Kiwi fruits
FRANK KEATING
Ha rd to believe, but soccer is not the only game. Far away in the southern midwinter chill it is fierce knuckle on knuckle as England's rugby world champions take on New Zealand, while up here at home the All Blacks' cricketing confreres, having lost the Test series, seek heartier form and, certainly, fitness for the one-dayers which begin at Manchester this week. It will be an anniversary outing for me. The Old Trafford stewards are a belligerent bunch of bouncers these days, so no remote chance of lolling with sandwiches and pop on the sunburned grass alongside the Warwick Road sightscreen. for olde tyme's sake, for that's what I did at the first Test match I ever saw: England v. New Zealand, when I was 11 in 1949.
This year marks an even more gilded, personal jubilee, for it is a precise half-century since, five years later, I saw my first rugby international and, by fluke, again it was New Zealand — England 0, All Blacks 5 — at Twickenham in 1954. It stopped snowing just before kick-off. The palpitating collision remains red-hot in the memory. The cricket at Manchester stirs a softer, more slippered reverie — awestruck bliss with time for a boy to gaze on monarchs. Hutton and Washbrook had a first-up century stand: the former was pallid, more frail than I'd expected; he unrolled one cover-drive of breathtaking beauty; Washbrook hooked, and we hurrahed, and then he hooked again. Edrich (78) and Compton (25) seemed never to stop smiling with and at each other as they 'gardened' between overs. The two captains, F.R. Brown and (father of Sir Richard) W.A. Hadlee, had gone out to inspect the pitch, each puffing on two great curly Peterson pipes on full St Bruno billow. Not only my first Test match, it was a debutant's curtsey also for two all-time greats, Kiwi John Reid, just 21, and Brian Close, at 18 years and 149 days still the youngest to play for England. When he signed my scorecard at teatime behind the pavilion Close asked me to hold his smoking Woodbine. Brian is cootbald now and 73; then his greased-down, combed-back hair had a worked-on Frank Sinatra quiff-wave as its front rim. He will for ever be one of my very favourite cricketers.
With Close and Reid, only six remain of that 22— of the England XIonly Reg Simpson, 84,
Les Jackson, 83, and Trevor Bailey, 80, are still at the crease. Heaven knows (literally) how many of the 30 survive who played that schoolboy's spellbinder at Twickenham in 1954. I shall think of them all early this Saturday as I watch on Sky TV the intimidating thud and blunder from Auckland. A half-century ago The Spectator's sportswriter was J.P.W. Mallalieu, the Labour MP they called 'Curly'. He said the All Blacks had won 'because they had what no other football side in history has ever had — a full-back like Bob Scott'. Fifty years on, Curly's decree holds good and I can't think that even the lustrous litany of Irvine, JPR, Blanco, Joubert or Cullen were better.
Two or three decades ago, touring with the British Lions, at one of those interminable AMF's (after-match functions) so beloved by Kiwis, I fell into conversation with a gently shy, soft-eyed, stooping pensioner who said he'd run a couple of gents' outfitting shops. He wore a crumpled All Black blazer which hung off his shoulders like a rope-slackened tent. It seemed he'd been at Twickenham that day in 1954. 'What as,' I asked, full of myself, patronising, 'tour baggage man, or trainer?' No, he'd been playing that day. 'You?' I challenged, surprised. 'What's your name, then?' The name's Scott,' said the old man, 'Bob Scott.'
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