Gubby Under Pressure

had been taken by E.G.Borwick and A.L.Christie. Allen made no objection to Borwick as umpire in the Test series, therefore the offender must have been Christie who was never heard of again during the tour. Why, where and when had Barlow made himself so objectionable? The ‘where and when’ could only have been in the fourth game of the tour in Melbourne, when MCC met Victoria and Barlow had shared umpiring duties with Christopher Dwyer. Allen wrote nothing in his letters to suggest that there had been any problems with umpiring decisions in Melbourne in 1936 and a quick check back to the 1932/33 tour confirms that the three matches in which Barlow was involved back then were not those in which Allen had grumbled that Australian umpires ‘fairly beat the band’ when it came to biased decisions against tourist elevens. So there is no clear reason why Allen should have been so vehement in his rejection of Barlow. The mystery is further complicated by the recollections of P.G.Wodehouse recorded in Murray Hedgcock’s Wodehouse At The Wicket . After the 1936/37 tour ended, Allen spent nearly three weeks on holiday in Hollywood, some of the time in the company of the famous author, who was under contract to MGM Studios as a scriptwriter, and who later wrote to a friend with a somewhat garbled account of the Barlow affair. Wodehouse claims that Allen had told him Barlow had cheated so badly in the New South Wales match that Allen was determined ‘he would never play with him again.’ It seems that Allen must have complained about the outrageous umpiring decisions in the New South Wales match as well as giving his objections to Barlow, and Wodehouse had mistakenly linked them together. Wodehouse then continued with what he claimed was Allen’s account of one of several attempts by the Australian officials to ‘slip something over on the English captain’ recalling that when the names of the umpires for the First Test were submitted for approval they included someone called Bartlett. Wodehouse says that Allen told the officials, ‘Bartlett? I’ve never heard of him. You don’t by any chance mean that fellow Barlow, do you?’ and back came the reply, ‘Yes, Barlow, of course’ with the excuse, ‘Isn’t it amazing how one gets names mixed up?’ None of this version of the Bartlett-Barlow mix-up found its way into Allen’s letters, the reason being that Allen was well aware of the credentials of John Bartlett as an umpire, as he was officiating in the MCC match against Queensland at the time Allen was writing his letter recording his rejection of Barlow! And Bartlett had also stood as umpire in the corresponding match four years earlier. It is possible the name of Bartlett had been put forward for the Test and Allen had rejected him first before they had come back with the name of Barlow. Whatever the circumstances, the amusing but inaccurate story told by Wodehouse takes us no nearer to discovering the reasons for Allen’s determination to exclude Barlow from the Tests. It is interesting to note that during Allen’s extended period away from the team in February, while Robins andWyatt were left in charge, there was no objection to Barlow as umpire in the second match with Victoria. First Test and first blood to England 10 At Brisbane [Woolloongabba]: 4, 5, 7, 8 and 9 December, 1936. First Test Match. ¹ England 358 [C.J.Barnett 69, M.Leyland 126, W.J.O’Reilly 5-102] The cricket 42