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

Foreword by Jack Bannister Ask any Warwickshire member which club captain had forenames of Horace Edgar, and the answer would be a blank stare. But then ask them the only “Tom” in history who skippered the side and the light will dawn. Tom Dollery, as he was always known from when he first came to Edgbaston from his native Reading in the early Thirties, was a superb middle order batsman, a fine slip fielder, and as he showed when he became the first professional to be appointed as captain in 1949, possessed one of the shrewdest cricket brains of his time. No more unselfish cricketer ever wore the Bear and Ragged Staff – only 63 not outs in 679 innings and a curiously low ratio of hundreds per innings played (one every 14 innings) – but a final county average of 38 was only bettered by R.E.S. Wyatt before Tom’s retirement in 1955. Even now, fifteen years after Tom’s death, only three batsmen scored more than his aggregate of 23,457. Figures only tell part of the story of a man to whom cricket was a game to be taken seriously, but never obsessively so. He was a born leader, possessing the sort of man management skills that recognised the need to treat different members of his side in varied fashion. I only played about sixty first team games before he retired, but have so much to thank him for in terms of learning how to play thinking cricket. He nursed me and made sure I rarely got the rough end of a game in terms of bowling to destructive batsmen for too long. The modern game gives a captain no such luxury, which may explain why youngsters come and go so quickly, instead of benefiting from a proper apprenticeship. Even so, I watched senior players occasionally puzzled by his tactics, because he was always ahead of the game regarding that most difficult of captaincy arts – the reading of a pitch. Uncovered pitches throughout his career made this fiendishly difficult, but he had the knack of being able to spot when a rain affected surface would be at its most difficult. That said, his most inspired declaration was on a dry pitch against Lindsay Hassett’s Australian side in 1953. In a low scoring match, Tom spotted that the pitch was about to dust and would suit Eric Hollies perfectly, so he unexpectedly declared, leaving the Aussies to score 166 in 170 minutes. Eric thought Tom had thrown the game away, but an incredible scoreline of 53 runs for five wickets in 59 overs showed he was right. Hassett knew his side was in trouble when early wickets fell to Eric and Bert Wolton, and he shut up shop with an unbeaten 21 in well over two hours. A crowd of 22,000 barracked Hassett unmercifully, and Eric wound up his old friend with, “The natives are getting restless Lindsay.” The reply was succinct, “The first one who comes near me will get this bat round his neck.” Hollies was even more succinct, “It’s not the first one you have to worry about!” Tom had a waspish, dry and wonderful sense of humour and it took something special to win a verbal joust with him. Eric managed it when Tom defended his rather peculiar style of driving a car, and he asked his old friend why he no longer accepted lifts with him. “Tom, I’m not saying you drive too fast. It’s just that you make the telegraph poles look like a sheet of corrugated fencing!” Tom led the side to Warwickshire’s first Championship for forty years in 1951, and the best tribute to a singular man is this extract from the county Annual Report of that year; “The team’s success was in the best traditions of the game. The players performed perfectly together as a co-ordinated entity, under the man who has proved himself the greatest professional captain the game has ever known, and one of the greatest natural cricket leaders of all time – H.E.Dollery. He led this side, which he himself described as an extraordinary team of ordinary cricketers playing purposeful cricket, and when necessary he inspired them with the brilliance of his own personal achievement, including magnificent slip catches, great fighting hundreds against near title rivals Lancashire and Yorkshire, and superlative cricket judgement.” “Such was the man, and such his cricket genius.” Those words sum up the career and character of a man whose niche in Warwickshire history is secure forever. Horace Edgar? Never heard of him. Tom Dollery? He will never be forgotten. 3