AND FINALLY...

It has to be admitted, whatever it means for England, for Barney and me this particular cloud does have its silver lining, and how! In truth, it seems as if a god is even now descending from the clouds, instead of down the pavilion steps. This is why we came – well, a good three-quarters of the “why”– and I feel the world a good deal less heavy than it has been all morning. A moment to savour. Barney is clearly much happier too; he extracts a sandwich from its grease-proof wrapping and takes an enormous, celebratory bite, just as Compton is taking guard. All the same, I make no pronouncements, no predictions, mindful of how Michael’s oh-so-confident words had scuppered Hutton. But some people never learn! “Now for some runs!” says Barney, well into his third sandwich.
Last ball of Miller’s over. A full toss, and Compton’s flashing blade plays it confidently away. Lindwall again, to Graveney. An easy single. And now, Denis has the strike. For my sins, my eternal, infernal, hell-fire sins, I wasn’t watching, so I’m not sure quite what has happened. Barney’s premature lunch has given me an appetite too, or something has, and I’m fishing around in my haversack, trying to find the right packet, and what do I hear but Barney choking on his sandwich, trying to squeeze words out of his bread-jammed mouth, that and a universal gasp. I look up. “What is it? What’s happened?” But if the detail is still a mystery to me, the awful truth it represents is all too plain to see – the evil, grinning Aussies; Lindwall looking very pleased with himself; Miller dancing a jig, and there, receding into the distance, to the distant pavilion, a wounded god.
Michael, I’ll give him his due, never says a word; probably for much the same reasons I kept silent at Hutton’s dismissal; it’s all too serious, there’s far too much at stake, to leave room for such petty rivalries. But for me, it’s deeply personal too, though hard to say how or why it should affect me the way it does. I barely applaud the incoming Watson, Yorkshireman though he is, talented though he is, for although I like him (and he’s made some good scores for Yorkshire in my County Championship, so far this season), he is of a lesser breed, sometimes a hero, but never an immortal. And he struggles, especially against Lindwall. Lunchtime is a relief that has been a long time in coming. England thirty-eight for three wickets, and only mortals left to try and quell the Australian onslaught. Lunchtime is nominal, for me, anyway. My appetite has left me.
“I think I’ll go for a walk round ... maybe get one or two of the team photographs.”
Michael nods. Barney says something I don’t hear.
There’s this idea that’s been clamouring to get itself heard all morning, but especially since Len Hutton was out. With Compton’s departure it has become utterly insistent. And it’s this. Somehow, in ways, and for reasons I do not understand, it is all my fault. I come to see Compton and Hutton play, and no one doubts that they are great, not just for these times but for all time, and both are out for ducks, both on their second ball, and both to Lindwall. If I hadn’t come, could that possibly have happened? All these coincidences. And it doesn’t stop there, does it? It has something to do with my Owzat test, where both failed, Compton for the same duck that that imposed on him in the real test match. It’s uncanny. I wanted to blame Michael and Barney, and well, all right, they both had a hand in it, but underneath it all, it’s my doing. After all, whose idea was it for us to come? Mine! Ok, the other two jumped at it, but in all probability, if I hadn’t thought of it they wouldn’t be here watching this tragedy unfold.
After lunch (and I don’t eat mine until we are on the train going home), it is much the same as before. Lindwall and Miller, seemingly inexhaustible. Runs prised out, like teeth. At tea time England have still only scored ninety-two, but at least no more wickets have fallen. A different episode begins, however, soon after tea, with the taking of the new ball. Four down, five down, six; we all agreed Simpson would fail (we don’t think he should even be in the side), but, to be fair, he was injured immediately he came to the wicket and had to leave the field at once. But not Bailey, stonewall Bailey, run out through a bit of Evans’s clowning.
Evans is really all that is left. Now for some real fireworks. But what is Hassett doing? Instead of sending his fielders out to the boundary he’s bringing them in close; ah well, let’s hope he’ll soon learn his folly. But it’s not to be. Far from scalping these arrogant Aussies, Evans is all uncharacteristic caution, especially after the Bailey fiasco. Then Laker, of all people, starts to swing the bat and you can see the Aussies backing away a bit, though only a bit, and ... well, we have to go. Michael has his trumpet practice this evening. Slowly we pack away our things, watch another ball, then another, edging gradually further away, and even at the gate running back as the crowd’s gasp sounds like the onset of a gale. Laker is out too.
The patches of sunlight have been all too few. Gloom soon took over from overcast, oppressing the day, compressing it, until it became hard even to breathe.

I never did manage to see Hutton and Compton again, not in what we all agree is real life. Of course, they both went on for a few years yet, still making their hundreds, whether in that real life or in that virtually real life of my own making – that which depended on the rolling of two small hexagonal bits of metal.
And suddenly, sixty years have gone by, at the batting of an eye, time that has spread like a stain. Of course, even in that match, Compton more than redeemed himself with a magnificent sixty-one in the second innings, and Hutton’s twenty-five was invaluable in building a score that the Australians just couldn’t overtake. And furthermore, after four drawn tests, England went on to win the final one at the Oval and thus regained the Ashes. Whoever would have predicted that on our gloomy day? So much for chance! So much for our gloomy day within the context of all those other more or less magnificent days. But that day was my only day and I lived it excruciatingly; all the others could just as easily have been a part of my Owzat!
I see us now as if it were yesterday. Haversacks, plastic macs, grease-proof packed lunches, hapless speculations, sinking steadily into glumness. And only I have the picture of that day, however imperfectly, imprinted in my mind. Michael is long gone; just a few short years after that day – chance, of course! – taking a corner a bit too fast near the Victoria Falls. Barney (Brian Bailey, really) also dead, not so very long ago. Of course, I had not thought of him, much less seen him in more than forty years.
For Hutton, Compton, Lindwall, Hassett, Laker, Evans and the rest, the brief poem is long over. They too have all departed for the far pavilions. Unbelievably, cricket itself has done much the same. And in its place an often graceless, often grotesque travesty. Impeccable, unimpeachable, even on that gloomiest of days, those giants we saw then have left behind them only vacant plots.


Doug Thompson

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1951-58

Current location (optional) Mid-Lancashire/ East Yorkshire

Great story Doug; evocative even for a cricket-hater like me. Even I knew those names: Graveney, Edrich, Laker, Bailey and of course Compton and Hutton; though their faces were less well known to me than those of the Aussies of a much greater sport: Hoad, Rosewall, Emerson and Laver. I felt what you must of gone through on that gloomy day. Luckily I do not remember being disappointed by a similar outing around the same time when my dad took me to Huddersfield to see them play Blackpool and marvel at the magic feet and gliding, feinting beauty of Matthews on the wing. The outcome didn't matter. I don't even remember it.

Years at KBGS e.g. 1958-1964 (optional) 1954-59

Current location (optional) United Kingdom