Lives in Cricket No 3 - George Duckworth

One feels slightly guilty, in the face of that indomitable and challenging spirit, to be reviewing his life, but one pleads in mitigation the fullness of George Duckworth’s career and times. Arthur Marshall’s much-used coinage of ‘rich tapestry’ could never be more convincingly applied. On examination, the portrait that emerges of George Duckworth is not so much different from the Cardusian cow heels and tripe and onions cartoon of his general prototype of northern cricket professionals of that time. Rather is it infinitely more complex and thereby more fascinating. Human beings are often complicated. Pigeon-holes, as George Duckworth, the pigeon fancier, would have confirmed, are for pigeons. Differing motives and contexts evoke differing facets of personality. Social mobility, either upwards or downwards, is one of the engines. There evolves some necessary response, ranging from a complete severance with the former culture to a dominant refusal to indulge in such divorce with the past. It was maliciously said of the Labour politician and biographer, Roy Jenkins, son of a Welsh miner and union official, that his carefully cultivated lisp faded as he tired during speeches in the House of Commons. His colleague and leader, Harold Wilson, tended towards the other school, making a virtue of his humdrum origins, rarely seen in public without a pipe, despite privately favouring a cigar, although, to be fair, he really did prefer tinned to smoked salmon and the Scillies to Tuscany for holidays, while he could readily rattle off the names of the Huddersfield Town team in their solitary glimpse of glory in the 1920s. Albeit genuinely and sincerely, George Duckworth was, in this light, a Wilsonian rather than a Jenkinsite. That is, he extended and built upon rather than replaced or renewed his personality. He was inordinately proud of his roots and never, physically, socially or culturally, abandoned them. Yet he was a very intelligent, well-read man, with self-evident gifts, especially for administrative and allied purposes, as well as a popular and successful sporting performer. As an obvious example, for all he grew from childhood in articulacy and expression, he always retained his rich South Lancashire brogue, itself a very recognisable asset when he engaged in public speaking and later took up broadcasting. With so intelligent a man, it would be foolish not to acknowledge a certain self-awareness about the facets of his personality, any The Legacy 62