Lives in Cricket No 3 - George Duckworth

to most wicket-keepers, so that some of his misses would not have been recognised on normal radar. One thinks of great strikers who miss goals in positions that ordinary mortals would not have realised existed and thereby escaped blameless of any shortcomings. The Lancashire wicket-keeper toured South Africa in 1930/31 and played in the first three Tests, and then his cover, Bill Farrimond, ‘Lancashire Seconds and England’, as the Mancunian funsters grinned, played his first two games for England, owing to Duckworth’s illness. He was to play two others, one in the West Indies in 1934/35, and one at Lord’s against South Africa, in 1935, in both of which Ames played as a batsman. Whatever the case, Leslie Ames tended from henceforward to be preferred. During the ‘bodyline’ series in Australia, Leslie Ames kept wicket. George Duckworth had the compensation of keeping in the conventional solitary Test in New Zealand with which that 1933/34 tour was concluded. George Duckworth, like the other English professionals, kept faith with the ‘bodyline’ credo. They The Cricket 38 Wintering in the southern hemisphere. George Duckworth and Maurice Tate on the beach in Durban in January, 1931.