Lives in Cricket No 42 - Frank and George Mann

113 Take-overs and New Responsibilities included Don Bradman, Gubby Allen and Freddie Brown. That year George also succeeded Lord Home of the Hirsel (once Lord Dunglass) as the Governor of I Zingari, the amateur wandering club which played the Eton Ramblers in most years and Sir J.P.Getty’s XI every year at the millionaire’s own ground at Wormsley in Buckinghamshire. He and Margaret moved to the Old Rectory at West Woodhay, not far from Newbury in Berkshire in the early 1960s and downsized to the Great Farm House nearby in the mid 1980s. Margaret died during a holiday in Cornwall in 1995 and George stayed on in West Woodhay, still playing golf regularly, birdwatching, 64 and visiting Lord’s whenever he could, including being the guest of honour at a ‘George Mann Celebratory Lunch’ held at Lord’s on 11 April 2001, attended by many of his Middlesex friends, including John Warr, Phil Edmonds, Bob Gale, Eric Russell, Clive Radley, John Dewes, Alan Moss, Don Bennett and Fred Titmus, as well as Vic Lewis and Joe Hardstaff. He passed away only four months later on 8 August, aged 83, following the rapid onset of a rare form of dementia. George’s various obituarists referred to his ‘courtesy’, to his ‘urbanity’ and to his ‘modesty’. It is clear, though, that they were doing more than simply following the convention that writers in such circumstances pick out their subject’s most acceptable characteristics. George was not much given to seek confrontation − indeed David Frith has recalled his tension immediately prior to addressing a potentially hostile press conference on a South African issue. Some thought his style ‘unobtrusive and shy’ and a fellow director at Mann Crossman thought him ‘a very private person’, reflecting: ‘I have worked [and played club cricket] with George for 30 years and know him no better than the first day.’ In Wisden’ s obituary, his friend, contemporary and sometime adversary, Ken Cranston, the Lancashire captain in 1947 and 1948, recalled ‘a charming, gentlemanly figure from the old-world tradition of cricket’. George of course never had financial concerns on any scale, and though he did not lack determination, it is not surprising that he was without the rough edges of some who run big businesses. It would seem that from his family life and from the management experience he had acquired in the armed forces, in the brewing and later news-gathering businesses (and of course in cricket), by instinct he usually took the position that leadership is at its most effective when it secures the co-operation of those involved. Truly a gentleman. 64 He was a member of wildlife trusts and at one time had owned a former fisherman’s cottage above the Whaligoe Steps at Ulbster, Caithness, where he and Margaret went to pursue their birdwatching interest.