Famous Cricketers No 68 - Fred Tate

From Gillingham he moved nearer London as coach to Woolwich Academy and then in 1909 crossed the river to the Gas Light and Coke Company at Beckton where he also worked in the offices during the winter and son Maurice was briefly apprenticed as a fitter. A further move took him to Highgate School, by which time Maurice was on the ground staff at Hove. During the War while Maurice was in the Army Fred coached at Haileybury. With his ability to bowl accurately for long spells, a talent for spotting a batsman’s faults honed through long hot hours bowling on the Hove wicket and blessed with an equable temperament, Fred was in many ways an ideal coach. His most important assignment came in 1922 when he was appointed coach to Derbyshire. Here he stayed for three years and helped to lay the foundations for a Derbyshire revival which culminated in their finishing Champions in 1936. Perhaps his most important contribution was the discovery of Stan Worthington, spotted playing for Bolsover Colliery in the Bassetlaw and District League. One of the great names in Derbyshire cricket between the wars, Worthington scored 17,000 runs and took 624 wickets for the county. He was capped nine times for England. While at Derby Tate found time to help out as a net bowler at nearby Repton where his old Essex opponent Charlie McGahey was coach. In 1925 Fred was on the move again, this time to coach at Trent College and subsequently to become licensee of the Robin Hood Inn, Derby where what Mrs Tate called his “Tale of the Test Match”, no doubt suitably embellished, was a great favourite with the regulars. More than a little suprisingly, Fred is on record as considering Maclaren the finest captain he ever played under. Tate only played under him once and from this distance Maclaren does not seem to have been at his best. On retirement, Fred returned to live near his famous son in Sussex where his cheerful manner and comfortable build made him an archetypal grandfather. Although Maurice maintained that his father never actually coached him, the son spent much of his boyhood on cricket grounds and among cricketers and, consciously or unconsciously, there must surely have been a great deal of paternal influence. In 1920 the two bowled together in a charity match in Lewes and reputedly the two actions were identical. This was of course before Maurice switched to the faster method which brought him fame. To the end Fred remained immensely proud of his first born. A third generation of Tate’s almost played first-class cricket. Maurice junior (known as Jimmy) had a one-year trial with Sussex without breaking into the first team and his brother Michael had trials with several counties including neighbouring Kent. Fred Tate died, much loved and respected at his home 323, Oak View Drive, Burgess Hill on February 24 1943, aged 75. The cause of death is shown as cerebral thrombosis, cerebral arterio-sclerosis and old age. The fatherless, former workhouse boy left behind him such a record of solid achievement both as a cricketer and as a man that it is high time the events of Old Trafford were seen in their true perspective. Many Test matches have been lost through fielding lapses - Leeds in 1948 for example - without any stigma attaching to the reputations of those responsible. Dropped catches were more common in 1902 than they are one hundred years later and Fred’s lapse was really nothing more than a minor hiccup in the career of a very fine cricketer. 48