Lives in Cricket No 3 - George Duckworth

today for a county championship occasion. Over against the 1926 Yorkshire match gates, previously mentioned, of 78,617 for three days, including 46,000 (39, 906 paying at the turnstiles) for one of those days, the total attendance for the four days game with Yorkshire in 2006 was 10,337, of whom only 1,993 paid, the majority being members. These crowds adored Duckworth and gloried in his appeal. ‘Quack, quack’, they would call back affectionately. And, apart from the angles of sportsmanship and of realism, he never overdid the appealing because maybe he intuitively guessed that it would soon lose its effect. The appeal would lose its appeal. That is good advice for the usage of any catchphrase. George Formby did not chuckle ‘It’s turned out nice again’ all that often, nor did Sandy Powell overuse his plaintive query, ‘Can you hear me, mother?’ On his first trip to Australia the ‘quack, quacks’ of the crowd were initially less welcoming, especially as George, short and squat, waddled forth in huge pads and matching flappy white sunhat. They were used to that polite prince amongst wicket-keepers, W.A.S.Oldfield, a candidate for the best-ever world eleven. His demeanour was the converse of Duckworth. He was as pacifically and mutedly courteous as a knight errant. It was if the game were being played at Camelot. There would be a deft flick of the bail and a gentle and disarming turn of the head to the square leg umpire, as if the urbane, apologetic query was no more than a mild musing as to whether, without wanting to be a nuisance, the batsman might just have strayed. ‘Not out, you bum,’ screamed back the Australian host when Duckworth bellowed forth, with scant regard for their own model, Oldfield’s propriety. It might be added that some Australian elevens of more recent vintage have not managed to emulate the Arthurian idyll as portrayed by that chivalric wicket-keeper. The Cricket 45 Webster on Duckworth