Famous Cricketers No 82 - H.E. 'Tom' Dollery

plane just two weeks before getting his “wings”. This put an end to his flying career and he was transferred back into the Army as a Royal Artillery Gunner, but another severe accident to his shoulder occurred when he had to cling to a ladder to break his fall from a gun emplacement. This led to an operation that partially cured the problem, but his shoulder was never the same again, and he had to modify his style of batting after the war to compensate for the restricted movement. He spent the next four years in North Africa, Sicily and Italy, seeing plenty of action while manning Bofors and light Ack-ack guns. Oddly, for a man who distinguished himself for his leadership qualities in later life, he was never put up for promotion whilst serving in the Army and he remained Gunner Dollery throughout the war. One of the deprivations endured during the North Africa Campaign was the constant lack of water, he was only issued with a pint each day and that had to suffice for drinking, shaving and to top up his vehicle! Ray Hitchcock recalls that the skipper took a dim view of players leaving the field for a drink during play, and his expression, “They didn’t stop a war for a drink of water you know”, became one of his more common catch-phrases. Another, far more serious side effect was the malaria he picked up in Sicily. He never made a fuss about this but his wife recalls him having really bad bouts of the fever off and on for the rest of his life. With the war turning the Allies’ way, the War Office and MCC came up with the happy idea of arranging a two-day match at Lord’s as a curtain raiser to the England v. Dominions match in August 1945. The match was an excuse to fly home a team of county cricketers who had spent several years away fighting in the Mediterranean; by this time Tom hadn’t seen Jeanne for four years! All the “rankers” were promoted to Sergeant just for the duration of the trip, so he got promoted after all. A two-day warm up game was arranged on a hastily prepared matting pitch in Rome against Middle Eastern Forces before they left and he hit up 92 in a seventh wicket stand of 196 with Lieut. R.A.Henty. A fortunate side affect to this was that Tom Pritchard, a New Zealand fast bowler, was literally hauled aboard the plane just before take off when “Dusty” Rhodes of Derbyshire was suddenly taken ill. Dollery took Pritchard under his wing in London, helping him buy some kit and sharing his hotel room with him and Jeanne, (much to Jeanne’s chagrin). The match was styled as Central Mediterranean Forces v. A Lord’s X1 and took place on August 23rd and 24th. Dollery, badly out of practice on the turf pitch scored only six runs in each innings. Pritchard, however, took four cheap wickets in the Lord’s X1 first innings with some extremely quick bowling, and Dollery lost no time in getting Pritchard demobbed at the New Zealand High Commission, back up to Edgbaston and signed up for Warwickshire. And that’s howWarwickshire obtained the services of the fastest bowler in English cricket until the emergence of Trueman and Statham, even if Dollery had to go AWOL to do it and fly back to Italy in the gun turret of a Douglas Boston bomber! A few days after his return Jeanne was visited by the Military Police demanding to know where Gunner Dollery was! There’s a photo of the C.M.F. team at Lord’s in the 1946 Wisden , Tom Dollery standing in the back row looking extremely slim and sun-tanned. The years following hostilities saw the emergence of Dollery, now a mature man in his thirties, reach the peak of his profession as batsman and captain. He dedicated himself to the cause of Warwickshire, and although he gained a few England caps, he regarded his selection in these as rather embarrassing, his view being that younger players should have been given their chance; his had gone with the war. In the early years after the war he and his friend Eric Hollies virtually carried the side, but a team of “ordinary” cricketers were eventually gathered together good enough to carry off the Championship in 1951 with him as captain. This success led to the Birmingham public becoming interested in cricket again and it laid the foundation for Edgbaston to become a Test Match venue once more. His Test Match career might have had a late flourish if he could have accepted Freddie Brown’s offer of the Vice-captaincy to Australia in 1950-51, but he had committed himself to a coaching contract in New Zealand that winter, and Tom was not the man to go back on a promise once made. Whatever, his wife Jeanne recalls that winter as one of the happiest times of their lives, their three-year old son David went with them, they were housed overlooking a beautiful view of Evans Bay, and he was regarded as the best coach New Zealand had employed. The following winter the Kiwi authorities did their utmost to persuade him to go out again and continue the good work, but he had committed himself to other business ventures and wouldn’t go back on those. In the end the New Zealand authorities resorted to 8