Gubby Under Pressure

Chapter One The story of the Gubby Allen letters When Gubby Allen wrote letters home during MCC’s tour of Australia and New Zealand in 1932/33, he was enjoying his first return visit to Australia since leaving that country some 24 years earlier, at the tender age of six. Naturally he was eager to relate all the details of his journey back to his parents, who had fond memories of their own lives there, and still had numerous relatives and friends living in Australia whose health and progress was important news to them. The fact that he was writing those letters while playing a major role in what many consider the most dramatic cricket tour in history, gave them added importance and made them an invaluable source of inside information for anyone attempting to understand the controversial events during what has become known as the ‘bodyline’ tour. When Allen, now 34, was chosen as captain for the next MCC and England tour of Australia and New Zealand, in the winter of 1936/37, he remained unmarried and once again wrote regular letters back to his parents. The letters were filled with updated information on relatives and friends, as well as his views on all the action on and off the cricket fields during another Ashes Test match series. In particular they revealed the pressures that can be experienced by a captain on such a tour, and how Allen dealt, and failed to deal, with them. Letters from both tours were carefully preserved, the contents unknown to the rest of the world for more than forty years. Then Allen’s friend, the influential writer and broadcaster, E.W.Swanton, was allowed limited access and included a few quotes when writing on the subject of ‘bodyline’ in the 1970s, and several more in his biography of Allen published in 1985. Following Allen’s death in 1989, after a lifetime of service to the cause of cricket, for which he had been knighted in 1987, his estate was broken up and several items found their way into an auction of his effects in 1992. One such lot was the complete collection of his 1932/33 and 1936/37 tour letters. The letters were purchased for £10,000 by James Fairfax, chairman of Fairfax Newspapers, and presented by his sister to the State Library of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, the city of Allen’s birth. While researching the history of ‘bodyline’, I wrote to the State Library to enquire if the letters were available in full, in some printed form or other, and whether I could use further quotations from them. I was surprised to learn they had never been published and that to do so, it would be necessary to first ask the executors of the estate for permission to approach residuary beneficiaries and request their agreement. It took me more than a year to track down the people concerned, several of whom had changed addresses and even countries of residence, but permission and agreement was finally secured. Following arrival of copies on microfilm, I was able to make the first actual complete 5