Gubby Under Pressure

The 1928/29 series was a personal triumph for England’s captain Percy Chapman who led the team to a magnificent 4-1 win. It would have taken a very great batsman indeed to shine in the company of Hobbs, Sutcliffe, Hammond, Hendren and Jardine who were all in magnificent form while England were rattling up an average of over 400 runs per innings. In that company, any contribution from Chapman batting fourth or fifth wicket down was usually irrelevant when there was already nearly 300 runs on the board. He must, however, have hoped for more than 165 runs from 7 innings with only one half-century. On the tour as a whole he scored 533 runs at an average of 33·31 and displayed his usual brilliant close fielding abilities with 23 catches, eight of them in Test matches. In the tense, ‘bodyline’ series of 1932/33 Allen would have observed at first hand his captain, Douglas Jardine, struggling to find form with the bat while under pressure to succeed as one of England’s premier batsmen. If Jardine’s excellent record in the 1928/29 tour under the captaincy of Chapman, on which Jardine scored 1,168 runs including six centuries at an average of 64·88, is compared to his poor record four years later as captain, 698 runs at an average of 36·74 with only one century, it suggests that the demands of leadership had taken their toll. But those demands were all created by events on the field of play and not by being forced to make an excessive number of speeches and personal appearances at social functions, most of which Jardine delegated to his willing manager Plum Warner, and about which, other than offering a frosty politeness, he cared very little, unlike Allen, who took them very seriously indeed. It could be argued that, during the Australian period of his 1935/36 tour, the form of Errol Holmes suffered from the special demands that were being made upon him to re-establish good relationships between English and Australian cricket, both on and off the field. He scored only 239 runs with an average of 26·55, while Hardstaff, Langridge, Human, Parks, Smith and Barber all did better. But like Chapman before him, he was usually going to the wicket when there were plenty of runs on the board and less requirement to make a significant contribution of his own. There seems little evidence, therefore, that Allen’s four predecessors had actually been the complete failures with bat and ball, as he had so vehemently suggested. Such an assessment may also have come as somewhat of a surprise to Gilligan, Chapman, Jardine and Holmes, if they had been asked. Nor is there any record that any one of them had complained about excessive demands upon their time to represent MCC or English cricket at social events, while on tour in Australia or anywhere else. Nevertheless, MCC attempted to placate Allen even before he presented his official report and secretary Rait-Kerr wrote to him from Lord’s on 8 May, assuring him that the Committee ‘appreciate that, in addition to the duties of captain in the field, you have had to carry a very heavy burden in connection with social duties, and they are full of admiration of the way in which these were carried out.’ Not surprisingly, this letter is prominently displayed in Allen’s bulging scrapbooks of his 1936/37 tour. The assessment 65