SPECTATOR SPORT
Clerics at the crease
Frank Keating
The BBC, if not the bookies, seem to rather fancy the transfer to Canterbury of the Bishop of Liverpool, that religious, leftie-evangelist and right-hand bat, David Sheppard. The broadcasters perhaps twig that cricketing in England is still pretty C of E on the whole. Well, I bet far more dog-collars dive for the county cricket scores of a morning than turn with relish to the inner-city Aids statistics. Or even the Sits. Vac. in the Church Times. It is still less than a brisk half-century ago that this appeared:
Old-fashioned vicar (Tractarian) seeks col- league, fine church; good musical tradition. Parish residential and farming. Good golf handicap an asset but not essential. Left- hand fast bowler preferred. Box HV521.
One prophecy which might yet make the bookmakers wince was heard one long-ago Saturday down by the Severn. Time and again Worcester's pally purveyor of leg- breaks, Roley Jenkins, had the young bat, Sheppard of Sussex, in a spin. But he survived, to such exasperation from Roley that he followed through down the pitch in that crablike chasse of his, to enquire, They say you're a cleric, son. Well, with Your ruddy luck you should end up Archbishop of Canterbury!'
When MCC's 'Bodyline' team were sail- ing for Australia on the Orontes in 1932,
the manager Pelham Warner asked a fel- low passenger, the Bishop of London, if it was permissible to pray for victory in the forthcoming series. The Bish said he'd sleep on it, and pray for guidance. At breakfast, he announced to Plum, 'Any- thing that conduces to the greater glory of England is a meet and fitting subject for prayer.' The current cricketing cleric with God on his side is that bright-spark Rev, Andrew Wingfield-Digby, three Blues for Oxford with his medium-fast floaters and latterly captain of Dorset in the Minor Counties league. Two summers ago, in a crucial game, Cheshire shut up shop at 92 for six with 11 overs left. They had been asked to get 201 to win, Wingers-Diggers told his bowler to fling down wides non- stop, and his wicket-keeper to let them all through for four byes. Wider still and wider — the one over, of 14 balls, resulted in 56 extras. Cheshire got the smell of victory again — had a go, but were dismissed for 182 in the penultimate over. Lord's popped a few apoplectic collar- studs; Wingers, trusting in his Lord, smiled unrepentant.
The Revd J. H. Parsons scored nearly twice as many runs — 16,000 — for Warwickshire than Sheppard did for Sus- sex. They say he was talked into taking orders by the Bishop of Coventry during the tea interval at Edgbaston one Saturday afternoon in 1929. He died, only a few years ago, a much loved Canon at Truro Cathedral. Only other batting Bish I come across is one of the Lyttelton family, the Rt. Revd A. T., who admitted on his enthronement, 'I can, I must confess, never enter the nave of any cathedral and not visualise the spin of a ball up the aisle.'
The late Ian Peebles, lovely man, and a better wine merchant, writer, and racon- teur than he was a demon leg-breaker for England (not to mention Scotland: he was a son of the manse himself), once told me of a Homeric battle at Lord's in the Thirties between Middlesex's thunderous bat, the Revd Tom Killick, and Hamp- shire's crafty cleric, the Revd J. Steele, Killick got his trenchant 50 before Steele castled him with flight. Ian was next man in. As he passed Killick at the wicket gate, he enquired about the bowling. Replied the Rev, 'Good ol' traditional C of E: just straight up and down and no nonsense.'
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