Lives in Cricket No 20 - Maurice Tompkin

Then, for the last over of the season – even I had given up hope by this time – Charles put Maurice on to bowl. To his second ball Pleass played far forward ultra-defensively with the intention of scotching any spin, his bat forming an acute angle with the ground in copy-book fashion, just as in the row of soldier/batsmen in Felix’s famous illustration with its outrageous twisting of Vergil for a caption. I could not tell from where I was sitting if Maurice got any lateral spin, but he certainly pitched the ball a trifle short and obtained a great deal of bounce, sufficient for the ball to rise above Pleass’s forlorn bat and hit the top of the stumps. Great was the glee of bowler, fielders and spectators; and so the season ended, not with a Championship, but with the highest final place so far and the sole wicket of one of the County’s favourite players. This was, indeed, the only first-class wicket that Maurice Tompkin took. The first-class season was not quite over for him. He travelled up to Scarborough to play for the Players against the Gentlemen. In the professionals’ first innings, he went in with the score on 17, and proceeded to put on 164 for the second wicket with Len Hutton, scoring just 54, as Hutton went on to score 241, his last double-century in England. Maurice himself finished just eighteen runs short of 2,000 runs for the season. Years of Plenty, 1950 to 1953 90 Festival cricket as a serious business. Maurice going out to bat with Len Hutton for the Players at Scarborough in September 1953. Hutton scored 241 and Maurice 54, but the Gentlemen won by five wickets.