Lives in Cricket No 20 - Maurice Tompkin

but he shared partnerships of 66 with Peter Richardson and 101 with Ken Barrington in the process. An unusual feature of his play on this tour was some very slow batting. His innings of 11 against the Combined Schools, in a two-day fixture, took half an hour, though it has to be said that some of the scholars in the opposition were ‘seniors’ in their twenties, and included Hanif Mohammad, who managed to open the batting and the bowling. In the second ‘Test’ at Dacca, it was reported that he did not start well, being dropped in the slips and then caught at point in the same over off the bowling of Fazal Mahmood, who dismissed him six times in 1954 and this tour. On the tour he was dismissed 15 times; on four occasions he was caught behind, and on three occasions lbw. By this time, homesick and now out of form and confidence, he was desperate to come home. When they had returned to West Pakistan in late February, some of the MCC team decided to enjoy themselves at the expense of the Pakistani umpire, Idrees Baig, who had stood in the third ‘Test’ match in Peshawar. The main protagonists in the incident in the team’s hotel were the captain, aided primarily by Roy Swetman and Brian Close. Maurice did not take part. ‘He was far too sensible to be involved in anything like that,’ remembers Donald Carr. What started off as a harmless, if misguided, ‘rag’, soaking Idrees, ended up as an international incident, with the MCC president, Field-Marshal Lord Alexander offering to fellow-soldier and Sandhurst alumnus Major-General Iskander Mirza, Pakistan’s Governor-General, who doubled up as the president of the Pakistan Cricket Board, to cancel the tour and bring the players home. Unfortunately for Maurice, this did not happen. He was left out of the team for the fourth match of the ‘Test’ series, and played only one of the last three matches of the tour. Mercifully, the party came home by aeroplane and thus avoided another three weeks on an ex-troop ship, and Maurice delighted his sons with the story of being smuggled out of Karachi airport in order to avoid any demonstrations. The frustration did not end there, an earthquake in Beirut delaying their return by another 15 hours. Allan Watkins, the Glamorgan all rounder, shared a roomwith Maurice, and remembers him as being a wonderful man. The only problem was that he did not drink alcohol, and Allan needed to track down the vice-captain, Billy Sutcliffe, to find a drinking partner. The other positive events were the football matches, and for the last time Maurice played football in front of a sizeable crowd. Maurice had a poor tour. His 334 runs at 22.26 in eleven matches was certainly not good by his standards, but few players enhanced their reputations on this trip. Jim Parks, for example, who had scored over 2,000 runs in 1955, also suffered from poor decisions and scored in ten matches only 198 runs at 13.20. Only Peter Richardson, who scored the only two In Pakistan, 1955/56 113