Famous Cricketers No 66 - Wilfred Rhodes

Introduction by Derek Hodgson Eighty years ago, which is very roughly, half the age of first-class cricket, Neville Cardus was unequivocal on one point : “[Rhodes] is the greatest of slow bowlers on all wickets”. At that time (1920) he would have seen some of the ‘giants’ of the Golden age, including not only Rhodes but Briggs and Blythe, but as a school-boy, I am unsure whether he had been able to make comparisons with the South African googly bowlers and Australia’s Arthur Mailey. Cardus had then been three years with the Manchester Guardian and had seen and absorbed enough cricket to make such a pronouncement with some confidence. Wilfred had been playing since 1898 and had yet more glory to come. His prowess on English turf, whether wet, drying, baked hard or crumbling, was renowned. He had made this claim to world status in Australia in 1903/04 when his mastery of flight and length, bowling on bone-hard pitches in stifling heat, to the likes of Trumper, Duff and Noble, was more of a legend than a memory. Australian crowds, it is reported, would sing out as he strolled up to deliver “Dum…dum…de-dum” over after over. Rhodes was, in the vernacular, the archetypal Yorkshireman. During his playing days he was taciturn, he conserved his cash and his breath and there are not too many photographs, in contrast to his great partner George Herbert Hirst, of his smile. There are stories to treasure. In his later years it was alleged, by some iconoclast, that his power of spin had faded and that he won his wickets on reputation. Wilfred’s reply was succinct. “If they think it’s turning – it’s turning”. In the 1920s, when Yorkshire were officially captained by a series of well-meaning amateurs, mostly good club batsmen, the team was in fact directed by Wilfred and Emmott Robinson. On one occasion the captain, on the second morning, was about to put on his pads to go into bat at number seven, when Emmott interrupted him. “I wouldn’t bother Major, if I were thee. Wilfred’s set on declaring after the next over”. Then there was the occasion, between overs in a tense, heated match between one of the great rivals, probably Lancashire, when Yorkshire’s captain was advised to post himself at long-off. Puzzled, he departed, to be told later “Wilfred didn’t think it were right that tha should have to listen to all that strong language”. Wilfred Rhodes was born at Moor Top, Kirkheaton, near Huddersfield, on 29th October 1877, the son of Alfred Rhodes, a miner, and Elizabeth Holliday. On leaving school at Hopton, he obtained a job in the engine sheds at Mirfield Station, his boyhood enclosing many hours of bowling against the door of a local barn, one side of the ball painted white so he could measure the amount of spin. He followed George Hirst into the Kirkheaton team, for whom he played on Saturday afternoons after finishing work at 2 p.m., which often meant that he had to run to the ground in order to be there for the start. Then he rang the knocking off bell 30 minutes early on one of those afternoons and his railway career ended abruptly. By then it was clear that he was an outstanding cricketer and he sought to make his living from the game, first being employed as a professional at the Galashiels club. In the years 1896/97 he took 169 wickets at an average of less than eight. The president of Scotland’s leading club. The Grange, advised Wilfred to return to England to further his career, advice that has never deterred the Scots from claiming they taught Wilfred all he knew. Warwickshire might have recruited Rhodes firstly, the way into Yorkshire’s first team being blocked by Bobby Peel but he returned home where the Yorkshire club had decided to allocate the young left-arm spinner to Sheffield United. After Peel had been sacked Rhodes and a Bradford spinner, 4