Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

64 The Batsman and Fielder bowling. Wyatt said that he ‘used to give [it] plenty of room’. While not ostensibly moving to leg ‘he didn’t make much effort to move in line: he used to flash at the ball quite a bit … I remember him telling me about his hundred against Harold Larwood: he said he didn’t fancy him a bit when he went in but he managed to get a hundred. He was quite open about it – he just said he didn’t like it 121 … Mind you, there were plenty of other people too who didn’t like it.’ Philip Snow went a little further in saying that ‘he would back away’ and that ‘there was an element of flinching’, but Snow saw him only at a late stage of his career when Astill’s reactions had slowed and he did add that even Hobbs backed away to a certain extent. 122 For a batsman often tired from lengthy spells of bowling that had sometimes ended only ten minutes before he faced his first ball, for a batsman in a team weak in this discipline (even in comparison with other minnows of the Championship) and for one who in his heyday was often relied on as the fulcrum of resistance, it would be reasonable to assume that he was a gritty but dull, at best workmanlike, performer. Dawkes said that he was ‘stodgy’; but Dawkes again knew him only when he was nearing fifty and nowhere else is there any suggestion of this stylistically negative quality. Indeed, the commonest adjective applied to all but the shortest of his innings is ‘attractive’ and after that ‘entertaining’. The first occasionally referred to a defensive performance – and defensive strokes can be very attractively executed – but nearly always when runs were freely made. He had a wide range of strokes all round the wicket and none was ugly: indeed the word ‘pretty’ is often applied to them. Again and again reports tell us that Astill played the most attractive cricket of the innings or the match, or that the batting was enjoyable to watch only while Astill was at the wicket. There was no languid elegance about his play but a bustling and cheerful grace. He clearly enjoyed his batting, as he did his bowling, and communicated that enjoyment to spectators. Many a time on good wickets he scored at the rate of forty or more runs an hour. Even when his innings was described as ‘steady’ we may learn that it was scored at over 40 runs an hour. Occasionally he did play a slow defensive innings, back to the wall, trying to save his county from defeat; but even in dire situations he refused to be cowed. His attitude on such occasions was well expressed by ‘Reynard’ over an undefeated innings of 25 in a total of 66 against Kent in 1920: ‘Astill alone relieved the gloom … He … had the resolution to place some reliance on his batting prowess – which … is much better than imagining that the bowler holds all the trump cards.’ ‘Reynard’, who saw him regularly from the very beginning of his cricket, may be given the last word: Sound and skilful batsman as he is Astill is of the type that the crowd likes, in that he does not sacrifice too much to mere safety, and as he is always ready to get a fair proportion of his runs by hearty methods in front of the wicket, that will be counted him a real virtue. He has all 121 He scored two centuries against Larwood, both not out and at Trent Bridge: 158 in 1926 and 121 the following year. 122 Should we add a further reason – that he played more matches against the powerful sides of Yorkshire (59) and Nottinghamshire (50) than against any other? His averages against these two were 17.31 and 16.60 respectively, his 15.71 against Kent (40 matches) alone being worse.