Lives in Cricket No 27 - CB Llewellyn

5 Introduction In his lifetime, Charley or Buck Llewellyn (‘Lew’ to his family) was famous as a left-handed allrounder in 15 Test matches for South Africa and in ten seasons for Hampshire in the English County Championship, when he achieved the cricketers’ double three times in all matches. Note, however, that his Test matches were spread over 17 years between 1895 and 1912, a period when South Africa participated in 29 such fixtures – also, that there were five seasons when his work for Hampshire was nothing like as consistent as in his best years. When I started watching Hampshire in 1949, Llewellyn’s greatest achievements were featured in the Hampshire handbook, but it was Harry Altham who, in the official club history Hampshire County Cricket by Desmond Eagar, John Arlott and himself and published in 1957, gave a sketch of Llewellyn: Bowling left-handed and on the slow side of medium, he could turn the ball on the best of wickets and, if the pitch helped him, his spin was vicious: considering that he combined the stock left-handers’ break with what is now called ‘the chinaman’ and an occasional googly, his length was as a rule remarkably consistent … . A fine stroke player with beautiful wrists, Llewellyn was not yet a consistent batsman [in 1901] … . He was also one of the best fielders in the country at mid-off. Two years later, John Arlott paid the Llewellyns a visit at their bungalow in Chertsey, by the Thames in Surrey. After touring South Africa, where Buck was born in Natal, and for whom he made his initial appearances in first-class cricket, Arlott vowed never to return to the Cape, so appalled was he at the racial discrimination and cruelty that he found in 1948/49. It is not surprising that race played no part in his conversation with the Llewellyns and it was a further ten years before anyone disclosed that while Llewellyn’s father may have come from South Wales, his mother hailed from St. Helena, the island in the South Atlantic. In 1970, his daughter had insisted that he was of British stock. The internet has since disproved that assertion, but by the time of that revelation, Buck had died. Memories of his appearances in Test matches for South Africa were rekindled when Omar Henry was called to their colour in 1992.