Lives in Cricket No 3 - George Duckworth

Faced plainly, the answer to the hypothetical question is a teacher, and for two reasons. First, as we have noted, that was very much the family tradition of public service, in an age when public service was honoured more than is now the unhappy and disgraceful case. An outgoing, ever curious, genial, companionable man, George Duckworth would have made a first-class teacher. Second, there is some sociological evidence that points to teaching being then proportionately the leading professional destiny of expatriate working class high achievers. The explanation is simple enough. They had found themselves comfortable with schooling and their teachers often had, from their own constricted experience, only teaching to recommend to them as a career option. Instead he became a first-class wicket-keeper in both the technical and critical meanings of that word. In that his family have rejoiced, but the more so have they revelled, not so much in the wicket-keeper, as in the complete man, one who personified William Blake’s estimable phrase, ‘energy is eternal delight.’ His heritage In this monograph, I have been keen to represent the more personal viewpoint of George Duckworth’s family and to extend what hitherto had been a convivial but rather straitened portrayal of a popular inter-wars Lancashire cricketing character. Trusting that I have done some rough justice to that purpose, it remains for me to assert author’s rights and finish with an individual recollection and tribute to that talented and entertaining cricketer. My father, who was born fifteen days after ‘Ducky’ and survived him by just two years, was a well-known scorer in the Manchester area. He was the first of the ‘modern’ scorers, according to the late Lord Winstanley, a north-western club cricketer of some repute. Indeed, there was a point, just after the Second World War, when he was invited by Rupert Howard, the Lancashire secretary and father of the Lancashire amateurs, Nigel and Barry, to become one of the Old Trafford scorers. There was much joy in the household, as we thought that this would offer some sort of ‘open Sesame’ for us to cricket’s big-time. My grandmother had been schooled, like Bessie Duckworth, in the rigorous college of hard knocks. Her son had ‘a proper job’ in the fire brigade, a service unlikely to allow its members extended spring and summer leave to pursue another trade. Grandmother’s question was akin to that of the Blackpool The Legacy 68