Lives in Cricket No 42 - Frank and George Mann

110 Take-overs and New Responsibilities cricket very much alive with positions on the committees of Middlesex and MCC, and in 1975 was elected chairman of the Middlesex club. Never forgetting the true roots of cricket, literally, he had also persuaded Watney Mann to present a county cricket ‘Groundsman of the Year’ award. The object of the award was to encourage the preparation of pitches on which attractive cricket can be played. In order to qualify, the groundsman must have prepared at least four pitches for first-class matches. Apparently missing the cut and thrust of commerce, George eventually accepted a position with the Exchange Telegraph Co Ltd (Extel) press agency in 1976; he was deputy chairman of the company between 1980 and 1986. 60 But even that was not enough and he was delighted to take over as chairman of the Test and County Cricket Board in 1978, an appointment welcomed by Swanton: ‘those who knew him best were thankful he was at hand to fill a post of such importance and responsibility.’ The Board had been set up by MCC in 1968 to administer the professional game at the same time as MCC relinquished its control and handed over the reins to the Cricket Council as the governing body of cricket in the United Kingdom. So for the next five years he combined membership of the MCC committee with the chairmanship of both the TCCB and Middlesex. The tangle of relationships between MCC, Middlesex and the TCCB, where some members served on more than one committee, meant that difficult situations often arose which required George to use all his talents for diplomacy and tact to maintain harmony. According to Charles Robins, who succeeded him as chairman of Middlesex: ‘He was the most gentle but thorough of legislators, possessing patience and determination yet allowing everyone to express their opinion.’ Wisden was later to refer to his many committee hats as ‘assorted millinery’ and to the aplomb with which he wore them. One of the most important of those difficult situations arose in 1982 concerning unofficial tours to South Africa. The MCC tour of South Africa in 1968/69 and the South African tour of England in 1970 had been cancelled and for twelve years South Africa had been frozen out of international cricket. Private finance had been made available for private groups of first-class cricketers to be invited to play there, and in the autumn of 1981 the TCCB, having heard that such a tour was being organised, sent a letter to all county cricketers in England, warning them that their presence on such a tour would have serious consequences. 61 That warning was ignored and twelve players, known by some as ‘the dirty dozen’, later increased by injuries to fifteen, were led by Graham Gooch 60 Extel had been set up in 1872 to distribute financial and commercial information about the Stock Exchange and the various London business markets. Its ticker-tape machines provided an almost continuous stream of business data for all types of interests. It broadened out to provide a general news service from about 1880, and into sports news in the 1930s. It was later acquired by United Newspapers and is now part of Thomson Reuters. 61 This was, of course, long after the agreement reached by the Commonwealth governments at Gleneagles in 1977, that they would discourage contact and competition between sportsmen and sporting organisations, teams or individuals from South Africa, in support of the international campaign against apartheid.