Lives in Cricket No 20 - Maurice Tompkin

The evacuation from Dunkirk would have been a harsh wake-up that even serving in a non-combatant role was still potentially hazardous. It seems likely that Maurice had been given some indication that he would shortly be sent abroad, either to North Africa or the Far East, and being married was understandably something that they wanted to do now and without fuss. The final part of Maurice’s war was spent in Bangalore, in Southern India. Here it is clear that he did indeed play cricket and a lot of football. His family have plenty of sporting pictures taken in India. Even though there was a war on, his papers include mounted copies of photographs of the 38th British General Hospital soccer first eleven, dated October 1943. Sixteen men are pictured, the eleven who played in the team, captained by Private Tompkin, and various officers, including two commanding officers and a sports officer, so the sporting affairs must have been well administered and controlled. There is also a cricket picture showing the Army XI v RAF taken before a match played at Bangalore on 15 and 16April 1944. In fact this is the only record of any wartime cricket match he actually participated in. The following year, as referred to earlier, he played for Bangalore Muslims against the Inter-Services touring team in a football match at the Garrison Ground in Bangalore on 20 April 1945. For the amount of cricket played, I can only add my late father’s memories. He was based in Bangalore at the same time as Maurice, and when I asked him about cricket in India, he always said that he never saw any, and that he certainly never saw a cricket ground with a blade of grass. The fact remains that football and hockey were more widely played than cricket by the army in India; pitch preparation was simpler, and they took far less time to play. Add to that the fact that Indian players would normally play in bare feet so equipment would appear to be at a premium too. It seems possible that while in India he struck up a friendship with Denis Compton, who became a particular cricketing friend after the war. ‘Two of a kind,’ said Terry Spencer, ‘both brilliant batsmen and footballers.’ Maybe Compton came to Bangalore, or maybe they played on opposing sides in the Rovers tournament held in Bombay. It was Denis who, on seeing Stuart Symington bowl in a match in 1949, remarked to Maurice, ‘I hope your skipper can bat, because he sure can’t bowl.’ It was Denis who sent a personal wreath to his funeral, and Denis who rallied support for the raffle of a bat for his memorial fund on the ship taking the MCC team to South Africa. The post-war cricketing resumption was for Leicestershire particularly traumatic. They had no ground, no team, no obvious amateur to captain the side and no secretary to run the club. It was clear from as early as March 1944 that they would not be able to use their old ground at Aylestone Road. The City Council wanted to use the practice ground to extend their electricity works, and in any case the ground had been neglected and would have needed substantial work to it. War and Peace, 1940 to 1949 45