Cricket Witness No 1 - Class Peace

114 Cricket and Society in the 1940s Statham told me the story of his initial first-class wicket. It is well-known that he came to cricket relatively late when spotted bowling during his national service by the eagle-eyed RAF Corporal Lazarus. Until Lancashire took an interest in him, he had never visited Old Trafford and he was drafted into the first eleven very rapidly. He made his debut at Old Trafford against Kent in 1950 and the authoritarian Cyril Washbrook, the county’s senior professional, sternly advised him not to bowl short to the Kent opener Arthur Fagg, a man reputed to be a ferocious hooker. In his second over Brian Statham did bowl a short ball and Arthur Fagg, perhaps surprised by the kind of pace that was very scarce on the county circuit in those years, mistimed his hook and was caught at forward short leg. Today a prized wicket, let alone the first in someone’s career, would lead to a near-hysterical festival of triumphant high fives, man-hugs and back-slaps. Professional cricketers were made of tougher fibre then. Cyril Washbrook stormed up to the errant bowler and scolded him. ‘Statham, I told you not to bowl short to Arthur Fagg.’ Even as a twenty-year old tyro, the fast bowler was his ownman, quiet but obdurately independent. ‘No’, he replied, ‘but then you didn’t tell me which one was Arthur Fagg....and, while we’re on the subject, I don’t know the names of half the bloody Lancashire team.’ That succinct cameo has something to say about the mood of the professional game then; the classroom or barrack square usage of the surname by the autocratic senior; the reprimand for disobedience rather than the good cheer over a wicket taken if accidentally; the impoverished induction of the new recruit into the squad... Happily the new recruit on this occasion turned out into a highly skilled sharpshooter; Fred Trueman is not the only good judge to assert that ‘George’, as Statham was known in the Lancashire dressing room in succession to Winston Place, was the most accurate fast bowler in cricket history. A rightful governmental edict ensured that former workers returning from military duties or war work must be re-employed, which, given the wartime Direction of Labour statute, meant practically everybody. Thus the 1946 county elevens looked suspiciously like the 1939 one, a factor, incidentally, in the popularity of cricket in those immediate post-war seasons. Lots of fans wanted a last look at their pre-war cigarette card heroes. These veterans also masked a fault-line in the production of young cricketers. Almost a hundred young cricketers made their debut in the 1946 summer but few lasted the pace. Although much has been made, and rightly so, of the records that would have been broken had the likes of Wally Hammond, Denis Compton, Len Hutton, to say nothing of Don Bradman, played first-class cricket in all those lost seasons, what has been often forgotten is the six year hiatus in any sort of nursery for or nurture of fledgling first-class cricketers. This problem is underpinned by the statistics. In the central phase of 1915/1930, when those born then would have been, say, 24 to nineteen in 1939, the births of English first-class cricketers drops below an average of 20 a year, whereas in the fore and aft eras of 1905/1915 and 1930/35 the figure is over 30. The veterans were sorely required. It was the Trueman/