Lives in Cricket No 20 - Maurice Tompkin

lofted Aslam Khan for six over mid on, and was then dropped off another big hit that went for two before Carr declared. The team was fortunate in that they were managed by one of the best touring managers that MCC ever had. Geoffrey Howard’s attention to detail was demonstrated by his early request to Lord’s for ‘2,000 pep pills’ (glucose tablets) to help his team with energy problems, particularly as they were getting accustomed to the water and diet. In the next game though, MCC were confronted by the Governor-General’s team, which was practically the same side that had beaten England at The Oval just 16 months before. The great Fazal Mahmood dismissed Maurice twice for eight and six, though MCC still came out winners, thanks to Tony Lock’s bowling. That defeat probably made the Pakistani team even more determined to win the ‘Test’ series; they duly did so 2-1. Their view was that they should have been awarded a full tour with official Test matches. New Zealand had played Tests at Karachi, Lahore and Dacca only months earlier. This meant that their determination that they were never going to be beaten by an ‘A’ team was strengthened even more. Throughout the tour there are references to Maurice making uncharacteristic lapses or batting particularly slowly. In Lahore, he dropped a catch which allowed the Combined Universities’ last pair to add another 50 runs. In the innings that followed he took 25 minutes to get off the mark, and had reached 39 and then hit the leg-spinner Fazal-ur-Rehman for six, before holing out trying to repeat the shot. The next day the Leicester papers were happily announcing that ‘Maurice Tompkin is in the Test twelve for the first official test against Pakistan’ on the basis that you should never let accuracy get in the way of a good story, though perhaps such headlines do account for the number of Leicestershire people who believed he actually played a Test match for England. Maurice’s highest first-class innings was against Pakistan on their 1954 tour, and their captain, A.H.Kardar, was only too well aware therefore of his potential, and the need to ensure that this did not recur. During that innings, it should be remembered, Kardar set the field to restrict his scoring. In the first ‘Test’, Kardar trapped him lbw for just one, in what was considered to be one of the ‘bad’ decisions that dogged his tour. Kardar dismissed him lbw once again in the third match against Pakistan, at Peshawar, one of four successful appeals won by the Pakistani captain. This later gave some of the more boisterous team members the incentive they needed to liven up an otherwise drama-free evening in the hotel. Maurice’s innings of 85 in the second innings at Lahore helped save that game, though towards the end of it he was dealing with the bowling of the Pakistan opening batsmen, Hanif Mohammad and Alimuddin; it is not recorded which arm Hanif was bowling with at the time. He reached 50 in 2 hours 20 minutes, and was not at all sure in the early part of his innings, In Pakistan, 1955/56 112