Lives in Cricket No 15 - Michael Falcon

Michael Gascoigne Falcon remembers that his father was very keen that he should continue to uphold the family name in the cricket world. In order to give his son an early advantage over other boys, Falcon had constructed a special net with a built-in slope which exactly replicated the famous slope at Lord’s. In this way he hoped his son would be properly prepared to cope with one of the major hazards of big cricket, a problem which was well known to perplex even experienced cricketers who were playing on it for the first time. He also made a yearly telephone call to his son’s headmaster in which he would nervously enquire as to how his son was progressing as a cricketer. Unfortunately for Michael Falcon, his son had inherited absolutely none of his father’s ability and, whilst this caused him disappointment, he was too good a father to let this adversely affect his relationship with his son who remembers the whole episode with wry amusement. (His name only appears once in the Eastern Daily Press cricket columns; in a colts match in which he failed to trouble the scorers. Whilst doing National Service he boxed a little but was not a natural sportsman.) It was his sister, Sybil Edwards, who inherited her father’s sporting enthusiasm and ability: she was a regular attender at Lakenham as a teenager and when she went up to Cambridge to read geography (being resident at Newnham College between 1944 and 1947) she won blues at both cricket and lacrosse. She was captain of the University eleven in 1946 and remembers that her father taught her to be a slow bowler and ‘was a huge support and encouragement’, taking great delight in her successes. 57 Before the Second World War, Michael Falcon would take his young children to visit their grandparents, who had moved to Sprowston Hall, for tea every Sunday. (Michael Falcon senior lived to the age of 80, passing on in April 1939. The funeral was held at Horstead Church, followed by a service at Sprowston Hall which was attended by the widow and all four children.) Then, when they went away to boarding schools and universities, he would Elder Statesman: 1930-1939 96 57 There is an uncanny resemblance to my own family here. My father was a good club cricketer, nowhere near Falcon’s standard but good enough to share the new-ball with John Price in Forces cricket in Germany and was desperately keen for me to follow in his footsteps. Unfortunately, like Falcon’s son, I was hopeless and it was my sister who went on to win Blues at cricket and lacrosse like Sybil, at Oxford rather than Cambridge. Where the story diverges is that, although I was inept I was exceedingly keen and continued to play doggedly at a low level in Norfolk. Eventually age caught up with my father and he quit ‘decent’ cricket before retiring back to Norfolk: at this point I invited him to resume his career by playing alongside me. We appeared together for a couple of years, which was most enjoyable, and in the end I was the one who first called it a day.