SPECTATOR SPORT
Fighting talk
Frank Keating
ALTHOUGH the selectors will doubtless have totally opposing views when they announce the official list next week, I reck- on there are ten dead certs for England's tour of the Caribbean this winter: Ather- ton, H. Morris, Stewart, Smith, Thorp, Hussain, Russell, Fraser, Malcolm and Watkin.
This leaves a brace of batting places to be fought over by Hick, Maynard, Gower, Lamb, Lathwell, Wells and Ramprakash; and three bowling vacancies from Bicknell, McCague, Taylor, Igglesden, Salisbury, Such and Tuffnell.
I fancy the committee will go for Hick, Lamb, Bicknell, Igglesden and Such. My quintet would be Maynard, Ramprakash, McCague, Taylor and Salisbury. What a corking side of fieldsmen you could pick from my lot, for starters. Youth would be given its fling. Maynard needs just one unfretful knock in England colours to go on to charm the world. The rest of the bats- men are all genuine fighters — with strokes. At last the bowling attack would not be blinkered by sameness — Malcolm and McCague to answer the home side's inevitable chin-music with snorting tunes of their own, Fraser and Watkin as mean sec- ond fiddlers, and Taylor and Salisbury pro- viding variety and different angles when called upon.
`The new broom starts here,' said Ather- ton when he took the job. Well, let it.
Gower and Gooch will go as broadcast- ers, and — why not? — must be co-opted occasionally into official net practice ses- sions in case of injuries. These come in abundance on tours to the West Indies. Ditto, say, Mark Nicholas and Derek Pringle if they go as journalists.
Of course, if Gower was picked next week 'in his own right', so to say, it would be dramatically splendid news all round. The selectorial mea culpas would be so humiliating that they just would not dare, more's the pity. The ageism excuse they put out about Gower before last winter's tour remains more criminal than even cynical especially in contemplation of a tour to the West Indies, where in 1947 Lord's sent as captain of England its favourite son, Gubby Allen, who was in his skippety second child- hood at the ripe old age of 45.
`Skip' is the operative word. That team of Allen's crossed the Atlantic in an empty
banana boat, the Tetela, and for nine days out of Plymouth it was tossed about like a cork in fearful seas, the whole company consigned to their bunks and brown paper bags.
On the tenth day, the weather changed to blue skies and a millpond sea. Allen ordered PT on deck, called for a skipping- rope — and promptly and badly tore the first muscle of the tour.
The rest of the team, on reaching the islands, went down as regularly as skittles through the rest of a woebegone trip — so much so that when they hobbled into British Guiana with seven fully fit men, both Crawford White of the Daily Express and E.W. Swanton of the Daily Telegraph were told to be ready to play. In the event, Allen raised a side — so the only time I can discover when a reporter came to the aid of his country on a cricket field remains a summer's day at Cardiff in 1935.
On the South African tour of that year, Louis Duffus was reporting for the Cape Angus. The non-playing tourists against Glamorgan had strolled into the city and not left a 12th man. Second slip injured a finger and went off for treatment. The Springbok captain, Wade, signalled Louis from the press-box to stand in for a couple of overs, during which time, Louis took two blinding catches — and then sauntered back to his inkwell.
Previous page
