Lives in Cricket No 16 - Joe Hardstaff

Foreword By Air Commodore Joe Hardstaff, MBE My father’s way of life as a professional cricketer meant perforce that he did not spend much time at home. Following my birth in February 1935, he spent the next twenty winters abroad either on tour with MCC, or on Army service with the Fourteenth Army during the Second World War, or coaching in New Zealand and South Africa. During the summer months of course he was engaged six days every week playing cricket for Nottinghamshire at home and away plus, sometimes, a benefit match on the Sunday. Thus to my brother, two sisters and me he was a distant, rather forbidding figure and in some ways he was a stranger in his own house. After the war, at weekends and during school holidays, my father took me frequently to Trent Bridge to participate in pre-season net practice or to watch Nottinghamshire play at home. I came to know all of the Nottinghamshire players very well between 1945 and 1952 and I came to love the whole ambience of cricket: the dressing-room humour, the camaraderie, the practical jokes, the pressures on those not yet established in the team and the drinks in the pavilion after close of play – with the so-called WAGS (including my mother) waiting outside the pavilion! I also came to realise that, far from being the rather aloof and distant person I thought he was, my father had a keen sense of humour and was a much respected, outgoing and popular figure amongst his peers in the cricketing world. At the same time, having watched him bat many times, I realised that he was a very gifted and elegant cricketer who made the art of batsmanship appear so simple. After I joined the Royal Air Force my father and I grew much closer together to a point where we became almost like brothers. There were no secrets between us; we enjoyed playing golf and drinking beer together and I came to know him very well indeed. He had his faults of course: he tended to be intolerant (a family failing so I am told) and, after one or two drinks too many he could be argumentative and difficult, but the storms blew over as quickly as 5