SPECTATOR SPORT
All hail and farewell
Frank Keating
WHERE HAS all the chivalry gone? Why didn't Allan Border get a formal three cheers from the England team when he made his final entrance on Monday at The Oval? Heaven knows, the gingery, freckled, combative cock-robin of an Australian cricket captain cannot have done more to deserve one — for no man in cricket's ancient history has played in more Test matches (147), scored more runs (10,678) taken more catches (149), nor captained his country more often (84). A quartet of uniqueness.
On the very same summer field 63 Augusts ago, Jack Hobbs stood shyly at the crease as the Aussie captain, Bill Woodfull, summoned his men to doff their baggy caps for hip-hip-hoorays in triplicate before the old Surrey master began his last Test innings. And what schoolboy of a certain generation (i.e. mine) still cannot recite this by heart? In a soupy, mellow Hampshire burr, of course:
Here's Hollies then, from the Vauxhall end . .. and Bradman goes back across his wicket and pushes the ball in the direction of the Houses of Parliament, which are out beyond mid-off. It doesn't go that far, it merely goes to Watkins at silly mid-off. No run, still 117 for one. Two slips, a silly mid- off, and a forward short-leg, close to him. .. as Hollies pitches the ball up ... and he's lwled!... Bradman bowled Hollies nought ... Well, what do you say in such circum- stances? I wonder if you see a ball very clear- ly in your last Test in England ... and the opposing team has just stood around and given you three cheers ... I wonder if you really see the ball at all?
John Arlott's lyrical immediacy sealed the legend that Bradman's last Test duck was caused by sentimental tears in the great batsman's eyes — and many years later I mentioned this to the England fieldsman at first slip that day in 1948, doughty Jack Crapp of Gloucester. 'Tears? That bugger Bradman never had a tear in his eye in all his life,' said Jack.
When Frank Woolley and Patsy Hendren took their final bow, the opposing captains also mustered the game's gratitude with three cheers. When Vivian Richards, again at The Oval, played his last Test match two years ago, it was not the England team but the Kennington throng which did the hon- ours, acclaiming him thunderously when he was out for 60 — and, halfway back to the pavilion, Richards stopped, palpably touched, turned to each three sides of the arena where the general populace were applauding, doffed his cap thrice and waved his bat like a battle standard. Then the smouldering patrician proceeded on through the club ties and fat-cat 'hospi- tality' merchants in the pay with no smidgin of acknowledgement. Pointed stuff.
The hooraying approbation of Wood- full's Australians for Hobbs at The Oval in 1930 was a delightful first for the custom. It is a shame that the modern Test cricketer is too (the 'in' word) 'focused' to bother any more with such happy and comradely ges- tures. The cynical will say, too, that hip-hip- hooray for Border at his entrance on Mon- day might have enabled England to get the obdurate little cuss out even earlier. For, like Bradman, so like Hobbs, who scratched around for a paltry nine that day before Fairfax bowled him. In Hobbs's 1960 biog- raphy of still stylish and charming vintage, Ronald Mason wrote:
You could hear the cavernous gasp as the balls fell ... as for just that second longer than usual Hobbs stood motionless, looking at the broken wicket. If it had been 0 now, as Bradman's last innings was, there had been some perverse distinction in the failure; but 9 was neither here nor there. The foundations were kicked away from the excitement, the evening dusk gathered above the players ... and the crowd sloped home in sadness, feeling for their hero.
Meanwhile, to Border — all hail, and farewell.
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