Lives in Cricket No 3 - George Duckworth

she was never naughty. His times at home, says Barbara, were ‘all high days and holidays.’ The actual holidays included trips to Blackpool, when Lancashire played a couple of matches before crowds of holiday-makers in Stanley Park, and late summer visits to the Scarborough Festival. George Duckworth had, when not touring, supplemented his winter retainer from the county, with speaking engagements, usually based on lantern slides derived from cricketing visits abroad. On retirement, he continued and developed these, as well as taking his first steps into journalism, but war soon intervened. Barbara was now at Lymm Grammar School, later to be the alma mater of Neil Fairbrother, and, during air raids, she sometimes found herself on the wrong side of the Manchester Ship Canal, her bus worryingly delayed by the automatic opening of the swing bridge during alerts. A bombed closed bridge, leaving debris in the canal to the detriment of shipping, was worse than a bombed open bridge. She was caught up in her father’s organisation of the Daily Dispatch War Fund XI, and tells how he juggled precious petrol against irregular train services to make good his commitments. Apparently, the commanding officer of the neighbouring RAF camp at Padgate, beloved of thousands of conscript airmen until well after the war, until it became a teacher training college, was a Warrington Cricket Club member. Yorkshire’s Ellis Robinson, a capable all-rounder, and the aggressive bat, George Cox of Sussex, were on the permanent staff, and George Duckworth was able to use his powers of persuasion to engineer leave for these two stalwarts and any other gifted cricketers who were passing through the camp. The chief of the Warrington police, who, it may be recollected, had found respectable employ for two rejected Warwickshire trialists, was also recruited for vital war service. Given the difficult transport situation, especially on Sundays, when the charity games were played, cricketers were often stranded. Through George Duckworth’s good offices, they were found accommodation in the police cells for the night. More seriously, Barbara Duckworth remembers the tragic juxtaposition of an enjoyable sunny day at the Wallasey cricket ground, inclusive of a stroll by the estuary and the view from New Brighton of a splendid array of merchant vessels at anchor in the Mersey, awaiting their turn to enter the port of Liverpool. That Sunday night there was intense and heavy blitzing by the The Legacy 49