Lives in Cricket No 3 - George Duckworth

highly of him as ‘a delightful friend and companion’. He also continued to be a pertinent adviser on Lancashire cricket, one welcomed, for instance, by Cyril Washbrook, when he was the county’s captain. ‘I didn’t always agree with his comments’, said Washbrook, a trifle guardedly, for he, too, like ‘Ducky’, was a man of trenchant and argumentative views, ‘but his opinion was always respected.’ He may have recalled Duckworth’s advice to him in pre-war days, when he won his first England cap. He told the young Cyril Washbrook not to worry overmuch about his batting but to guarantee there were no complaints about his fielding. Washbrook, one of long line of predatory Lancashire cover points, duly obliged, recognising, after Duckworth, the priority of an efficient fielding unit in cricket’s tussles. Denis Compton, although he had only once had George ‘breathing down my neck’, as he termed it, as a player, recalled him affectionately as baggage master on the 1954/55 tour. ‘He achieved the impossible’, wrote Compton, not the best organised of human beings, ‘by getting me from State to State without the loss of a single garment. I can assure you that this was no mean feat.’ 52 The Legacy George Duckworth, his brother Jim (scorer), and Peter Smith, the former Essex player, reporting for ABC Television on play in the Yorkshire v Lancashire match at Headingley in May, 1960.