Ninety not out
FRANK KEATING
Anotable week for brand-new nonagenarians. The last firework had scarcely fizzled to earth at the Olympics. closing ceremony on Sunday when, nicely, it was Monday morning and Sydney Wooderson's 90th birthday. For Brits of a certain generation, Wooderson remains a legend in his own lap-times. He inspired the 16-year-old stripling Roger Bannister to have a go. The starting guns at Mons had just set off the first world war when Wooderson was born in London on 30 August 1914. Eight days later Norman Mitchell-tones, England's oldest surviving Test cricketer and president of the one-cap wonders, was born in Calcutta. Compared to today's loony tunes and tantrums, the worldclass sport both birthday boys enjoyed might as well have been played on another planet.
Although he remains fabled in the lore, the Olympics passed Wooderson by. He was an unlikely athletics hero — just 5ft Sins in his socks, a reed-thin scrawn in pebble-lens spectacles, he was a solicitor and weekdays' commuter on the 7.37 from Surbiton to Waterloo in a bowler hat. But put him in a pair of baggy shorts on a Saturday and he was a Reggie Perrin on speed. The Daily Express called him the city and suburban cyclone'. At 20, Sydney ran four mins 13.4 secs for the mile and beat the upcoming Olympics champion Jack Lovelock. A cracked ankle bone put paid to Woodersoris own chance in those epic 1936 Berlin Olympics, but the skinny little gallant told me at his Perranporth home on his 75th birthday that no one would have beaten Lovelock that day. .Jack was a terrific runner. But an odd fellow. Shy and unapproachable. Just like me, I suppose: At 34, Wooderson was too old for the next Olympics in 1948, although to prove a point that year he did win the English cross-country title. He held the world mile record (4;06:4) for five years from 1947 and was European champion at 1,500 metres in 1938 and at 5,000 metres in 1946. All for fun — I did win a canteen of cutlery once in the Rangers sports in Glasgow. And after a race in Birmingham I found 12 £1 notes in my bag when I got home. Yes, of course I sent it back to them immediately by registered post.'
'Mandy,' Mitchell-Innes was an amateur of more flamboyant hue gaudy club caps and colourfully condescending carves through the covers. He was up at Brasenose in May 1935 when Lord's eminence 'PlumWarner saw him clock the touring South Africans all over the Parks for 168. so by June he was in at No. 4 for England at Trent Bridge, batting between Hammond and Leyland. He was lbw for five, and before the second Test at Lord's he telephoned Warner to say Sorry ol' boy, the hay fever was playing up. So his best Oxford buddy (another Calcutta-born scion of the Raj) Errol Holmes replaced him. As it was, Mandy stayed at Holmes's London flat; Holmes took a taxi north and made a measly ten and eight for England and Mitchell-Innes took the Tube south to the Oval and, between sneezes, scored a glistening 132 for Somerset against Surrey. After which a wellspent career in the Sudan Political Service doubtless cured the hay fever, and between sending back diplomatic boxes and quelling tribal unrest he managed some eccentric net practice in the broiling heat of Khartoum in preparation for long leaves in his beloved Somerset. For my money, new nonagenarian Mandy remains the most wondrous of all England cricket's one-cap wonders.
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