PAGE 151
‘Len was sitting in some kind of rocking chair…’
Alan Moss, interview with the author, 31 March 2015.
‘the wicket will be fast, very lively in the first hour or so’
Gleaner, 15 January 1954, p.12.
teamsheet suggested he might have done
At Brisbane, when Ross learnt of England’s team selection, he observed: ‘Hutton has virtually committed himself to putting Australia in if he wins the toss’ (Australia 55, p.88).
It is possible that in Australia Hutton was diddled by the curator once more, as Arlott noted the groundsman saying he had prepared an even grassier pitch for the Test than in the State match (Australian Tour Diary, p.21).
Hutton and Stollmeyer at the toss
Instead, Wardle rushed up to Moss, not to offer congratulations…
Moss, interview with the author, 31 March 2015.
‘No Laker’
May, A Game Enjoyed, p.52: ‘We played four fast bowlers and Lock. No Laker.’
Laker had hardly been overbowled in the warm-up games…
He did not play against Combined Parishes, and in the first colony game bowled half the overs Lock did (21 versus 42). Laker did get a longer 30-over bowl in the next tour match, but only as the game was winding down; he bowled 8 overs to Wardle’s 19 in the first innings, when Bray noted ‘Holt was so rude to Laker that Bailey took him off for Wardle’ (Port of Spain Gazette, 12 January 1954).
‘put out of business for the tour’
Hutton, Fifty Years, p.99
[I have omitted a ‘him’ between ‘put’ and ‘out’ without ellipsis as it would have looked awkward on the page.]
what Michael Holding calls ‘that old Sabina gloss’
In his autobiography No Holding Back.
PAGE 152
‘shone like the polished floor of a house-proud wife’
Bannister, Cricket Cauldron, p.44.
Compare Crawford White, News Chronicle, 16 January 1954: ‘The 22 yards of so-called turf is so hard and polished by rolling it literally glitters’. Trueman remembered ‘you could have used the reflection to shave yourself’ (Fast Fury, p.82).
Moss retains the image of the barefooted groundstaff…
Moss, interview with the author, 31 March 2015.
Ross made similar observations on the next tour, stating that ‘you could clearly see [Geoff] Pullar’s reflection on the gleaming tortoise-shell wicket’ and Wes Hall ‘moving in reflection’ as if the pitch was linoleum (Through the Caribbean, p. 148, p.151).
enthusiastic about Headley’s bit-part off-spin
In a Jamaica v Trinidad inter-colonial game in 1946, Headley had taken 5 for 33, including a burst of three for 0 in 14 balls which inspired a pitch invasion (Lawrence, Masterclass, p.71).
Walcott agreed his inclusion at No.6 was a ‘good move’
Island Cricketers, p.83: ‘George, though a good deal slower on his feet than he had once been, would bring a most useful touch of experience to the side.’
George de Govia, writing from Trinidad, felt Headley’s selection ‘has startled all knowledgable [sic] followers of the game in these parts’ and could only assume Pairaudeau’s form ‘must have been very poor indeed’ in the practice games. But at least, he conceded, Headley could bowl (he says leg breaks but I think Headley was bowling off breaks) and could form part of the side’s ‘brains trust’ with Gomez (Port of Spain Gazette, p.8).
Alan Ross likened it to ‘an overcrowded raft’
Through the Caribbean, p.179.
Graveney made a difficult catch look easy
The various descriptions may reflect journalistic styles as well as the degree of difficulty: Hall described it as a ‘wonder catch’ (Daily Mirror, p.14), Rostron as ‘excellent’ (Daily Express, p.8), Bray as ‘nice’ (Daily Herald, p.6).
[For press reports on each day’s play in the series, I will add the date only if for some reason the report does not come from the next day’s newspaper.]
not playing as fast as it looked, nor as fast as the pitch next to it had played…
Walcott: ‘Hutton must have realised quite early in West Indies’ first innings, when he saw the slowness of the wicket as compared with that for the colony game, where he had gone wrong, but there was little he could do’ (Island Cricketers, p.86).
PAGE 153
Moss duly appeared second change…
Swanton, in an article on ‘Five Barbadian Heroes’ written in 1966, and collected in The Cricketer’s Bedside Book, ed. Ron Roberts, p.41.
Statham and Trueman both told the tale of the prodigious rebound…
Trueman, As It Was, pp.156-57: ‘After tea, Everton Weekes hooked me so hard that when the ball hit the concrete wall it rebounded more than a pitch length back onto the field’. (The incident cannot have happened where Trueman places it on the second day as Weekes was already out).
Dexter, From Bradman to Boycott, p.131: ‘Of the three Ws [Walcott] clearly hit the ball the hardest, as Brian Statham will vouch if you ask him about a day at Sabina Park when the ball was repeatedly cannoned back past him, only to bounce back so far from the solid concrete sightscreen that he could simply pick it up again as he walked back for his next ball.’
‘How do you expect me to swing this?’
Moss, interview with the author, 31 March 2015.
No doubt he was already regretting his decision to play four quicks
Ditton counted only three false strokes before lunch: ‘Both Stollmeyer and Holt had time enough to play off either foot without difficulty’ (Gleaner, p.1). Bray counted only four, two off Statham and two off Bailey, during the course of the whole Stollmeyer/Holt stand
PAGE 154
He did play the shot of the day when he pivoted on a Trueman long hop…
Roberts, Gleaner, p.10: ‘He rose to his full height, pivoted and cracked it to the fence…It was a shot for the book’.
‘the patience of Job’
White, News Chronicle, p.8. White was also one of the English reporters who reckoned Lock ‘gave the batsmen more trouble than any of the pace bowlers’.
Lock threw up a bump ball…
Roberts, Gleaner, p.10: ‘The crowd was amused when Lock held a bumped return from Stollmeyer and the batsman aided to the fun by walking away from the wicket.’
There was a similar exchange between Hutton and Weekes on Day 4, at which the crowd again ‘laughed and cheered’ (Gleaner, 20 January, p.10).
a female admirer came out of the crowd at long-off…
Reported in a ‘Sabina Park sidelights’ column by a ‘Gleaner Sports Reporter’ (p.10). The spectator left the umbrella on the field for Compton ‘to use when the sun get too hot and you change your mind’.
Weekes … came out to a deafening reception
Ditton, Gleaner, p.10: ‘Everton Weekes walked to the wicket amidst deafening cheers’.
He rode his luck to play a few shots…
Again, The Gleaner records that Weekes then ‘set the crowd in ecstasy’ by setting about the bowling. There were also some nervous moments: a near run-out first ball, a yorker from Statham which nearly got through and a miscued hook off Trueman.
On the Saturday there was a record crowd of 15,000…
Ditton made this estimate, noting that the crowd ‘filled every inch of space in the ground’. As well as finding their ‘gay umbrellas and colourful shirts’ a ‘pleasing’ background to the day’s events, Ditton was fascinated by the way ‘no vantage point was too precarious’. Supporters made use of the edges of the sightscreen, the roofs of the stand and the branches of nearby trees; a house with a good view of the field did a ‘roaring’ trade: ‘Nearly 100 people watched from the roof, and in the rooms underneath they were packed in a manner which would have made even sardines uncomfortable. How West Indians love their cricket’ (Sunday Gleaner, 17 Jan 1954, p.1).
Weekes set off at over a run-a-minute in the first half-hour…
His first scoring shot did represent what Ditton called a ‘lucky escape’, an ‘intended off-drive against Statham narrowly missing the stumps on its way down to fine leg’ (Sunday Gleaner, 17 Jan 1954, p.1).
‘a positive ferment of excitement’
Swanton, West Indian Adventure, p.37.
PAGE 155
‘It was unplayable’
Moss, interview with the author, 31 March 2015.
‘a foot up from the base of the stumps’
Evans, Action in Cricket, p.83.
Statham thought it was taking out ‘middle peg’
Cricket Merry-Go-Round, p.89.
Holt was struck ‘on the back of the calf’
Swanton, Adventure, p.37.
‘palpably misjudged a straight ball’
Bannister, Cauldron, p.27.
‘was a very real question whether Statham’s delivery was lifting…’
Manley, History, p.104. According to Frank Birbalsingh, Holt was ‘unlucky to be given out’ (Westindian Cricket, p.81).
because ‘in their opinion’ Holt was struck high up on the pad
Weekes (with Beckles), Mastering the Craft, p.149.
‘for a Jamaican umpire to give a Jamaican batsman out on 94…’
Sir Everton Weekes, telephone interview with the author, 31 January 2018.
‘expressed their dislike with multitudinous vociferation’
Compton, End of an Innings, p.117.
As Alan Ross put in his review of End of an Innings: ‘Mr Compton gives away no secrets of composition: perhaps he wrote every word unaided though certain phrases suggest the contrary’ (p.181).
The Gleaner believed the crowd’s outburst was already without precedent…
Strebor Roberts, Sunday Gleaner, p.10: ‘Something unprecedented happened in our cricket after lunch when a section of the crowd who resented the decision, booed the umpires as they emerged from the pavilion… It was a bad show by our crowd. Shame on them’
a ‘wonderful gesture’ by Hutton
Ditton, Sunday Gleaner, p.1.
PAGE 156
an attempt to pre-empt any ‘incidents’
Hutton, Just My Story, p.52.
‘so dour and ruthless’ as Hutton
Walcott, Island Cricketers, p.83
‘Man, this ain’t cricket any more. This is war!’
Trueman, As It Was, p.136.
Walcott and Headley resuming after Lunch on Day 2 (George is holding his West Indies cap in his left hand).
Headley kept his counsel until 1956…
All the quotations in this paragraph are from Headley’s letter to The Gleaner, 21 March 1954, p.10, which is also reprinted in Noel White’s biography.
PAGE 157
Whereas Hutton thought he was making an agreeable ‘little gesture’…
Fifty Years, p.100.
‘probably caused more bad feeling than any other incident…’
Walcott, Island Cricketers, p.83.
‘anything they could reach without a step-ladder’
Swanton, Adventure, p.38
Strebor Roberts … thought Headley’s play was reassuringly ‘safe’
Gleaner, p.10.
‘scarcely looked likely to get out’
Swanton, Adventure, p.38.
‘One groaned for Lock and for Bailey’
Swanton, Adventure, p.38.
‘The situation shrieked aloud for Lock or of course Jim Laker’
Bray, Port of Spain Gazette, p.1. He made the same point, with a bit less of a shriek, in his Daily Herald report, p.8.
PAGE 158
‘none of us was pleased’
Statham, Cricket Merry-Go-Round, p.89.
‘appalling fielding’ … ‘twice off…Brian Statham…’ … ‘three times off my bowling’
Trueman, As It Was, p.157.
‘given a lot of stick in this hectic half-hour’
Gleaner, p.10.
He remembered being ‘cheesed off’
Trueman, As It Was, p.157.
Compton was hampered by an encroaching peanut-vendor…
Bannister reported that ‘Denis looked upon the umpire’s unwillingness to change his decision as a slur on his own honesty” (Cauldron, p.46).
Compare Hutton, Fifty Years, p.100.
PAGE 159
most English journalists thought West Indies had accomplished their objective…
Reg Hayter in The Times: ‘West Indies have accomplished what they obviously set out to do on the first day – insure themselves against defeat’.
a few hoped there was still time for the visitors to post a 200-run lead
Ross Hall in the Daily Mirror, 18 January, p.13: ‘Time is now against an England win, but I do hope Hutton and company will bat as if they really believe victory is possible. Three hundred runs a day, instead of the West Indian average of 204 could give England a big lead early on the fifth morning of this six-day game if we can polish off the West Indians fairly cheaply.’
But Bray went out to inspect the pitch after the close…
Daily Herald, 18 January 1954, p.8.
‘in a class of their own’
Hutton, Fifty Years, p. 97
Graveney, extremely critical of West Indian umpiring in all of his autobiographies, did at least acknowledge that ‘with a certain amount of self-righteousness, we claim that English umpires are the best’ (Tom Graveney on Cricket, p.65).
‘English cricketers have a tendency to be put off …’
Hutton, Fifty Years, p.147. Hutton called this a ‘generalisation’, and it is specifically triggered in his memoirs by the throwing controversies of 1958/59.
‘anxious and inclined to be rattled’
Hutton, Just My Story, p.51.
His famous father … is reported to have broken down in tears
Bannister, Cauldron. For the calypso shirts, see Swanton (p.35), who thought they were ‘particularly gorgeous’.
PAGE 160
Hutton remembered only a ‘stream of abuse’…
Just My Story, p.51.
Evans … talked in 1956 of Burke’s son being pushed into a river
Action in Cricket, p.83.
…but by 1960 he was remembering the boy being ‘thrown into stinging nettles’
Gloves are Off, p.131.
Graveney’s version has Burke’s father actually ‘dropped in the docks’
Cricket Through the Covers, p.114.
Headley thought the whole affair had been ‘overplayed’…
Gleaner, 21 March 1954, p.10. [Headley uses a hyphen which I have silently removed.]
Gladstone Mills … remembered Burke having to be provided with police protection
Grist to the Mills, p.181.
J.S. Barker, presumably at second hand, later asserted that the umpire was given a ‘police guard’ (Cricket in the Sun, p.54).
…the Jamaica Umpires’ Association asked for a pay rise
As reported in Public Opinion, 30 January 1954, p.7.
‘not exactly an aid to impartial umpiring’
Compton, End of an Innings, p.118.
PAGE 161
‘How’s that, umpire?’
Public Opinion, 7 November 1953.
a ‘beautiful inswinger’
Roberts, Gleaner, p.10: ‘…a beauty of an inswinger to which the batsman played somewhat nonchalantly’.
a ‘perfectly straight one’
Watson, Double International, p.57.
Among the journalists, Rostron called it an ‘ordinary inswinger’ (Daily Express, p.8); Bannister a ‘straight ball’ (Cauldron, p.47).
‘the sort of ball I am sure I would never have missed…’
Watson, Double International, p.57.
May’s only previous meaningful experience had been at Fenner’s…
May also played for Surrey against West Indies later in the summer, when only Valentine was playing, but he was out to the seamers.
PAGE 162
‘amid the loudest uproar of rejoicing … I can recall on a cricket field’
Rostron, Daily Express, p.8.
a ‘Hampden-like roar hit Kingston’
White, News Chronicle, p.8.
Even on Day 2, during the McWatt/Gomez partnership, Hutton remembered ‘noise and pandemonium … more like a frenzied cup tie than a cricket match’ (Fifty Years, p.100).
‘the noise went on and on so that Compton and May…’
Swanton, Adventure, p.42.
May (p.53) also remembered a ‘deafening noise’.
‘I thought we were playing rather well’ …
May, A Game Enjoyed, p.53.
‘down the pitch’
May, A Game Enjoyed, p.53. Hall agreed Compton was ‘well down the pitch’ (Daily Mail, 20 January, p.14).
McWatt’s catch to dismiss Trueman off Gomez just before the close of Day 3
‘shocking … inexcusable, almost beyond belief’
Hall, Daily Mirror, p.14.
‘miserable … appalling … pathetic … awful’
Charles Bray, Daily Herald, p.8.
PAGE 163
Gomez bowled Moss with a creeper
It was Swanton who used the word ‘creeper’ in his description of the dismissal (Adventure, p.45).
‘a discreet silence greeted his announcement …’ … ‘definite psychological advantage’
Bannister, Cauldron, p.47.
Hutton was in the England dressing room in South Africa when the home side declined to enforce the follow-on in the Timeless Test and Hammond asserted that the opposition captain Melville ‘had made a blunder he would come to regret’ (Lazenby, p.135).
The Lord’s mandarins Allen and Robins…
On the next tour Swanton felt May was following local practice when he did not enforce in the second Test: ‘It is noteworthy that no WI critic or cricketer had any doubt about the best thing to do. On these pitches the follow-on is virtually unknown in first-class cricket’ (West Indies Revisited, p.115).
the ‘cricket-mad’ Jamaican public ‘had other ideas’
Walcott, Island Cricketers, p.84-85.
‘He was booed all the way to the wicket…’
Hutton, Just My Story, p.51.
Weekes’s theory is that Stollmeyer was ‘so elegant in everything that he did’
Telephone interview with author, 31 March 2018.
‘the first of many disagreements’ … ‘in complete agreement’
Stollmeyer, Everything Under the Sun, p.144-45.
In his foreword to Stollmeyer’s India Tour Diary, Kenneth Ramchand asserts that Headley was included at the captain’s ‘insistence’ and ‘against the view of the President of the West Indies Board’ (p. xviii).
‘he’s flattering the England batsmen’
Swanton, Adventure, p.46.
‘several street-corner fights’ in Kingston
Walcott, Island Cricketers, p.84.
The Gleaner‘s diary column for Day 5 also noted ‘three’ fights breaking out in the ground about the ‘merits and demerits’ of Stollmeyer’s decision (p.10).
The father of the banker Peter Stormonth-Darling remembered …
The late Peter Stormonth-Darling, interview with the author, 13 May 2015.
as if ‘in revenge for the time when rich whites and coloureds…’
Macmillan, Land of Look Behind, p.34.
She happens to echo an observation made by her husband W.M. Macmillan, in his book on the region published two decades earlier, when he suggested that the ‘consciousness of injury suffered’ in slavery ‘finds an outlet among the masses in boisterous independence and assertiveness, as if in repudiation of old indignities’ (Warning from the West Indies, p.45).
‘was still at a point of social evolution in which class and national tensions …’
Manley, History, p.104.
This kind of atmosphere comes across in poems written about Tests against England in later eras, anthologised in The Bowling was Superfine: Stewart Brown described the home fans as ‘caged | vociferous partisans, quick to take offence’ (‘Test Match Sabina Park’, p.63); Edwin Baugh one of their number taking umbrage at ‘them white boys | making my boy look fool’ (‘View from the George Headley Stand’, p.44).
Recalling his childhood in Kingston, Stuart Hall painted a picture of ‘a very Jamaican scene with its high drama, loud contention, joshing and jostling, taste for exaggeration and caricature, its (often manufactured) sense of outrage…’ (Familiar Stranger, p.9).
At the time … he condemned the treatment of Burke and Stollmeyer
Manley, Public Opinion, 23 January 1954, p.4: ‘Never in my life have I seen a display as disgusting as that enacted by our own crowd’.
Manley noted a ‘savagery’ towards Stollmeyer in both ‘bleachers and reserved stands’ and believed the way they had gone ‘beserk’ was ‘a blot on Jamaica’s name as a sporting nation which will take a long time in the removing’.
failure to pursue an enemy ‘on the run’ …
Jones, Public Opinion, 23 January 1954, p.7.
While describing Hitler as a ‘bone-head’, Jones suggested that ‘had the mustachioed dictator continued his drive across the Channel the British would have been placed in a most embarrassing position and for all we know the Battle of Britain might never have been fought. But the invasion was delayed and England slipped out of the noose’. Stollmeyer had England ‘well on the run’ but ‘an immediate retreat was ordered, the “enemy” was permitted to re-group, to live down the psychological effects of being put on the run…’
‘the crowd continued to voice their disapproval…’
Argosy, p.7.
‘You could see him go forward to drive only to find the ball not quite there…’
John Figueroa, West Indies in England, p.138.
‘the most flagrantly obvious throw I have ever seen’
Walcott, Island Cricketers, p.85.
Worrell did not discuss this incident specifically but wrote of Lock in 1959 that ‘certainly his late action has all the makings of a throw’ (Cricket Punch, p.15).
‘he didn’t bowl it, he threw it, threw it like a rocket…’
Evans, Gloves are Off, p.133.
‘a faster ball from an alleged slow bowler would be hard to imagine’
Hutton, Fifty Years, p.100.
an ‘old-fashioned chuck’
Graveney, interviewed in England’s Finest, at about 15:25. Compare Heart of Cricket, p.110: ‘I doubt if the victim was alone in not picking up the delivery.’
‘really did something to the crowd’ … ‘boos and jeers and yells of derision’
Evans, Gloves are Off, p.133.
‘a regrettable happening but not, I think…’
Swanton, Adventure, p.45.
Simon Wilde (England, p.305n.) points out that ‘Lock remains the only bona fide England bowler to be called for throwing in a Test match’ (Gower deliberately threw the last ball of a drawn Test against New Zealand in 1986).
‘building up a feeling that the umpires had a “down” on them’
Laker, Spinning Round the World, p.125.
‘vigorously telling the umpires to no-ball Lock’
Hall, Daily Mirror, p.14.
Lock had not been warned before being called…
Hall (Mirror, p.14) thought this proved the English players ‘could not trust the umpires’.
England had grave doubts about Ramadhin’s action
Covered in Chapter 10.
Fourth, they had complained about the Trinidad spinner’s habit…
White, Chronicle.
Fifth, they may have read reports that Burke went to the cinema with Holt…
Bannister, Cauldron.
Sixth, Burke awarded four leg-byes … when Weekes kicked one away…
White, on the back page of the Chronicle, reported Bailey and Hutton both making ‘protests’, gesturing a ‘kick without a stroke’ to the umpire.
‘As the day wore on England’s appearance in the field deteriorated sharply…’
Swanton, Adventure, p.45.
Several other journalists, including Bray (Herald, p.6) used the word ‘ragged’ to describe England’s performance in the field towards the close. Roberts noted Hutton indulging in ‘obvious time wasting’ (Gleaner, p.10).
‘Mr Bumper Man’
Bannister, Cauldron, p.26. Trueman, As It Was, p.154. A calypso was also written to the tune of the Sailors’ Hornpipe: ‘Head down and up she rises | He’s a bowling bumpers’.
‘Shylock’
Alan Hill, Tony Lock, p.38.
PAGE 168
‘nor have I met the man who has’
Everything Under the Sun, p.146.
…for no good ‘cricketing reason’
Weekes (with Beckles), Mastering the Craft, p.149.
he concurred with his captain’s emphasis on batting time
Sir Everton Weekes, telephone interview with the author, 31 January 2018.
Just after the Test, Weeks gave an interview to the Port of Spain Gazette, stating that he was ‘in no way’ annoyed by being deprived of scoring another Test century at Sabina and concluding ‘we play matches to win’.
‘good, phlegmatic Yorkshire stuff’ … ‘agreeable briskness’
Swanton, Adventure, p.52.
‘the outfield was so fast we thought we had a chance’
Watson, Double International, p.58.
PAGE 169
The Gleaner … described the chance as a ‘sitter’
Roberts, Gleaner, p.10. Whereas Ditton’s report, on the very same page of the paper, described the chance as ‘hard’. Bray thought Watson had driven a full toss from Ramadhin ‘very hard’, but still implied the catch should have been taken (Daily Herald, p.8).
Watson was on 27 at that point and survived another half-chance on 46 when Weekes at first slip to Valentine ‘got a touch’ to a fierce snick but ‘failed to hold it’ (Argosy, p.6)
‘You can usually feel it in your bones when things are going right…’
Watson, Double International, p.58.
‘Gerry was always a fair appealer…’
Hutton, Fifty Years, p.100.
Although compare Ian Johnson, in a Financial Times article, 16 December 1965: ‘My good friend Len Hutton is just one of the many great England players I opposed who assumed a delightful air of innocence when appealed against, no matter how sure everybody was that he was out’
‘that such a sterling innings was marred by the skipper’s obvious displeasure…’
Gleaner, p.10.
‘obvious shock’
Hall, Daily Mirror, p.14: ‘He made a comment to West Indian captain, Jeff Stollmeyer, as he walked off – the victim of an incredible piece of umpiring that might have proved disastrous.’
Hayter also noted Hutton’s ‘obvious surprise’ (Times, p.10).
PAGE 170
‘biased and offensive’ English reporting
Strebor Roberts also added a ‘Sports Editor’s Note’ on the front page of The Gleaner:
Of nine leg-before decisions given … five were against the West Indies and your against England. There was also the incident of the highly controversial Willie Watson stumping chance on the fifth day when the England batsman was given the benefit of the doubt by umpire Tom Ewart.
Watson propped at a googly, rather than sweeping as had been his wont…
Watson’s biographer suggests that he lost his concentration partly because he had been called through for three by May and was still catching his breath. But the scorebook does not corroborate this story.
Evans… not his usual ‘gay self’
Swanton, Adventure, p.43.
PAGE 171
‘sprinting from the field at the end of a long hot day…’
Hayter, as reported in Sandford, Godfrey Evans, p.115.
‘unhappy to miss’ … ‘couldn’t sleep for hours’
Evans, Action in Cricket, p.85. Compare Gloves are Off, pp.133-34.
Hutton had attended the party as guest of honour
Evans, Gloves are Off, pp.134. Hutton was already out of course, but one can understand Evans’s anger if what he says is true.
Perhaps Compton had this incident in mind when he made a general observation about the importance of social invitations being well ‘handled’ on tours, because team morale could be badly affected if there were ‘a sense in some people of being rather left out, a sense even that the captain is taking all the good things for himself and leaving the less pleasant for the others’ (End of an Innings, p.49).
This was partly because of Frederick’s tickly cough
As reported by Bannister in Cauldron, p.47.
‘for the first time the number of tree dwellers could be counted…’
Ditton, Gleaner, p.1. He estimated the crowd to be ‘no more than 2,000’ when play started.
‘We are in mourning for West Indian cricket killed by Jeff Stollmeyer’
Bannister, Cauldron, p.48 – he records that the ladies were ‘dressed in severe and unrelieved black’.
Roberts of The Gleaner certainly subscribed to the view that the low attendance was a ‘protest against the decision’ not enforce the follow-on (p.10).
‘it seems that England is going to achieve the impossible’
Manley, Public Opinion, 23 January 1954, p.4.
Although the pitch was now a mosaic of cracks, locals may have feared it would play well: on the next tour Ross was told by one of the umpires that he never knew a pitch that would play so well on Day 6 as Sabina, however wide its cracks (Through the Caribbean, p.169).
‘May and Graveney in full flight’
Manley, Public Opinion, 23 January 1954, p.4.
recalled the tactics
Brigette Lawrence asserts that Stollmeyer resorted to leg-theory ‘after another conference with Headley, who suggested that the bowlers attack the leg-stump, backed up by a tight field’ (Masterclass, p.90). I have not been able to find a reference to this conference in newspaper reports, but it is entirely possible that Headley was the key driver of the tactic (Kentish was also a Headley protégé). It should also be noted Stollmeyer had already employed leg-theory as captain of the West Indies on tour in 1950 (abetted on that occasion by Worrell) and as captain of Trinidad in Barbados, when the local papers lamented that cricket ‘can be made to look ridiculous by grown men (Everything Under the Sun, p.135).
Swanton noticed several unhurried ‘confabulations’…
Adventure, p.57: ‘I do not mention these facts in condemnation, for West Indies were doing nothing that England had not shown them earlier.’
‘a feeling that we were getting nowhere… ’ … ‘not otherwise have played’
May, A Game Enjoyed, p.54.
PAGE 172
‘This decision was nothing less than terrible…’
Graveney, Cricket Through the Covers, p.114.
‘probably right’ in thinking bat was involved
Walcott, Island Cricketers, p.86.
‘glanced a wide ball too fine’
May, A Game Enjoyed, p.54.
the batsman is reported to have sat inconsolably…
Bannister, Cauldron, p.51.
Two American academics took up posts at The University of the West Indies…
See the 1996 article by Jay and Joan Mandle.
According to one report from Kingston carried by the Trinidad Guardian (22 January 1954, p.1):
…[S]oon after lunch, when the procession of English batsmen began, crowds on the streets, listening to radios in shops, went wild with delight. Itinerant pedlars threw their goods away downtown, and went into crazy mambo movements. While yesterday they spoke unlovingly of skipper Stollmeyer, today praises were sung for him.
One is reminded also of a nice image in Ian McDonald’s poem ‘Test Match’, although portable radios would not be common in the Caribbean until the 1960s: ‘Transistored cyclists weave one-handed, | Risking crashes every wicket down’ (The Bowling was Superfine, p.99).
PAGE 173
He remembered the catch … rating it one of his best
Sir Everton Weekes, telephone interview with the author, 31 January 2018.
‘Play yourself in. Don’t do anything rash.’
Sandford, Godfrey Evans, p.114.
an element of ‘anger and resentment’
Evans, Gloves are Off, p.134.
Kentish…produced one too good for Trueman
Ditton described the delivery which clean bowled the Yorkshireman as ‘a real snorter’ (Gleaner, p.1); Bray, on the other hand, thought it was ‘a shooter’ (Port of Spain Gazette, p.1).
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Hutton expected the first Test to be a ‘holding operation’
Fifty Years, p.99.
Stollmeyer believed only a ‘super-optimist’…
Everything Under the Sun, p.144.
he asked for a helicopter to be ready to whisk him away
Admittedly this particular rumour is reported by Trueman (Fast Fury, p.82).
‘a chilling little example of the fanaticism of West Indies cricket’
Hutton, Fifty Years, p.101.
Hutton says that this plane was going to Barbados and that MCC’s plane to the same location was also searched for bombs. I think he and Bannister may have got this wrong: as far as I can make out MCC went straight to Antigua. I also think Stollmeyer went back to Trinidad briefly, before going out to Antigua himself – as did Worrell – to provide moral support to the Leeward Islands.
‘keen disappointment’ with Hutton’s ‘mistaken’ insinuations
Stollmeyer, letter to The Cricketer, 28 April 1956, p.120.
Guyanese protests about ‘vulgar insularity’
The Gleaner (15 January 1954, p.12) reprinted the Sunday Chronicle’s diatribe against the selectors: ‘For sheer vulgar insularity, this latest effusion takes the cake’ – youth in the form of Pairaudeau had been given ‘a slap in the face’ in favour of ‘an aged veteran with every evidence of failing powers’.
Bajan jibes
On the next tour Ross (pp.178-9) recorded an extraordinary incident where the Barbadian Advocate reporter flung a pocket full of dollars at the Gleaner sports editor after Kanhai was run out by Jamaican, shouting ‘only a Jamaican could have done a thing like that’.
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the other feedback loop…
Of course this can be a feature of any Test series or international sporting event, especially when a perceived ‘incident’ inflames the media: for MCC tours, Bodyline is an obvious precedent, and one can think immediately later in history of the Idrees Baig controversy on the A tour of 1955/56 (see Oborne 2014, pp.111-32), the throwing controversies of 1959/60 (see Brodhurst 2020) and the Vaseline incident of 1976/77 (see Naha 2014).
‘intemperate condemnations’ of Stollmeyer
Port of Spain Gazette, 23 January 1954, p.4.
‘both a surprise and a bitter blow’
Hutton, Fifty Years, p.99.
‘great deal of bearing on the feeling between the teams’
Graveney, interviewed by Martin-Jenkins in England’s Finest.
Bray observed at the time: ‘To add irony to our dismay, the West Indies defeated us by using the very tactics which Hutton had used earlier in the match, tactics which I maintain and shall go on doing so until my dying day, are against the spirit of the game’ (Port of Spain Gazette, 22 January 1954, p.1).
Bailey noted that leg-theory was rarely used again…
Wickets, Catches and the Odd Run, p.188: ‘The players themselves realized that it could kill the game as a spectacle and it was stopped without any legislation.’
By extraordinary coincidence, the man often credited with ‘inventing’ leg-theory, Fred Root, died at the age of 63 in the Royal Hospital, Woverhampton, on the fourth day of the Test.
‘promising him the support of MCC should he decide to discontinue…’
MCC Cricket Sub-Committee, 1 February 1954.
Alec Douglas-Home remembered that, at Eton and Cambridge, the wicketkeeper Mervyn Hill used to stand up to Allen’s bowling: ‘In such circumstances to bowl outside the legs was positively bad form, and the bowler didn’t last long who did so’ (Quick Singles, p.31). Perhaps this was one way in which Allen’s aversion to leg-theory was formed even before Bodyline.
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…when Verity sometimes bowled outside leg stump to keep Bradman quiet
According to Ken Farnes (Tours and Tests, p.151).
‘The number of overs per hour bowled by each County…’
MCC Cricket Sub-Committee, 22 February 1954.
‘shot in the arm’ … ‘basher’ tactics …
All the quotations in this paragraph are from Bradman’s article, (I have used the version syndicated to The Sunday Gleaner, 21 February 1954, p.3 given the headline ‘These tactics could ruin cricket’).
He thought the Don had tried every trick in the book in 1948…
Les Ames, not yet an England selector, thought Bradman’s change bowlers in 1948 ‘bowled almost completely negative stuff on or outside leg stump’ (Close of Play, p.98). The bizarre 55-over new-ball rule operating in that series meant that these tactics were especially effective.
One of the few things Hutton and Compton always agreed on was that in 1948 Bradman initiated many of the tactics which were to be a feature of Test cricket in the next decade: ‘It is somewhat ironical that Bradman, now the greatest advocate of brighter cricket, should have started it, for start it he did’ (End of an Innings, p.40). Compton not only criticised the use of Toshack and Johnston to ‘most effectively shut up the game’ but the way Bradman encouraged Lindwall and Miller to bowl bouncers: he remembered in particular Hutton being hit several times at Trent Bridge in bad light with Bradman ‘grinning his head off’ at cover point (p.44).
Hutton was probably less concerned about the moral high ground…
Although, looking back twenty-five years later as he compared his tour to the one led by Ian Botham in 1980/81, Hutton does not give the impression he thought the situation was irrecoverable: ‘We were not on our knees when we departed for the second Test in Barbados, but our legs were not as strong as I would have liked’ (Observer, 22 February 1981, p.26).