lookout for a new one. Robert Curphey in his MCC Archivist Blog explains how they decided on the name Cross Arrows:

The day before they played against Northwood Cricket Club, one of the staff members asked where Northwood was and received a reply of: "It's cross 'arrow way" meaning that it was beyond the district of Harrow. Jimmy Fennell, Assistant Tennis Marker at Lord's, replied: "That's it, lets call the club the Cross Arrows", and thus the name stuck.

The opportunity to play at Lord's was not to be missed even if the matches were usually on the Nursery Field and not on the main Lord's pitch. In 1970 the Northwood v Cross Arrows fixture coincided with our family holiday at Sidmouth in South Devon. Nevertheless I was up early and drove to London for the game. It was wet and a game seemed unlikely. We hung around for a while and wandered round the inner sanctum of the Lord's pavilion. Eventually the game was cancelled and later that evening I drove back to Devon. On another occasion I did play a match on the nursery ground against, I think, a Middlesex young professionals XI. All I remember of that game is fielding in my favourite position, gulley, and catching, much to the batsman's surprise, his hard slash of a square cut.

The Lords Taverners, was set up in 1950 by a group of actors who liked to watch cricket from the Taverners pub at Lord's. It is now the UK's leading youth cricket and disability sports charity, encouraging participation in cricket by disadvantaged young people and supporting sports and recreational activities for those with special needs. (It became customary for British Prime Ministers to be made members of the Lord's Taverners, an all male club. When Margaret Thatcher became Prime Minister an Honorary Lady Taverners was formed and she agreed to become its first member.)

I am not sure if I ever played in a match against the Lord's Taverners but I do remember Harry Secombe, President of the Taverners in 1967-68, being at Northwood. Harry was best known to my generation for his role as Neddie Seagoon in the radio series The Goon Show which ran from 1951 to 1960. In 1981 he was knighted - for his coat of arms he chose the motto "GO ON" and jokingly called his rotund self Sir Cumference.

The International Cavaliers were largely professional international players who made up ad hoc sides to play on Sundays against club and county sides. From 1965 to 1970 they played 40 over one-day games, the forerunner of the John Player County League, a one day series begun in 1969. The Cavaliers were disbanded the following year.

One of the best matches of my cricketing career was against the International Cavaliers. I remember three of the international players who came for the match against Northwood, although I am not sure which season it was, probably 1970: Brian Davison, captain of Rhodesia who joined Leicestershire in 1970 and was later county captain; Saeed Ahmed, a middle order batsman and right arm off-break bowler who played 41 tests for Pakistan from 1958 to 1972; and Randolph Ramnarace from Guyana, fast medium swing bowler and middle order batsman who represented a Rest of the World team in England in 1968 and played for Colne in the Lancashire League in 1969. (I also remember the all-rounder Richard Hutton, son of Sir Leonard Hutton, playing in a match at Northwood but am not sure who he was playing for; I don't think it was the International Cavaliers. Richard Hutton played five tests for England in 1971.)

I was pleased to find among the photos on the NCC website a photo of the 1971 team in which I played.

That's me, third from the right in the back row. Third from the left at the back is Keith Knowles who was our opening fast bowler. Keith is currently President of the Club so I made contact and we are now friends on Facebook. Who would have thought - after 42 years since I left for New Zealand?! I still have the decanter I received from my team members as a farewell gift. It has made a long and meandering journey too and is a memento to treasure.

Cheers.

___________________________________________________________

*Arunabha Sengupta, '6,6,6,6,6,6 - Gary Sobers blazes his way into history books', Moments in History, Live Cricket Scores and News, India.com, 2014.

**The Telegraph, 22 Sept 2013.

***See 'I expected to be dead at 73, not doing 3am feeds with my baby', The Sunday Times, 6 March 2011.