Lives in Cricket No 20 - Maurice Tompkin

his partnership with Vic Jackson stood at 89. Then ‘Rain, Rain, Rain’. He was, for once, cross: ‘I was really annoyed, because for the first time this season I really felt in form and I was enjoying it.’ Vic Jackson agreed: ‘He really looked in form. He seemed to have a carefree festival attitude and was playing very nearly like his old self.’ The weather at Torquay was even too wet for golf, so he took Sheila and the boys to the cinema. The players naturally got bored with the lack of action. One activity that impressed the Tompkin boys, if not the management of the Grand Hotel, was to remove the silver paper from inside a cigarette packet and chew it until made a glutinous ball that they could then throw up to stick to the splendidly decorated ceilings. In reporting his return to Leicester on 10 September, the Leicester Mercury made no mention of his back problems or his visit to the specialist the following week. By this stage it must have been clear that the problem was rather more serious than lumbago or fibrositis. He was swiftly admitted to the Fielding Johnson Hospital on Regent Road in Leicester. As he went to hospital in the ambulance, his son Nick asked him for a game of conkers. ‘When I get better, son,’ was his father’s optimistic reply. A laparotomy was carried out on 20 September, with the purpose of identifying the cause of the problem. The result was catastrophic. Maurice had cancer not just of the pancreas; it had also spread to his stomach. Nothing could be done. The Leicester Evening News issued a bulletin on 22 September, saying that he had experienced a slightly better night, following the serious operation, and again on 26 September, that he ‘was about the same’. Final days 117 The Torquay Festival of 1956, with Maurice Tompkin’s last cricket match under way on the first and only day of play in a wet week.