The Summer Field

64 Private Life bare benches one figure wrapped in a cloak and wearing an Edwardian hat sat through the whole of a long afternoon. It was Lord Harris. The unnamed captain – who must have been Jack Bryan - earlier that year had ‘expressed distinctly Bolshevistic sentiments towards old men in general and his lordship in particular’; yet now he was so worried ‘that he left the field in person to take rugs around for Lord Harris’ legs’. A Kent captain had to ring Harris every evening of a match, to report. According to Crawley, Lord Harris’ enthusiasm for cricket was ‘entirely selfless’; had that won over the captain? Or was Bryan doing whatever it took to stay in his job? And these were men of the same educated, comfortable class. Once you rose through the ranks, and encountered men unlike you, you had to keep your thoughts about them to yourself. Take a passing yet revealing remark by John Dewes, who as an 18-year-old opened the England batting with Len Hutton at Lord’s in 1945, as featured in my book The Victory Tests . ‘Len ’utton,’ Dewes said. It only took two words for Dewes, the Cambridge University graduate who became a private school teacher, to make his point that Hutton was different, a Yorkshireman who did not pronounce aitches (and who by the way was a Freemason from 1942). I did not ask Dewes what he meant; any more was private. What between men was private became secret when a team or club showed a front to the outside world. Naturally men did not want to admit failings, the same as any business kept to itself why workers left suddenly, or fell in rank. Secrecy was even more of a reflex among cricketers when it came to wrongdoing. Was it for fear of the accused making a scene? Or did even a thrower – typically fast bowlers bending their arm – as a member of the dressing room have the right to keep a good name? In his 1895 interview in The Strand Magazine , W.G.Grace spoke of some very fast, suspect, bowlers (‘I need mention no names’): The only remedy I can suggest would be for a dozen umpires and a similar number of captains of the best county teams to meet together. The names of all the bowlers who were suspected of throwing should be placed on a slip of paper. Then they would be marked, as by ballot … … and any man judged by more than two-thirds to throw, would never be allowed to bowl again. What sort of justice was that – to be denied your pleasure, or livelihood, without the right to make your case or hear your accusers? Without a right of appeal, or possibility of forgiveness? And who decided which were the ‘best’ teams (because presumably your own captain would defend you)?! A thrower could claim he was only guilty of trying too hard, not an excuse you could offer for match-fixing. The first, May 1882, issue of Cricket: A Weekly Record of the Game reported that Australians bet huge sums on matches, ‘as used to be the case in England 60 years ago’. Whether the magazine was ignorant, sparing older readers, or deceiving younger ones, in truth men had bet openly at Lord’s and village grounds alike at least until around 1860, judging by newspaper reports of the changing