Lives in Cricket No 3 - George Duckworth

landlady who asked her guests complaining about the prices, ‘What do we do in the winter when you’ve gone?’ Sheer economics told and we were doomed to disappointment. My father used to tell the tale of one of the Lancashire scorers, with whom he was closely acquainted, who had been asked by a fledgling wicket-keeper to transfer stray byes into the leg-byes column in order that, when the coach, the unbending Harry Makepeace, examined the accounts, he would not look so inadequate. Harry Makepeace and George Duckworth were watching this club and ground match together and, towards the end of the visitors’ innings, they approached the score-box and glanced at the scorebook. Not only did they, to the alarm of the scorer, identify the discrepancy and subsequently reprimand him, but they were also able to recall every relevant instance throughout the entire innings. The ball that bumped past the desperate wicket-keeper at such and such an end, when the score was 43 and bowler A was on; the ball from bowler B that struck number five batsman’s pad and rolled away towards square leg, where it was fielded by C, just before the fall of the seventh wicket, and so on and so on. It was a master class in professional concentration. Nothing escaped the two veteran cricketers. That ability to carry in the mind the complex and evolving pattern of a relatively insignificant innings offers some insight into why George Duckworth’s was so valuable a cricketing brain. Some years before this incident, in 1940, I was recruited for official war service. I was eight years old at the time. If my father could obtain leave from the fire service, he would often score for the Daily Dispatch War Fund XI. If I could obtain leave from my grandmother, I would accompany him, to provide self-important support by way of turning the rollers and pinning the tins on the scoreboard. My grandmother, although the most generous- spirited of women, took the long view, thinking it a rum sort of war that required for victory a little boy to imperil his immortal soul by helping, in whatsoever an imperative capacity, at a cricket match on the Sabbath. The call to arms triumphing over the hazards of original sin, I thus watched George Duckworth for the first time. One or two others also impressed. Among them were Learie Constantine and E.A.Martindale, the West Indian quick bowlers, and the first black The Legacy 69