Lives in Cricket No 15 - Michael Falcon

He kept up a fine pace, and was always making the ball rise at an awkward height, and the ball off which Strudwick was caught at short slip might have got out the greatest batsman in England so abruptly did it rise from the pitch.’ The Manchester Guardian described Falcon as having ‘bowled superbly’. Unfortunately the Gentlemen were unable to take advantage of Falcon’s bowling and had to follow on: Falcon soon found himself whipping in for the second time to join Arthur Gilligan in a seemingly hopeless cause. Gilligan greeted the appearance of Falcon by launching a calculated assault on the Players’ attack so severe that 134 runs were added for the tenth wicket in only 70 minutes. Playing very much a supporting role, Falcon made an unbeaten 34 in a record tenth-wicket partnership for the Gentlemen. The Times , the Telegraph and ‘Plum’ Warner (again) were all favourably impressed by his innings. It remains a bit of a mystery why he ‘lost’ his batting to some extent at the first-class level whilst remaining one of the premier performers with the willow in the Minor Counties game. 40 (He did, of course, show sporadic glimpses of what he could do with the bat in first-class fixtures in the twenties.) Gilligan was eventually dismissed for 112, 41 but the earlier ineptitude of the Gentlemen meant that the Players were able to coast home by six wickets. Still, it was one of the highlights of Falcon’s first-class career. Michael Falcon’s third first-class match of the season was, if anything, even more of a highlight than the match at The Oval; up there with his performance for Archie MacLaren’s side at Eastbourne in 1921. He was chosen to captain a Minor Counties XI against the South Africans, in a fixture awarded first-class status, and led his team to victory in front of his home crowd at Lakenham. Whilst it is true that, as opponents, the South Africans were vastly inferior to Armstrong’s tourists, they treated the Minor Counties XI with respect and put out a near Test-strength side. What made the game so special for Falcon and the Norfolk At His Peak: 1919-1929 71 40 An interesting theory was put forward by Mohammad Nissar – himself a fast bowler of great reputation who started life as a batsman. He stated that ‘I feel that a fast bowler gradually loses the capacity to use his bat with skill, the reason being that the arm muscles of a bowler – especially the fast one – are developed in such a manner that the flexibility and pliancy which are required for the execution of a good stroke are lost.’ Nissar’s hypothesis may have seemed plausible in the 1930s for there had been few pace-bowling all-rounders in the first-class game up to his day but there have been so many examples since that his idea no longer holds water. 41 Gilligan’s effort with the bat, having been hit over the heart in the first innings, was thought to have had a permanent effect on his ability to bowl fast. He never bowled with his old hostility again after this match.