Lives in Cricket No 3 - George Duckworth

unsettled combine than the first two outfits. All in all, the tours plainly had an effect in sustaining an international connection for Indian sub-continent cricket when touring there was intermittent and perhaps reluctant. The personnel on the tours was very diverse. The first tour, when Jock Livingston, the Northants forcing bat from New South Wales, captained the side, comprised of five English county players, nine Australians and two West Indians, all professionals, with the overseas players in most cases foregoing the opportunity of playing in domestic first-class and even Test cricket at home. Predictably, most of the overseas players had been playing in Lancashire leagues in 1949 and were well known to George Duckworth. On both the second and third tours, players were replaced during the tour because of injuries and illness. Frank Worrell was very much the star. He was the only player to travel on all three tours and he was the top run scorer on the first two. Les Ames captained the second set of Duckworth fledglings, on a tour in which John Ikin, the talented and ever courteous Lancashire left-hander, performed very efficaciously, as did first Jim Laker and then Sonny Ramadhin in the spin department. Of that second tour, Les Ames told Mihir Bose in interview that ‘George Duckworth chose the side mainly, but we collaborated. He would ring me up and say, have you seen so-and-so this season, how good is he? We had a fabulous side. It was not difficult to get the spirit going . . . we were unbeaten. One of the best sides I ever travelled with.’ They were all long and arduous trips, two cushioned by a boat journey of some three weeks there and back. The third travelled to India and back by Comet jet. The players left soon after the end of the English season and returned not too long before the start of the next. The first and last playing days were respectively 9 October 1949 and 12 March 1950, 1 October 1950 and 6 March 1951 and 10 October 1953 and 8 February 1954. In 1949/50 they played in 21 first-class and six lesser two day matches; in 1950/51 there were 27 first-class matches and one minor two day match, while, in 1953/54, 21 first-class matches were played. Each of the tours included five five-day unofficial ‘Test’ matches were played against the full Indian side, with most of the trappings of the genuine article. The outcomes of these three series were, in order, 1-0 and 2-0 to the Commonwealth and 2-1 to India in the third. The Legacy 54