Lives in Cricket No 6 - Bill Copson

Chapter Four Australia and New Zealand All was now set for what was to be, for Bill Copson, the almost unbelievable magic of selection for the MCC team chosen to tour Australia to try to recover The Ashes, which had been surrendered in 1934. Just over four years previously he had been hewing coal underground and had hardly, if ever, ventured away from his native Derbyshire. Away from his usual winter employment with the Clay Cross Company, he was travelling abroad for the first time in his life, meeting people from all walks of life and visiting places about which he could only have read and never dreamed that he would see. The tour was an extremely long one and involved Bill, a newly married man, being away from home for over seven months in the days when the only means of contact with loved ones at home was by the written word or in an emergency by telegraph with its curt language. This is, of course, a tremendous contrast to today’s continuous electronic communication, where touring cricketers can be whisked home by air when domestic crises occur or to be present at the births of their children. Kenneth Farnes’ mother died during the early part of the tour, but there would have been no question of his being allowed to return home even had he so wanted. Certainly as late as 1954 this view still prevailed when Colin Cowdrey’s father died while the MCC were on their way by ship to Australia. 33 Bill Copson’s 1936 passport photo: it made no difference to the outcome of the Ashes series.