Lives in Cricket No 48 - Maurice Leyland

17 Chapter two The match Maurice, much to his surprise, had been asked to bat at number three instead of his usual four or five but happily agreed and padded up in readiness while Hutton and Edrich walked out at 11am to open the innings in front of around 15,000 spectators. Edrich was tense. He looked at the Oval wicket before the game, saw the turf full of runs and the light perfect and thought “there’s no excuse for me if I fail this time”. Yet as he made the long walk to the wicket he was, in his own words, “miserably nervous”. He knew there was a big question mark over his Test match temperament as far as the Press were concerned, not to mention the suggestions of favouritism in his selection, and he was very conscious of this. A single off Mervyn Waite in the second over got him off the mark, and the scoreboard moving, but half an hour into the game, having given only token acknowledgement to the new ball, spinners ‘Chuck’ Fleetwood- Smith and Bill O’Reilly entered the fray and there were knowing nods around the ground that suggested the real contest was about to start. Twenty runs had come off the swing bowlers and Hutton managed to glanceO’Reilly to the fine leg boundary but with 29 on the board, in 45 minutes’ play, Australia made the breakthrough. Edrich, uncertain, playing off the wrong foot, misjudging the pace of the ball, crumbled in the face of the all spin attack and, playing in a way he said he would have been ashamed of at school, put his leg in front of a straight one from O’Reilly. Having been given the benefit of the doubt by umpire Walden after an earlier appeal by Stan McCabe his luck ran out as umpire, judging him lbw, raised his finger to confirm his dismissal and the ‘Tiger’ had bagged his 100th wicket in only 19 Tests. The Middlesex man walked disconsolately back to the pavilion took off his pads and sat down. Looking up at the scoreboard he couldn’t wait for someone else to get out and cover up that ‘Last Man, 12’, that seemed to be staring back at him in letters ten feet high. He later recalled: “Thank goodness, Hutton and Leyland had no intention of obliging me.”