The Summer Field

110 Ironically, while MCC was claiming there was only one way to coach, some of the most successful players ever – Hobbs, Hammond, Tich Freeman – claimed another way: they never had a day’s coaching in their lives. That was the simple truth. As they had come from humble backgrounds, no- one had seen anything special in them, or rather, no-one had even looked. That did not matter because, as Patsy Hendren put it in his 1934 memoir Big Cricket , ‘the best players are born, not coached’. This posed a deep threat to coaching, even if (like Hobbs) some leading cricketers put their name to ‘how to play’ textbooks. Some distrusted coaches, alleging that ignorant teachers – as in art or music – wanted to iron out genius, or anything abnormal. In obituaries in 1937, the 1890s Derbyshire captain Sir Herbert Evershed was remembered for his stance, ‘one of the most peculiar we ever saw’, according to the Burton Chronicle , ‘but could not he hit on occasion?’. In 1926, the Ashbourne columnist Plaindealer recalled Evershed putting ‘his left leg right across the wicket and placing his bat down to the ground somewhere near his right heel’. A professional in Evershed’s native Burton-on-Trent was once told to instruct all batsmen in the nets. ‘Take your leg back, sir,’ the pro’ said on seeing Evershed’s ‘incorrect position’. ‘You want to hit ‘em sir. You must lay on to ‘em, sir,’ the pro’ urged. A clubman asked the pro’ if he knew who was batting. ‘No, I don’t,’ the professional replied, ‘but I think I shall make a batsman of him.’ Plaindealer implied that the pro’ made a fool of himself by not realising Sir Herbert had no need of his coaching. The pro’ did have a point; Evershed might have done better, if he took a more balanced stance. Or, even if a change made sense, Sir Herbert might have become so set in his ways, change might have been for the worse. Some of long-standing, such as Les Berry in Leicestershire’s 1951 annual, maintained that only through coaching could you make the most of raw material. In a letter in The Times in April 1978, the former England captain Ted Dexter claimed that the ‘higher education’ among batsmen, such things as courage, and ‘know-how’, ‘which used to be handed down man to man’, had gone because Kerry Packer had signed ‘almost an entire generation of English batsmen’ for his Australian summer matches. (Note here one more example of English cricket’s habitual bias towards batting.) Dexter suggested ‘a short end of season course at which the cream of the country’s young cricketing talent would be subjected to instruction and counsel by the best cricketing brains coupled with an award scheme for the season’s best performance, based on technique, skill etc rather than sudden flashes in the pan.’ Dexter – who also modishly suggested business sponsorship - was arguably ahead of his time, as England have since run A-tours, and gathered players at Loughborough University. For every self-made man, others long treasured a life-changing word. The Gloucestershire bowler Charlie Parker recalled that as a young man in the early 1900s he played W.G.Grace’s London County: After the game I received a message. ‘The doctor wants to see you.’ Need I say I trembled slightly as I went into the presence of WG. You know of course that he was supposed to be a fearsome sort of person. Coaching