Lives in Cricket No 15 - Michael Falcon

arranged his bowling wonderfully well throughout the game,’ said MacLaren of the Norfolk man’s captaincy against Staffordshire in 1913. If they had had a crystal ball, the selectors would have seen more evidence that Michael Falcon was a gifted leader of men. His defeat of the near full-strength 1924 South Africans, with only the resources of the Minor Counties to call on, showed he could skipper at the highest level and in the Minor Counties Championship his captaincy was consistently innovative and was praised frequently in the local press. It may be pushing things too far to see a Minor County cricketer skippering an Ashes Test, but Michael Falcon ‘captain of Middlesex and England’ is, in hindsight, an entirely plausible response to Armstrong’s 1921 Australians. By 1914, however, it was only ever going to be Michael Falcon ‘captain of Norfolk’ and he was more than content with the honour of leading his native county. As it was, the panic-stricken selectors turned to the aged C.B.Fry, who declined the offer to skipper himself, but talked them into appointing Lionel Tennyson to replace Douglas. Tennyson, like Douglas was brave, but was considerably more clueless even than his predecessor, as his illegal declaration in the Old Trafford Test showed. As it turned out, the selectors were lucky: when Tennyson badly split his left hand whilst fielding in the Headingley Test, he showed his bravery by scoring, in two innings, 99 runs, some with one hand using a junior bat, and England did become invigorated and then put up more of a fight. (David Lemmon, though, attributed England’s improved performance to Australian apathy once the series had been decided.) Although he was cheerful in adversity, Tennyson was wayward, eccentric and had a heavy gambling habit. He was in many ways an accident waiting to happen, quite unsuitable as an England skipper, and the selectors duly dispensed with him as soon as The Ashes series was over, before he had chance to drop too many bricks. Michael Falcon, an MP of three years Commons’ experience – we can imagine the headline ‘Tory MP to captain England’ – would have embarrassed nobody by his behaviour if he had been appointed Test skipper. We can be sure though, that to Falcon himself, it wouldn’t have been as enjoyable as playing for Norfolk: in 1928, during one of his many speeches of thanks upon his re-election as Norfolk skipper, Falcon declared that he enjoyed playing for Norfolk more than anything else. By way of finishing this flight-of-fancy, comparison of his first-class career averages A Test Cricketer? 121