Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

73 No-ball! called for a sub-committee to be set up to inquire into the matter. Not all of those present agreed with him. The South Melbourne representative said that if - as it appeared - the issue was nothing more than the querying of an umpire’s decision, then no further action was called for; the fact that Young had taken a new line as regards Pitcher’s action “only showed that he might not [in the past] have given sufficient consideration to Pitcher’s style of bowling”. 49 In reply, Phillips added mysteriously that “there was further evidence that he did not wish to make public at present. A remark was alleged to have been made by Young to Pitcher when the latter was placing the ball in the sawdust before bowling that he [Phillips] did not feel disposed to repeat at this stage.” Pitcher, he continued, would mention certain facts and would back them up by a statutory declaration. It was agreed that the matter would be referred to the VCA’s executive committee, with Collingwood supplying them with all the information that they had in hand. The Leader commented at this point that “further developments are anxiously awaited, as the matter resolves itself into a charge against Crockett of bias”. That may be something of an over- simplification, but in any case the effects of the no-balling were still rumbling on. The VCA held its inquiry into the affair on 29 March, at which Crockett and Young were both examined, along with their fellow umpire William Hannah and players Jimmy Matthews (St Kilda, and later a Test cricketer for Australia) and Pitcher’s club-mate Bob Coburn. The brief reports of the inquiry in the contemporary newspapers fail to mention whether Pitcher himself gave any evidence. It was reported that the results of the committee’s deliberations would be put before the next full meeting of the VCA. This meeting was not until mid-May, and by that time it seems that much of the heat had been taken out of the affair. Perhaps even Collingwood had come to accept that the South Melbourne man was right: all they were doing was challenging an umpire’s decision, which had been made in accordance with the laws as they stood at the time, whereby the umpires were required to call a no-ball if they were not entirely satisfied as to the fairness of the delivery. In any event, the report of the VCA’s findings occupied much less space in the newspapers than had the report of Collingwood’s accusations in March. No details of the executive committee’s discussions were given; the papers simply reported that “the executive committee had inquired into this matter and found that the allegations of the Collingwood Club were not sustained, though the executive committee considered they were made bona fide”. The executive’s report was adopted by the VCA and 49 After the MCG game, Young never umpired a District match in which Pitcher played, so we do not know whether his call of ‘no-ball’ against the bowler on 4 February was a permanent, or just a temporary and expedient, judgement of the legality of his action.