Squeezing the Orange. Henry Blofeld

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СКАЧАТЬ he considered the most beautiful in the game. When I got it right he would purr with delight. He and David Macindoe had together written a splendid book called Cricket Dialogue, about the need to maintain the traditional etiquette and standards of the game. It may be dated, but it is still well worth reading.

      I shall never forget my first Eton v. Harrow match. The anticipation had been intense, and I was given a lift from Eton to Lord’s, along with Edward Lane Fox and Gus Wolfe-Murray, by Richard Burrows, a considerable middle-order batsman and a wonderful all-round games player. His father, the General, sent his Rolls-Royce – what else? – and chauffeur, and the four of us piled inside and were driven not only to Lord’s, but imperiously through the Grace Gates. What a way to enter the most hallowed cricketing portals in the world for the first time as a player. No matter what those in the know talked about in College Chapel, I felt that Heaven couldn’t be any better than this. I can still clearly remember the frisson of prickly excitement as we stopped to have our credentials checked. Yes, they even checked up on Rolls-Royces. Even today, every time I go in through the Grace Gates – and goodness knows how many times I have done so – I still get that same feeling. I remember carrying my puny little canvas cricket bag through the back door of the Pavilion, up the stairs and along the passage to the home dressing room, the one from which Middlesex, MCC and England ply their wares. After being given a cup of tea by the dressing-room attendant, we changed into our flannels. There were several formal-looking dark-brown leather couches around the walls and as I sat down on one to tie up my bootlaces it suddenly occurred to me that not a fortnight before, England had been playing the second Test against South Africa at Lord’s. In that same dressing room, sitting more or less where I was and doing precisely the same thing, would have been Denis Compton, Peter May, Ken Barrington, Tom Graveney, Godfrey Evans, Fred Trueman and the others.

      We won the contest, and were generous to let Harrow get to within 34 runs of us. As far as I was concerned, the only blemish came on the second morning. We had begun our second innings on the first evening, and needed quick runs to give us time to bowl them out again. We made a good start, but then after about an hour, wickets began to fall, and there was mild panic in the dressing room. I was batting at number eight, and no sooner had I got my pads on than there came shouts of ‘You’re in, you’re in!’ I grabbed my bat and gloves and fled down the stairs, through the Long Room, down the steps and out through the gates. I strode to the Nursery End, took guard and prepared to face Rex Neame, who bowled testing off-breaks, which he was to do later on a few occasions for Kent in between his productive efforts at the Shepherd Neame Brewery. I came two paces down the pitch to my first ball, had a swing in the vague direction of the Tavern, and my off-stump went all over the place. I retreated on the interminably long return journey to the Pavilion amid applause and yells the like of which I had never heard. In the circumstances I felt I could hardly raise my bat or take off my cap, and somewhat perplexed, I continued on my way. No one much wanted to talk to me in the dressing room, so I took off my pads and things, put on my blazer and went to join Tom and Grizel in Q Stand, next to the Pavilion. When I arrived, Tom looked severely at me and said, ‘You were a bloody fool to let him get a hat-trick.’ Until then, I had had no idea it was a hat-trick – the first ever to be taken by a Harrovian in the Eton and Harrow match. Tom Pugh, who was playing that day, always says that when the hat-trick came up for discussion later, I said, ‘If I’d known it was a hat-trick I would have tried harder.’ You never know what to believe.

      When I returned to Common Lane House in September 1955, Geoffrey Nickson had retired to North Wales, and Martin (‘Bush’) Forrest (MNF) had become my housemaster. It would be fair to say that we never got on. He was a charming man, but such a different type of schoolmaster to GWN that those of us who graduated from one to the other had some difficulty in getting used to the change. MNF, a large and rather heavy man, built for the scrum, was nothing if not worthy, but, at first at any rate, he lacked the quick-witted humour GWN had brought to even the trickiest of situations. I suspect MNF felt that I was the creation of his predecessor, and that as I was, at the age of fifteen, already in the Eleven, I could do with being taken down a peg or two. I found him suet pudding in comparison to the soufflé-like texture of GWN.

      There is one story about Bush which illustrates my point. In the following summer half we played Marlborough at Marlborough, and won by seven or eight wickets. When we returned by bus long after lock-up, the only way into the house was through the front door. No sooner was I inside than Bush asked me how we had got on. I told him we had won, and what the scores were. He then asked me how many I had made. When I said, ‘Sixty-something not out,’ he looked at me for a moment in that stodgy way of his and said in a slightly mournful tone, ‘Oh dear,’ which was what he tended to say on almost every occasion. It hardly felt like a vote of confidence, and our relationship seldom progressed beyond a state of armed neutrality. It must have been my fault, because all of those who spent their full five years with Bush adored him. He clearly became an outstanding housemaster, and a great friend to his charges.

      The 1956 cricket season at Eton was a joy. I teamed up as an opening batsman with David Barber (known as ‘Daff’), and together we formed the most amusing, successful and noisiest of opening partnerships. It was unceasing ululation as we negotiated quick singles, and seldom, initially at any rate, were we of the same opinion. We played one match against Home Park, a side largely comprised of Eton beaks. One of them was a housemaster called Nigel Wykes, a most remarkable man, who had won a cricket Blue at Cambridge, was a brilliant painter of birds and flowers, and had Agatha Christie’s grandson, Matthew Pritchard, a future captain of Eton, in his house. He was known as ‘Tiger’ Wykes, and he fancied himself as a cover point, where he was uncommonly quick with the fiercest of throws. In the course of our opening partnership, Daff pushed one ball gently into the covers and yelled, ‘Come five!’ We got them easily as Wykes swooped in and threw like a laser back to the stumps, where the middle-aged wicketkeeper was nowhere to be seen and four overthrows was the result. That year we played Winchester at Eton and came up against the fifteen-year-old Nawab of Pataudi, also called ‘Tiger’, who even at that age was in a class of his own. Like his father, he went on to captain India. He didn’t make many runs that day, but the way in which he got them told the story. As luck would have it, I caught him behind in the first innings and stumped him in the second. Sadly, that year’s Eton and Harrow match at Lord’s was ruined by rain.

      I had the luck, though, to be chosen to keep wicket for the Southern Schools against The Rest for two days at Lord’s in early August. I managed to do well enough to secure the same job for the two-day game later that week, also at Lord’s, against the Combined Services, which was a terrific thrill. The Combined Services were run by two redoubtable titans of the armed forces: Squadron Leader A.C. Shirreff, the captain – Napoleon himself would have envied his ever-pragmatic leadership – and his number two, Lieutenant Commander M.L.Y. Ainsworth, who had reddish hair, a forward defensive stroke with the longest no-nonsense stride I have ever seen, and a voice that would have done credit to any quarterdeck. They had under them a bunch of young men doing their National Service, most of whom had already played a fair amount of county cricket, including Mel Ryan, who had used the new ball for Yorkshire; Raman Subba Row (Surrey and then Northamptonshire), who went on to bat left-handed for England; and Stuart Leary, a South African who played cricket for Kent and football for Charlton Athletic. Then there was Geoff Millman, who kept wicket for Nottinghamshire and on a few occasions for England; Phil Sharpe of Yorkshire and England, who caught swallows in the slips; and a few others.

      We batted first, and at an uncomfortably early stage in the proceedings found that we had subsided to 72 for 6, at which point I strode to the crease. Before long Messrs Subba Row and Leary were serving up a succession of most amiable leg-breaks, and when we were all out for 221, I had somehow managed to reach 104 not out. It was quite a moment, at the age of sixteen, to walk back to the Lord’s Pavilion, clapped by the fielding side and with the assorted company of about six MCC members in front of the Pavilion standing to me as I came in. It all seemed like a dream, especially when I was told that only Peter May and Colin Cowdrey had scored hundreds for the Schools in this game. To make things even more perfect, if that were possible, Don Bradman saw my innings from the Committee Room, and sent his congratulations up to the dressing СКАЧАТЬ