Lives in Cricket No 3 - George Duckworth

It is vital to any intelligible comprehension of George Duckworth’s cricket to understand how closely he was garbed and cloaked in this guise of Warrington legend. A bright scholarship boy, he self-evidently identified with this model and shrewdly recognised it as one worth fashioning, so that, eventually, as so often happens with a public demeanour, it becomes difficult to assess what proportions derived from his complete induction into Warrington life or his canny grasp of the possibilities of amplifying that image. It was neither artificial nor contrived. Like any sensible performer, he was incisively aware of his personality and then pressed it bountifully into service. To use a schooling analogue, there have been excellent teachers who, recognising their natural diffidence, have utilised that reticence in a beguiling button-holing technique with children, whereas, if they had essayed a bravura stance à la Douglas Fairbanks Junior, their pupils, ever the instant spotters of the false front, would have demolished them. For the essence of George Duckworth’s cricket was that he conceived himself as a performer, albeit an exceedingly serious and competitive performer, on the public stage. Would that other sportsmen and women, for whom we find ourselves forking out large sums of money for the anticipated pleasure of their talented artistry, might more carefully remember that aspect of their role. He was a great wicket-keeper and a great entertainer, the greater in sum because, like Ernie Wise’s supposed toupee, ‘you couldn’t see the join’. He joined a Lancashire team in which that balance of sporting gifts and evident ‘character’ was a notable feature. He joined a Lancashire team that, in the County Championship, was to be the most successful in the county’s history. He joined a Lancashire team that could still attract, for all the trials and tribulations of the inter-war years, a respectable – in numbers and in deportment – crowd, and one that recognised and approved of both the talents and the temperaments of their heroes. Before departing the scene of George Duckworth’s salient upbringing, a postscript is needful on t’other George Duckworth, proof that his early inclusion in these annals was not unduly eccentric or prurient. The judicious Gerald Howat has reminded us that the alternative George Duckworth was, curiouser and curiouser, also a wicket-keeper. He secured vital wickets in that role, as well as making useful runs, for Eton when they beat Harrow at Lord’s in 1886. He had a trial when he went up to The Background 20