Lives in Cricket No 20 - Maurice Tompkin

in the great season which most players of his type enjoy, make his two thousand quick runs and give us some innings to remember. Arlott’s other selections were George Dews, another footballing cricketer with Worcestershire, and Ted Lester, who later became the Yorkshire scorer, but neither became serious challengers for an England place. At the season’s end, Maurice once more departed for a winter at Grey High School in Port Elizabeth. A team photograph (see page 70) and an engraved cigarette case ‘from the cricketers of Grey College’ are all that remains of the two years spent there. The picture is of him with the school’s First XI. The great cricketers associated with the school around this time were Athol McKinnon, who had just left; and Peter and Graeme Pollock, who were aged nine and seven in his second season at the school. Maurice’s son Chris believes that his father coached Peter. The school’s cricket coach in the late 1940s was the great South African player, Dave Nourse, and for over 20 years from 1957, Tom Dean, who had played for Hampshire after the war and in the early 1950s ran a pub in Torquay. It was Tom who took most of the credit for coaching (or rather as he put it, not coaching) the younger Pollock, such was that player’s genius. * * * * * If Maurice had any England aspirations, and the talk in Leicestershire was that he should, 1951 was the year when it nearly became reality. The circumstances so nearly gave him the opportunity. MCC had suffered a heavy defeat in Australia. The selectors had generally tried to give youth a chance, though still needed the experience of those that had established themselves pre-war. Freddie Brown, aged 40, was captain but though he captained the team enthusiastically and had a remarkably successful series as an allrounder, the batting – apart from Hutton and Simpson had failed. The failures included Denis Compton and Cyril Washbrook from the pre-war era, and the younger generation of John Dewes, David Sheppard, Gilbert Parkhouse and Brian Close. That Maurice was one of a number of possibles can be judged by his selection for MCC against Yorkshire at Lord’s starting on 28 April, where he made an unbeaten 67, and he was then picked for the MCC against the South Africans match on 19 May. Sadly, this match was not so successful, as he was part of a mid-innings collapse and was bowled by the fast bowler Cuan McCarthy for a duck. Selection for this match caused him to miss a Leicestershire game, and it was the first time since August 1939 that he had missed a Leicestershire championship fixture. McCarthy was a tall, blond fast bowler who had burst onto the Test scene as a nineteen-year-old when England had toured South Africa in 1948/49, taking over 20 wickets in that series, but had been far less successful the Years of Plenty, 1950 to 1953 71