Lives in Cricket No 3 - George Duckworth

spite of his pigeons and his text-book, but George Duckworth never lacked for self-assurance. This was in 1940. It went reasonably well. In 1942, the Duckworths moved to the bigger 40 acre Old Hall Farm at Moore, opposite the Red Lion on the road fromWarrington to Runcorn. There they lived and worked until 1955. These times embraced Barbara’s teenage years, with her father still easy-going and refusing her little. His happy disposition, his refusal to worry, his constant belief that things could be worse, might have mildly exasperated Bessie Duckworth, but, for a teenage daughter, it meant ‘you couldn’t sulk with him for five minutes.’ After the war, and as well as the farming, George Duckworth resumed his journalistic tasks, writing on sport mainly for the such late and lamented newspapers as the Kemsley-owned Daily Dispatch , the Co-op’s Reynolds News and the Sunday Empire News , plus forays into the pages of the Manchester evening papers. He wrote personally, candidly and with some lucidity, while he also took naturally to the radio, reporting on rugby league and cricket and being what he might have called ‘a dab hand’ at sports quizzes on the ‘wireless’. With the advent of television, he did some cricket commentating of a regional nature, sometimes with his brother, James, acting as scorer. It was said that ‘his ability to read a game, a legacy of his playing days, helped many listeners and viewers, not fully acquainted with the finer points, to a quick and shrewder appreciation of the issues involved.’ He was also in considerable demand for speaking engagements, many for charitable fund-raising purposes, and not all of them of the localised brand. He twice visited Pakistan for the British Council in the 1950s, giving talks about cricket in colleges and other institutions. That gives a clue to the other side of his nature, for the post-war British Council, its aesthetic airs more akin to those of the Bloomsbury Group acquaintances of the other George Duckworth than the earthy values of Warrington, must have been absolutely sure of his ability to carry off such intrepid tasks with aplomb and tact. His astute cricket mind and engaging personality made him the ideal ‘wise counsellor’ for cricketers, especially on tour. As well as visiting Australia as a journalist on the 1946/47 English tour, he travelled as scorer and baggage master aka sage mentor on the 1954/55 and 1958/59 trips. The then captain, Len Hutton, spoke The Legacy 51