Lives in Cricket No 42 - Frank and George Mann

89 Chapter Sixteen MCC in South Africa 1948/49 MCC waited until after the final Test of the 1948 Ashes series, in mid August, before announcing the team that would tour South Africa in the winter of 1948/49. The current England captain Norman Yardley was unable to lead the team and George Mann was delighted to accept the invitation and the opportunity to replicate his father’s successful tour twenty-six years earlier, with the huge bonus of an escape from the ration-book austerity of Britain. The group of players under his command were relatively inexperienced: eight of them had never toured overseas before and only Douglas Wright and Leonard Hutton had been on the last tour to South Africa in 1938/39. In addition to himself there were three amateurs, half as many as those taken by Frank, and without their wives on this occasion, Charles Palmer from Worcestershire, Reg Simpson from Nottinghamshire, and Billy Griffith from Sussex. The twelve professionals came from nine different counties, including two from George’s own county, Middlesex, Jack Young and Denis Compton, plus two from Kent, Doug Wright and Godfrey Evans. Then there was Roly Jenkins from Worcestershire, Jack Crapp from Gloucestershire, Allan Watkins from Glamorgan, Cliff Gladwin from Derbyshire, Alec Bedser from Surrey, Maurice Tremlett from Somerset, Cyril Washbrook from Lancashire, and Len Hutton from Yorkshire. The manager for the tour was Brigadier M.A.Green, who had played for Essex and Gloucestershire before the war and was now secretary of the Worcestershire County Cricket Club. 45 Before he left for South Africa, George sought his father’s advice on how to earn and keep the support of a touring team containing a disparate group of outgoing characters and those content with a more laid-back lifestyle. Frank told him never to accept private invitations to dinner as his absence for such reasons would create a divide between himself and the team. His place should always be in the hotel dining room with the team, no matter how many or how few would be there that evening. It should be the time and place during their travels where he could always be found. Frank also advised George to avoid contact with members of the Press, viewed with suspicion in the early 1920s. But that relationship had changed in the post-war years and George always enjoyed happy relations with sports journalists. MCC had a discouraging start to the tour at Cape Town against Western Province when they conceded 386 runs, took only four wickets, and 45 Among other things Green had played rugby union for Harlequins; had been a member of the Gold Coast (now Ghana) Legislative Council; won an MC in 1918 and had been appointed OBE in 1939 for military services in the Gold Coast, and CBE in 1945 for military services in Britain.