Famous Cricekters No 53 - George Geary

Recollections of George Geary by Philip Snow Some personal recollections may contribute to interest in the personality of George Geary outside his distinguished feats for country and county. I first saw him in 1925: this was on the Aylestone Road ground, Leicester, the heavily marled wickets of which he would lament while having so frequently to bowl on them up to the end of the 1930’s. And I last saw him as a player when he was acting captain of Leicestershire v Somerset in 1938 and I was, by invitation of Ewart Astill, 12th man in that match (fielding under Geary’s direction, as substitute for Haydon Smith who retired ill early in Somerset’s first innings, through most of that innings), a fortnight before sailing to my appointment to Fiji as an Administrator. Throughout the period 1925 to 1938 Geary always wore the England tourists’ blazer with its pipings of MCC red and gold, but when in the field he wore the England home cap with three lions and a crown. What was most distinctive, however, was his wearing it while bowling. So far as I recall - and I saw all the first class teams in England during those thirteen years - there were only about half a dozen others who bowled in a cap, including Rhodes, Roy Kilner, Alan Shipman, Newman, and Bob Wyatt. Geary had been nearly bald from an early age: touring South Africa in 1924 when just over 30 years old, he was always photographed off the field wearing a trilby. I saw Geary in his remarkable last season scoring three hundreds in the county championship - as many as in his whole career in the competition before that season. What I most vividly remember about the occasions were the clouds of orange dust puffing up from the marl inside the crease as he brought his bat down vigorously to trap yorkers. He was in splendid straight driving touch. It was as though he was showing that it was easier and more enjoyable to bat than bowl on Aylestone Road’s wickets. In 1931 I had been invited to the Indoor School in the Refreshment Room at Aylestone Road. This was run by Geary wearing his cap. His eyes were rich brown, his demeanour dignified, his tall figure spare, his long and strong face deep brown, even in mid winter, although he did coach out of season in Argentina and South Africa. He surprised me by offering me professional terms (I think mostly as a googly bowler) but readily understood that I was aiming for a more secure career that might follow from my going from the Leicester grammar school to Cambridge. “If I’d had the chance of Varsity” (he always used that word) “I know that’s what I’d have gone for”, he said. It was at this time that he struck me, as I watched his quiet directions and unremitting observing of the couple of nets, that he had a positive flair for coaching - quietly authoritative, shrewdly perceptive. This became national knowledge when shortly after the War he was associated with Peter May’s emergence at Charterhouse as the pre-eminent schoolboy batsman in the country. May recorded that Geary “was an advisor and guide rather than a coach”, and when he asked me as Fiji’s representative on the International Cricket Conference to sit next to him at lunch during his chairmanship he made the same judgement when he talked of Geary, for whom he had the warmest admiration. When I knew Geary better some years after the War he told me: “May is the best young ‘un I ever saw in the nets or in the middle, and I’ve seen a good many lads all over the world in my time since the First War...”. Geary made no claims for discovering May, merely contributing to some smoothing out of a near perfect assembly and mastery of natural gifts. During my Bursarship at Rugby on return from Fiji (where I had acquired first-class experience as captain of the Fiji team touring New Zealand in 1948), the post of coach became vacant and, remembering Geary’s outstanding gifts, I was able to persuade him to take up the appointment for which he could drive from Leicester, although he had, as he thought, retired finally when he left Charterhouse. From then until his death, I came to know him well. Still wearing his England cap and 4