Cricket Witness No 1 - Class Peace

102 Essex in the post-war years. 6 Although grammar schools were and remained a largely middle-class preserve, some of their products, having graced their school first elevens, found employment as first-class cricketers, among them Leslie Ames, the Kent and England wicket keeper-batsman, of Harvey Grammar School, Folkstone, George Cox Junior whose father was also a Sussex professional, of Collier’s Grammar School, Horsham and Cyril Washbrook, the Lancashire and England opener, of Bridgnorth Grammar School. In all these and like cases their family background was of a middling grade where there was some ambition for the gifted son to do well, in Cyril Washbrook’s case the hope that he would go on to university. Here again we observe paid cricketers coming from a sometimes indefinable shaded area between the overt industrial working class and the patently professional middle class families. On the other hand, George Duckworth, the Lancashire and England wicketkeeper, was a clever child from a poorer home who won a scholarship to the Boteler Grammar School in Warrington but had to leave after three years owing to family money pressures. His potential was demonstrated not just in his superb wicket keeping and trademark appeal but in his magnificent achievements as an administrator and organiser during and just after the Second World War. 7 There is no doubt that the involvement of cricketers of this ilk, although for the most part they obeyed with admirable decorum the conventions of the split class world they inhabited, signalled the changes ahead. In this narrative of professional improvement and identity two very talented cricketers stood out. One was Herbert Sutcliffe and one was Wally Hammond. They were destined to give professional cricketers a very encouraging boost in their self-regard, the former almost as some form of personal crusade, the latter more by the trajectory of his career. Where Jack Hobbs was dignified and peacefully deferential, his partner and friend in perhaps the most successful opening partnership in Test cricket was determinedly aspirational. Herbert Sutcliffe was a remarkably self-confident man, regarded with awe by the likes of Len Hutton, and no wonder. His origins were disadvantaged. Orphaned as a youngster, he was brought up by an aunt in Pudsey and apprenticed as a ‘clicker’, a fastener of soles to uppers in the manufacture of boots and shoes. He quickly escaped to clerical work and cricketing duties, then along came the First World War. He soon became a corporal in the Sherwood Foresters stationed at York but then was commissioned as a second lieutenant with The Green Howards at Salisbury. Perhaps this crossing of the class lines was the most amazing fact of his intriguing life. He was not a first-class cricketer at this point, for he made his debut for Yorkshire in 1919. His future partner was in wartime air mechanic Jack Hobbs. Once established as a leading player, he made it his business to outdo the amateur. This was not part of some left-wing insurgency. He was not interested in creating, for instance, a militant trade union or syndicate. He once scolded his team-mate and admirer Bill Bowes, the Yorkshire and England quick bowler, for not wearing his blazer to lunch. Bill Bowes had The Shadow Of Embourgeoisement