No . 131 The Trusty Servant
his place in cricket ( and other ) history explained . Who could we get to write a foreword ? Both Stephen and I had been present at Bob Barber ’ s 70 th birthday cricket match and dinner at Hambledon in 2005 . Bob had played for Cambridge , Lancashire , Warwickshire and England , and had been a protégé of Harry ’ s since his schooldays at Ruthin School , and it was obvious he was the man . I emailed him and he provided the excellent foreword . As I was to write later , ‘ I can only thank him for remaining a hero to me .’
To explain who Harry was I used a talk I gave at the Hambledon Cricket Club , who meet twice a year for lunch . I greatly expanded this , and at its centre is his description of Don Bradman , taken from the 1938 edition of Harry ’ s A History of Cricket , a perfect example of his writing style . I also included a letter from David Lloyd Owen ( D , 31-36 ) who Harry had taken to Berlin in 1936 to see the Olympic Games . Harry had obviously been very influential on him , and this was also to be seen in the many letters he had kept from the war years from mostly Furleyites who wrote to him from all over the world . That special quality I tried to portray , but only the reader can judge with what success .
The actual letters needed to be placed into their context , and this was , in many ways , the easiest bit to do . Researching through Wisden and various volumes gradually brought the story of the 1958-9 tour into focus , and also the problem of throwing . Trying to provide a one-sentence , or even one-phrase , summary of many great cricketers stretched my powers of expression to ( and probably beyond ) breaking point . The politics of the ICC may appear labyrinthine today , and so they were back in 1960 , but getting Don Bradman , and the Australian chairman Bill Dowling , to come over to England when the South African chairman and president would also be present was key . The West Indian and Indian chairmen also attended , while the newly elected Pakistan were represented by a member of the Embassy , Lieutenant General Yousuf . The Australian delegation stayed in London for three or four weeks for discussion both before and after the conference . The background to the ICC conference was the infamous no-balling of the South African Griffin in the Lord ’ s Test , and the knowledge that the next year , 1961 , was to see an Australian tour , with the pregnant question of what would happen if Meckiff and the other questionable bowlers were chosen in the Australian touring team and were subjected to the scrutiny of English umpires . The compromise eventually reached just about satisfied everybody and the tour passed off successfully , principally because none of the suspects were selected , and also due to the personality and diplomacy of Richie Benaud , the Australian captain .
Taking guard on New Field
In many ways the most elegiac moment in the short volume comes in Harry ’ s letter of March 1961 , shortly after the conclusion of that great series between Australia and West Indies of 1960-61 , which did so much to put cricket back on its feet after the doldrums of the 1950s . He writes :
I suppose there is no chance of your coming over this summer , but I wish you could , if only to come down for a day to Winchester to see it as it looks today , with the most wonderful March sunshine lighting up the College and the Cathedral , which the Conqueror built nearly nine hundred years ago . I still find that , and the boys , a permanent inspiration , and only this afternoon found myself giving a fielding practice to the small sons of two of my colleagues – and , my goodness , how well they caught .
I would like to be able to record that the latter two were my younger brother and I , but I have no evidence that it was , but it was the school holidays , so maybe it was , and we loved fielding practice with him . The sight of sunshine on New Field , looking across Logie to St Catherine ’ s Hill from what are now the Altham Gates , or looking the other way towards Meads , with both College Chapel and the Cathedral as backdrop are as powerful a provoker of memories as those sounds with which I started . Win Coll remains a bedrock in my memories and Harry Altham as an inspiration for this little book .
The Altham – Bradman Letters , edited by Robin Brodhurst , can be purchased from www . cricket-books . com
23