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76 pages

English

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The book tells the story of two test match series: England vs West Indies in 1933 and West Indies vs England in 1935. The England team was one of the best to ever play the game. Their side including: Herbert Sutcliffe, Wally Hammond Harold Larwood and captained by Douglas Jardine had just battered Australia by 4:1 in the infamous bodyline series.Australians though regarded the bodyline series as a travesty: what was supposed to be a gentle game for gentlemen had been turned into a struggle for dominance characterised by violence, intimidation and injury.The West Indian team, made up of from the populations of Britain's scattered possessions in the Caribbean and divided by race as well as island loyalties, seemingly, had little chance against Jardine's juggernaut. But cricket in the West Indies was more than just a game, the cricket field was a place where the island's black population could meet their white compatriots as equals in competition, competitions they often won. West Indian cricket was an exciting new thing, suffused with athletic excellence, passion, the desire for dignity and financial security. Could men like: Learie Constantine, Manny Martindale and George Headley take West Indian cricket out into the world and beat the best the British had to offer?

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Cricket

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Publié par	Troubador Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	25 juin 2019
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781838599775
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	2 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0400€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

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Copyright © 2019 Richard Bentley

The moral right of the author has been asserted.

Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form or by any means, with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.

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ISBN 978 1838599 775

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To Dad
my first reader
with love.
Contents
Chapter 1
Lord’s of London
Chapter 2
Two Cricket Matches and an Assassination Attempt
Chapter 3
Back Pages: The Press and the 1933 Tour
Chapter 4
Amateur Affair
Chapter 5
Prejudicial to the best Interests of the Game
Chapter 6
A War to the Knife
Chapter 7
Empire
Chapter 8
Emmanuel Alfred “Manny” Martindale
Chapter 9
Liberal Imperialists
Chapter 10
Hanging on for a draw
Chapter 11
Bodyline and Learie Constantine
Chapter 12
Spartan Cricketer
Chapter 13
Bodyline Autopsy
Chapter 14
Old Trafford Day 3 and Learie Constantine
Chapter 15
Interlude
Chapter 16
The West Indies 1935 and Captain Cipriani
Chapter 17
Jack Grant, “The Man What Lost the Test Match”
Chapter 18
Wally Hammond
Chapter 19
Trinidad: Last Man Standing
Chapter 20
Room for One More?
Chapter 21
Trinidad, to the Wire
Chapter 22
Trinidad Aftermath
Chapter 23
Jamaica
Chapter 24
George Headley: Atlas
Chapter 25
“This what Martindale do to you”
Chapter 26
The Dawn of a New Era?

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Notes
Chapter 1
Lord’s of London
There has been a Lord’s cricket ground in St John’s Wood, London, for 203 years. Tucked away behind high walls, we are inured to what an odd place it is. The playing area, a circle of the greenest grass in a grey city, is as incongruous as an Aztec temple in the rainforest. Its empty acres surrounded by some of the most expensive real estate in the world are an affront to the priorities of a commercial capital.
The history of Lord’s, its manicured grass and pristine white stands, summons up a folk memory of a cricketing golden age when the sport was supreme and the social waters it sailed in undisturbed. But a cricket ground is a place where two teams come together to play a game and that coming together has always involved the releasing and leashing of social forces. And cricket, like all spectator sports, was never insulated from the requirements of cold, hard cash. As cricket developed as an international sport, nationalism was dragged into the vacant spaces of the cricket field.
This book is about two test match series: the West Indian tour to England and Wales in 1933 and England’s visit to the West Indies in 1935. It is a story filled with great players, glorious achievements and grave defeats. But I have also tried to look at the two series against the background of the 1930s. Because cricket writers of the time did not believe they were living through a golden age, for them the golden era of cricket had ended on 4th August 1914. They lived in a world of economic dislocation, political extremism and fretted that cricket, as they knew it, might not survive. There were cricketing controversies in the 1930s so severe as to threaten the end of test matches between England and Australia and these issues were re-run in the two series against the West Indies.
And it wasn’t only cricketing disputes that had to be mediated. The West Indian team was a racially mixed side from the British Empire’s scattered Caribbean colonies playing a game, cricket, regarded as epitomising English virtues. The series of 1933 and 1935 were about countries and societies, empires and nationalism, as well as cricket and I have tried to show that in the chapters which follow.
Chapter 2
Two Cricket Matches and an Assassination Attempt
The crowd unfurls in the May sunshine, taking their first look at the West Indian cricket tourists of 1933. They have seen George Headley, score a hundred in his first innings at Lord’s and the MCC bowlers take advantage of a hard and fast pitch to restrict the West Indians to 309 all out. Now it is the West Indies’ turn to bowl. In the cooling of the day, the drowsy hum of chatter subsides and the spectators shift to the edges of their seats. The West Indies have two proper fast bowlers in Learie Constantine and Emmanuel (Manny) Martindale, preparing to bowl in the fading light.
The first over is a succession of near misses. The batsmen prod uncertainly in the direction of the ball as it thuds into the wicketkeeper’s gloves. But they hang on, stay in, things get a little easier and the ball begins to hit the bat. The bowlers respond. The length of delivery shortens, the ball rears, threatening fingers and weeks off without match fees. The MCC and Middlesex opener Joe Hulme is struck in the ribs. He reels from the wicket “rubbing furiously”. West Indian captain George (Jack) Grant jogs in from cover point to ask if Hulme is all right. Not all observers are so sympathetic; the “best cricket correspondent in England” considers: “The English batsmen childishly helpless against fast bowling.” 1 Of course, the best cricket correspondent in England is writing from the safety of the stands.
MCC opening batsman, Joe Hulme, also looks like he wants to be somewhere else. He is a professional footballer as well as cricketer, a member of Arsenal’s 1932-1933 title winning side. If it wasn’t for the cricket, he might have played in the May international against Italy in Rome’s Stadio del Partito Nazionale Fascita. But for Hulme cricket comes first, it pays better than football and its maximum wage.
The other opener, John Hearne, is caught by West Indian wicketkeeper Ivan Barrow off the bowling of Constantine for 12.
The MCC side has plenty of good batsmen, including England captains Douglas Jardine and Percy Chapman. But with ten minutes left and in fading light it is William Franklin who comes out to bat as night watchman. Franklin is the weakest player in the MCC team, has never played county cricket, but is still sent in to face two quick, international standard bowlers ahead of players better able to defend themselves. Hulme defends a ball onto the leg side and sets off for a single and the safety of the non-strikers’ end. Franklin sums up his situation, he raises his hand like a policeman and in a voice that rolls across the ground shouts, “Go back, I know where I’m well off.” 2
Franklin can’t stay off strike forever and not surprisingly is clean bowled by Martindale for five in the last over of the day. Hulme, who has got through twenty awkward and painful minutes, scuttles back to the dressing room. The spectators go home well entertained, in a day with over 300 runs scored and twelve wickets lost.
*
With a gate of almost 20,000, the MCC treasurer would also have been satisfied. The attendance was, in large part, due to Learie Constantine playing for the West Indians. On the 15th May The Times included a short article on the hours of play and admission fees for MCC vs West Indies at Lord’s. One column across and at exactly the same height was a notification that Learie Constantine would be playing in the game. This wasn’t a coincidence. There were many famous cricketers in the 1930s: Bradman, Larwood, Hammond and O’Reilly. But the game could be static, rates of scoring slow, the fielding ponderous. Whether batting, bowling or fielding, Learie Constantine was a cricketer in motion. The Morning Post believed he was blessed with “A vivid sense of the improvisatory and far from formal ener