Lives in Cricket No 3 - George Duckworth

My introduction to Old Trafford was macabre. Cec Parkin, the ace prankster, was having his last laugh from beyond mortal bounds. It was the same Parkin who, it was alleged, had once pretended to pick up a ball in the field but, instead, had thrown a splattering orange into ‘Ducky’s’ gloves. He had died in 1943 but had requested that his ashes be spread at Old Trafford when play there recommenced. Officials and players stood alongside the pitch whilst this task was accomplished. A stiff north-easterly breeze was blowing, of a tempo that would prove helpful to Dick Pollard’s outswing when bowling from the Warwick Road end. Cecil Parkin’s remains flurried and gusted back into the startled faces of the mourning party. The cricket match itself proceeded decorously enough. Learie Constantine’s triple cameo of pacy bowling, quick-fire batting and astounding fielding was a gem. Cyril Washbrook scored a brisk hundred, with Winston Place lending him faithful support, and the North of England won by seven wickets. My first remembered visit to Old Trafford, therefore, coincided with George Duckworth’s last major appearance there. There came a moment when George Duckworth, now in his mid-forties and not playing regularly, was keeping to one of the world’s fastest bowlers of that time, with the budding flower of Australian cricket at the crease. He left me, as an aide memoire from one of my first and thus most relished of cricketing idols, a score-line that serves excellently as a text for his life in cricket: Pilot Officer Keith Miller; Stumped George Duckworth; Bowled Learie Constantine 2 The Legacy 71