G&C 231
GOOGLIES & CHINAMEN
An Occasional Cricketing Journal
Edition 231
March 2022
Spot the Ball
Out and About with the Professor
February is a good month for catching up on some reading, and this February, with its line-up of “named” storms, has given plenty of time indoors.
A golfing chum heard that I had a passing interest in cricket and got in touch. He is a life-long Yorkshire supporter and had a couple of books he thought I might like. He arrived on the doorstep with the generous loan of five: three were about Hutton (his boyhood idol, of course) one about Bradman and the last about Constantine. It is difficult to imagine three cricketers – three of the finest ever cricketers – who went about playing the game in such different ways.
Two of the Hutton books were autobiographies and I think were the least successful. Autobiography is a difficult art form, or so it seems to me (objectivity being, obviously, a particularly tricky issue) and there is no obvious reason why someone who is good at opening the batting should also be a gifted writer, even one who made a living from journalism. Oh I know that ghost writers are often involved (“My life in sport – as told to” .…or somesuch) but I still think it is awkward. I guess many Googlies readers get cricket books as presents, and some are truly dire. A Jimmy Anderson autobiography turned up in my Christmas stocking last year and, sadly, it didn’t sound like Jimmy at all. (An unkind aside here might suggest he will now have more leisure to develop his writing style). It is difficult to believe that some celebrity sports books have even been read by their authors.
Gerald Howat’s “Len Hutton” was a much better read – not quite warts and all but a deal more analytical about the great man. Howat’s cricket biographies will be known to many and this, I think, was one of his later ones. Googlies readers will know a lot about Hutton and I think the most impressive thing (the most “Yorkshire thing”) is the dedication and single mindedness that he employed as he went about his batting….and, perhaps, everything else. His story is of the prodigy, playing for Pudsey St Lawrence while still a child; being the youngest Yorkshireman to score a First Class century; the 364 in only his 6th Test; the professional captaincy of England and so on. What I thought was more interesting was his response to the constant criticism of “caution” both in his batting and captaincy and “reserve” – he “invited admiration rather than affection”. From team mates that might perhaps have been true, but not on the terraces, where they loved him, and for those who saw him play, which includes my golfing chum, still do. The description of his style (from one who never saw him play) was described as largely back foot (although his off drive was “the glory of the game” – Alan Gibson) and as late as possible. Difficult not to think of Joe Root from that description, and his Test average of 56.7 might also be close to Root’s when he finishes. Hutton also had to confront (but perhaps never quite overcome) class distinction in a parallel, but lesser, of course, manner to Constantine and racial discrimination.
Roland Perry’s “The Don” is one of many books about the greatest ever batsman and he makes the case for that description time and again… and it’s not too hard a case to make. This is a hefty 650 page book which goes almost innings by innings through his career, which can be a touch hard work, but two things are made clear and they are the two things that I’ve always thought amazing about Bradman. First, he hardly ever got out. He played his first game for a men’s team as a little boy aged 12. The classic story of the scorer getting to play when the team was one short. He only (sic) got 37 and 29 in his two inning, but they couldn’t get him out…in either innings…he was 12!
When he played for Bowral in a “Bush” (i.e. club) game at 17, the opposition included Bill O’Reilly. O’Reilly had him dropped early on and then later bowled him. In between those two events he scored 234. He got a hundred on debut in Grade cricket and again in First Class cricket. In fact he didn’t play that many games before his First Class debut, because there wasn’t that much cricket to be played: no “under 12’s”, “under 13’s” etc., etc.. Bowral was, at least on its way to, the back of beyond. Indeed he played just 10 First Class matches prior to Test selection. Perry says that Bradman only played 338 “major innings”; he scored a hundred or more, 117 times.
The second thing is the speed at which he scored runs. Not by swiping the ball to the fence – his aversion to hitting sixes after getting into First Class cricket is very well-known – but by scoring off almost every ball. Famously he would look to get a single off his first ball and look to score from everything else. In other words, he rarely left a ball. Rarely “shouldered arms”. Now, how can we square those two things? One way of not getting out much is to let balls outside the off stump go by if they are doing a bit. Nasser, as he likes to tell us, enjoys a “good leave”. Presumably the ball moved about a fair bit when Bradman played; he certainly batted against some great exponents of seam and swing. But, he didn’t leave it alone and he didn’t get out. Hutton’s 364 came from 847 balls and Perry estimates that had Bradman batted for that long he would have been near to 800. I have been to the Adelaide ground and had a go in the mock-up of the water tank and the stick and golf ball that Bradman played with as a child. I’m sure it sharpened up his reflexes, but is that it? How can you play at almost every ball against Test bowlers and not get out? Answer…you have to be Don Bradman.
The book I enjoyed most was the biography of Learie Constantine. It is by Harry Pearson (he of “Slipless in Settle”) and is a book with more pace and drive, and indeed fun (rather like the subject). Pearson also puts Constantine’s career within the context of black people’s struggle for equality which makes it all the more admirable. Indeed, much more admirable. By contrast to the other two, it wasn’t the scores or wickets that Constantine got which stayed in the memory of those who saw him, but the way he played the game. And that was, pretty much, flat out. He only played 18 Tests (remember West Indies Test status in his early years) and only got 641 runs at 19 with a highest of 90 (plus 58 wickets at 30). But people who saw him play never forgot it. In a match at Lord’s for the Windies he scored 50 from 22 balls in 18 minutes. In the same game he had a spell of 6 for 11. He bowled Ian Peebles with the fastest ball Peebles had ever seen: “Except I didn’t see it”. He got a First Class hundred in an hour, and so on and on. Lancashire League cricket, which offered a chance for a black professional cricketer, denied to him by the white establishment in Trinidad, was perfect for the complete showman, blasting the opposition bowlers and batters and – taking catches in the outfield behind his back. How he would have loved T20.
There were things in this book that I didn’t know. I didn’t know that in March 1935 Constantine was the first black man to captain the West Indies – not selected to do so (of course) but taking over from Jackie Grant when he was injured in the outfield. I also knew little about his cricket pedigree which included his father Lebrun (who also played for the Windies, came on a tour to England where he became firm friends with an Irishman called “Learie”) a number of uncles and cousins and his Mum who was "good enough to have kept wicket for a county”. One of Constantine’s team mates in the 1930 side was Frank deCaires, great-grandfather of Atherton fils. There were also some spicy little asides: Pearson repeats the story that Pelham Warner (who was born in Trinidad) may, in addition to his own children, have fathered Gubby Allen; and the debilitating illness that Hammond suffered on returning from a Windies tour might just have been syphilis (Hammond: “liked a shag”). Best of all, Pearson links his biography to the social and political climate of the times (the link, for example, between Test status and Independence – of real importance for many black cricketers). The best cricket books are always about more than cricket.
A couple of other things link these three brilliant players: religion and money. Faith was important in each of their lives: Hutton as a Moravian, Bradman a Protestant and Constantine as a Catholic. I’ve heard the story many times about Fingleton and O’Reilly collapsing in laughter when Hollies bowled Bradman, which some put down to a long antipathy between Fingleton and Bradman going back to Bodyline, but others have located in the latter two’s Catholicism. In each one of these books, however, there are references to the importance of religious belief. Of similar, but perhaps slightly less devotion (?), was their concern about making money from their prodigious talents. None came from really poor backgrounds but each had to make their way and knew the value of what they could do and were seldom tempted to lavish, and certainly not squander, their earnings. “Mean” is perhaps too unkind a word (notwithstanding Bradman’s refusal to buy drinks from his windfall payments) but “careful” certainly seems to fit and money was perhaps a third thing that Hutton was cautious about.
So, some dark, cold and miserable February hours well spent I think….I hope you think so too.
This & That
I commented last month about the amusingly titled Islamabad United in the PSL and their unlikely opening combination of Stirling and Hales. Stirling is only there for a few games before returning to Irish duties. However, I watched their second partnership against the Quetta Gladiators when Hales was out in the fourth over for 22 from 9 balls with the score on 55. Stirling went on to make 58 from 28. Stirling seems to be one of the very top performers in T20 at present and given his position in ODIs in 2021 he may well be currently the best white ball batsman in the world. On one of my more recent visits to Lord’s (probably longer ago than I am recalling) he batted at four and top scored with 82 in a four-day game and looked easily Middlesex’s best batsman. He may have been underrated for a long time.
Meanwhile Islamabad had to move Colin Munroe down to three to accommodate him but in this match he made 72 from 39 with five sixes and Azam Khan made 65 from 35 with six sixes. They are a good batting line up to watch. I hope that at some point Stirling will get to bat with Azam as they could make the world’s largest ever pair at the wicket.
I was late joining the action when Lahore Qalanders batted first against the Quetta Gladiators but was in time to see Harry Brook’s cameo. He came in when the commentators had written the pitch off as too slow for stroke making but he made 41 not out from 17 balls and, accompanied by David Wiesse, 22 from 9, took the score to an hitherto unlikely 204 for 5. Jason Roy had recently arrived from England duties in the West Indies and completed his quarantine the day before the match and had had no practice sessions. He opened for Quetta in reply against Lahore’s formidable bowling attack which included Shaheen Shah Afridi, Haris Rauf and Rashid Khan. He proceeded to give an extraordinary display of clean hitting and indeed remonstrated with himself whenever he failed to reach the boundary. When his partner Ahsan Ali was out for 9 off 8 balls the score was 71 after 5 overs. He went on to his hundred from 49 balls and was finally dismissed for 116 from 57 balls in an innings which included 8 sixes and 11 fours. Viv Richards led the standing ovation as he left the field.
Azam Khan normally threatens to do terrible things to a bowling attack but rarely delivers. However, against Peshawar he got it all right and made a magnificent 85 from 45 balls with 7 sixes. He seems a humourless individual and never smiles even when he dispatches a length delivery 100 metres into the night sky.
A precocious talent to look out for is the twenty-year-old, ultra-self-confident Mohammad Haris. He is one of a very select band who has despatched his first ball in the PSL for 6. Opening for Peshawar against Islamabad he reached his fifty in 18 balls and was dismissed for 70 from 32 balls in an innings which included 5 sixes. Like Jason Roy he expects to score a boundary from every ball he faces. Recently he played for Pakistan in the Under 19 World Cup final and was interviewed before the match. He told the interviewer he would be back after the match to claim his Man of the Match Award.
I often thought that Harry Brook was batting too low for Lahore and his innings against Islamabad rather proved this. He came in at 12 for 3 in the Powerplay and proceeded to give a masterclass in modern T20 batting. He hit the ball cleanly all round the wicket and reached 102 not out from 49 deliveries. I liked the look of him in the Hundred last year and he will be knocking on the door of both international white ball sides soon. He later played the decisive innings in the final with 41 not out from 22 deliveries adding 43 with David Wiese from the last 16 balls of the innings
Another promising Englishman is Will Smeed who looked good in The Lord’s final last year and has made two scores in the 90s. Englishmen who have not progressed their careers in this tournament include James Vince, Phil Salt, Joe Clarke, Tom Lamonby, Will Jacks and Liam Livingstone. George Garton also did poorly on his rare appearances.
I was not familiar with Tim David when he appeared in this year’s PSL, although I now understand that he turned out at the end of last year for Surrey. He is 6’ 5” and plays for Singapore. He has what is described in the franchise fraternity as long levers. He plays for the Multan Sultans and when Shan Masood and Mohammed Rizwan eventually get out he arrives at the crease and tees off immediately. He clears the rope (or as it is now called the Toblerone) with effortless ease all round from square cover to square leg. Against Peshawar Zalmi he made 51 not out from 19 balls.
A feature of the PSL has been the number of overthrows generated. This arises because the fielders all throw hard at the stumps regardless of whether the batsmen has already made his ground or not. Wicketkeeping (often performed by stand in batters) becomes a nightmare and the bowlers regularly don’t make any attempt to field the returns. If the ball hits the stumps overthrow chances are greatly increased. I remember Steve Caley saying his lasting memory of fielding in the Hong Kong Sixes was how hard the ball was hit. Now any attempt to collect throw -ins joins this jeopardy. Many of the fielders wear plasters and bandages on their fingers and hands and the commentators have suggested that this often disguises padding. I suspect that there will be some law changes soon to accommodate this armour. If not the fielders will have to ignore their coaches directions.
Shahid Afridi made an early appearance in the PSL and other performers in their fifth decade have starred throughout- Shoaib Malik, Mohammed Hafeez and Imran Tahir. Samit Patel is also there and he is, of course, 56.
In the India v West Indies T20 series it is not the established Indian batsmen who have caught the eye, although Rohit, Kohli and Pant all made scores, but rather Suryakumar Yadav and Venkatesh Iyer who both demonstrated extraordinary clean hitting skills. Suryakumar knows the way to a big score is by hitting sixes. In the third T20 he made 65 from 31 balls with 1 four and 7 sixes.
In the ODI between Bangladesh and Afghanistan, the tourists made a modest 215 but in reply Bangladesh slumped to 45 for 6 before A Hossain (93 not out) and Mehedi Hasan( 81 not out ) added and an unbroken partnership of 173 to see their side home.
Brice Samba, the Nottingham Forest goalkeeper, became every mother’s nightmare when he appeared in their cup tie against Leicester in an all-white kit. The only colour on display was the green of his boots.
I have previously been a critic of the penalty taking abilities of professional footballers, which, of course, is highlighted in penalty shootouts. I was therefore amazed and pleasantly surprised by the quality of spot kicks in last weekend’s Wembley final. All outfield players scored on both sides and it was only the ridiculous Kepa who had come on specifically for the Shoot Out who blasted his kick over the bar. His antics precluded him from saving at least one of Liverpool’s kicks. It should also be remembered that he refused to be substituted in the Cup Final a couple of years ago.
Some interesting names were ignored at the IPL auction. Eoin Morgan Adil Rashid, Sam Billings, Chris Jordan, Sam Billings, Steve Smith and the world’s top all-rounder Bangladesh’ Shakib Al Hasan were all left unsold.
Morgan Matters
We are all wondering whether the GJM will emerge from his exile from Lord’s next month
Warwick's former England allrounder Tim Bresnan has retired aged 36. He played 23 Tests and was an Ashes winner in 2010/11 and 2013 and a WC winner in 2010. He played 85 ODIs and 34 T20 internationals.
Middlesex have become the first County Championship side to sign the Muslim Athlete charter, ensuring cricket is a game "that can be enjoyed by everyone"... even those watching this winter? Middlesex have re-signed Afghan spinner Mujeeb Ur Rahman for this year's T20. S Robson (32) has extended his Middlesex contract until the end of the 2024 season.
B Stokes will have a camera crew following him during the Caribbean tour as he has signed up for a documentary about his life: how much do you think this will improve his performnces?
The ECB has lifted the suspension on Headingley staging internationals and they might be allowed to stage the third Test v NZ (June) and an ODI v SA in July.
J Liew, in the G, thinks that Anderson and Broad could be the last red-ball specialist seamers we ever see.
Worcestershire have signed Pakistan batsman Azhar Ali to replace Matthew Wade (who has gone to the IPL) for the 2022 County Champ season. Meanwhile Durham have signed SA batsman Keegan Petersen for 7 Championship games before he joins up with the SA squad.
The March Cricketer tells us that
West Iindies off-spinner and last survivor of the famous 1950 Test side, Sonny Ramadhin is dead aged 92.
What’s wrong with English Cricket?
Douglas Miller shares some views
A poor performance in the Ashes invariably calls for heads to roll in all directions, some of them to be severed from track-suited bodies, others from blazers or suits. The truth, of course, is that if the players were more talented, the organ grinder’s monkey could open the champagne as coach. When England last won in Australia the top seven in the batting order ended their Test careers with averages over 40. This past winter we have been trying to make do with a majority of the top order struggling to reach 30 and plummeting. That is the essence of the problem. No wonder Middlesex didn’t bother to add Graham Thorpe to the short list of candidates as their next coach.
There is an immediate cry for a re-vamp of the domestic fixture list. Whilst seeing some sense in this, I wonder to what extent it is truly relevant. I rather suspect an underlying motive is the wish for more first-class cricket to be laid on for the benefit of the thermos and sandwich brigade relaxing under the limes at Worcester or Chelmsford. Elsewhere in the world Test batsmen emerge and thrive without much long-form cricket beyond their international commitments. In a career spanning 25 years Sachin Tendulkar played 200 Tests but just 110 other first-class matches. For Ricky Ponting the figures are 168 and 121, while Vinod Kohli has played only two other first-class matches since winning the first of his 99 Test caps in 2011. It is true that a few of the Australians had enjoyed a couple of Sheffield Shield knocks ahead of the Ashes, but David Warner, with three Shield appearances in four years, and Steve Smith, with only four over the same period, were not among them.
Ten matches per team is the ration in the Sheffield Shield, while New Zealanders manage well enough on just eight in the Plunket Shield. Eight is also the ration in South Africa and there are no more in the Ranji Trophy, a competition Kohli has not graced for eleven years. If there is a message about our own championship it is surely that we should not be sacrificing quality for quantity. Once this is established and we slim down to perhaps ten matches per team, neatly spread across three divisions of six teams, the need to start on April Fools ’ Day recedes. Under such a scheme each match would count for more and, with talent migrating to the stronger teams, the gap between county and Test cricket would narrow.
A benefit of not overcrowding the first-class programme is that adequate time is retained for the shorter forms of the game. The format that most closely replicates the cricket with which most of us are familiar as players is the 50 over game, where there is time to build an innings in the traditional manner. It is a format which has suffered from the determination to run two competitions of 20 overs or less. Yes, this may be one too many, but it is a format that is vital to the welfare of the wider game. The attraction of a match that starts and ends in a single evening, as a football match might, seems well proven by the attendance figures and the obvious excitement in the crowd, even more notably overseas. These matches cost far less to stage than a four-day game with all its attendant catering and hotel bills, usually played out before a few hundred spectators and offering little to interest the television channels.
The case for a thriving short form game is even stronger once one begins to look at cricket in a truly global sense. Anyone who doubts this should read Evita Burned Down Our Pavilion, a remarkable book by two cricket journalists, Timothy Abraham and James Coyne, the latter the assistant editor of The Cricketer. Together they back-packed their way round Central and South America to seek out and record the origins and subsequent fortunes of cricket in each of the countries. What relevance can four- and five-day cricket have to those struggling to sustain the game in ICC Associate member countries such as Peru or Costa Rica, let alone those who hardly aspire to such recognition like Ecuador or Guatemala? The shorter the game, the more accessible it becomes and, perhaps, the closer to its roots when farm labourers played casual games as the sun set or factory workers found time for a few balls against a chalked wicket in their lunch hour.
Bridging the gap from short form cricket will always be a challenge facing those who aspire to succeed as Test cricketers. Inevitably they will have been reared on games where the mindset must be focused on scoring opportunities, whereas keeping one’s wicket intact is a first priority in longer forms. This easily, and sensibly, leads to some batters adopting different stances at the crease and finding that traditional text book methods can be abandoned against white Kookaburra balls. Many find adjustment to the longer game difficult, as those who clamoured for Jason Roy as an Ashes opener soon came to recognize.
Moving to the business of selection, is not the choice of Roy exactly the kind of decision one might hope a highly paid professional selector would have resisted? Where the rest of us may place undue emphasis on raw statistics, one with the sagacity of Duncan Fletcher was able to see Chris Adams in the nets and correctly predict failure. Commentators in Australia made constant reference to the positioning of Hameed’s hands. All highly technical talk well above my pay grade, but indicative of the kind of shortcoming that we might hope a selector mindful of Australian conditions would have been able to spot to justify his salary. These are not easy calls to make. Should Dominic Sibley’s patent offside limitations be ignored and judgements based on the impressive statistic of facing more championship deliveries than any other player? Should we fall into the trap of believing that Zak Crawley’s classically high elbow means that his meagre average is misleading and that he will compensate for the looseness of technique that has so often cost him his wicket? Should Rory Burns’ shuffling around be discounted by the weight of his championship runs? Why have Ollie Pope’s early runs dried up?
Regardless of whether the team coach or a panel of selectors make the decisions, these are some of the questions that must be asked. It is such choices that bring success or failure. There is, too, the paradox that the putative best eleven took the field, so why might the second choices perform better? At the time of writing a party for the West Indies has just been announced. Of one thing I feel certain: those chosen will not meet with universal approval, and the probability is that most of the sceptics will be justified one way or the other at the end of the series until there is a stronger pool from which to pick. Or, perhaps worse still, West Indies, where we have not won since the days of Michael Vaughan, will prove supine opposition and easy runs will flow from the bats of those who will only later join the long queue of batters proven to be below Test class.
Tom Harrison was out in Australia to see some of the Ashes carnage. Hardly a necessary journey given the quality of television coverage, but what is he to do about it all before his time at the helm expires? Let us be clear about one matter: the resources now available for coaching and match play down the age groups far exceed anything that was possible or even attempted before the Sky money came flowing in. The implementation and administration of much of this helps to understand the bewildering number on the payroll at the ECB. It contrasts with how things were less than fifty years ago when Cedric Rhoades, chairman of Lancashire, was outlining his plans to remove the TCCB, ECB’s predecessor, from Lord’s to offices at Nottingham where he estimated a salary bill of £5,600 would be enough to keep the show on the road.
We now have two million pounds of government money coming into the ECB, almost enough to cover the pay and bonuses finding their way into the pocket of the chief executive. Such remuneration cannot be right. Whereas Harrison may point to television contracts won that justify his pay, the game will be the healthier for pegging the financial reward to, say, £250,000, thereby attracting those whose prime motivation is more likely to be the welfare of the game. The swing away from distinguished past players to businessmen with scant experience of the game beyond club cricket appears to be one of the contributing factors to the structural weaknesses that have not helped our Test teams in recent years. We still need the money as much as when the first £6,000 was extracted from Gillette, but the need for a deeper understanding of the game at its highest level has now become paramount.
Hall of Shame
I find it increasingly puzzling that professional footballers are so lacking in the basic skills even at the highest level. In front of goal the vast majority of them lean back, don’t get their weight over the ball and blast it over the crossbar. Even the beloved Trent is guilty of this. What do these guys do in training? Do they not do any practice of the basic skills?
Barnet Watch
Manchester City’s Nathan Ake hasn’t changed barbers since his Southampton days and he still looks like an old-fashioned floor mop stood in the corner.
David Weisse the South African itinerant cricketer hasn’t been to the barbers this century and looks like a base player from a mediocre seventies rock band.
Meanwhile Marcus Rashford and Joelinton keep everyone happy by maintaining their “cheese on toast” styles.
Phil Foden can do no wrong in many eyes but he certainly needs to change his hairdresser. In January he was sporting a shaved at the sides look with the remaining hair on top dyed blond. He joins Benrama and Richarlison in the Crème Brulee camp.
The West Indian cricketer, Kyle Mayer, unusually in the current era, fields without a cap and shows little hair except a patch at the back of his head held together, presumably, by a rubber band. This looks like a sprouting carrot and he would not look out of place on a vegetable allotment.
The mercurial leg spinner, Imran Tahir, grew his hair long in the lock downs and it is now streaked with grey. When playing he ties it into a bun at the back and looks just like a Victorian granny.
The Liverpool defender, Fabinho, has given up completely on hair styles and has shaved it all off.
Odd Man Out
Ian Harris (Ged) and John Williams both identified Laurie Evans as last month’s Odd Man Out since he has never had a Middlesex contract.
Why not have a go at making up your own Jazz Hat XI or setting an Odd Man Out? All suggestions will be welcome.
Old Danes Gathering
The Last Old Danes Gathering will take place on Friday 29 July at Shepherds Bush CC. The day is the final day of the club's cricket week. The Gathering will commence at 2pm but attendees will be welcome throughout the afternoon.
This is not a gathering of cricketers and all Old Danes, their partners, friends and even non Old Danes will be welcome. There is no dress code for the event and no prizes will be awarded for the oldest attendees.
I am circulating a list of attendees and apologies on a separate circulation list. If you would like to be added to this list please let me know.
Googlies Website
All the back editions of Googlies can be found on the G&C website. There are also many photographs most of which have never appeared in Googlies.
www.googliesandchinamen.com
Googlies and Chinamen
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Broad Lee House
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An Occasional Cricketing Journal
Edition 231
March 2022
Spot the Ball
- Jonathan Agnew: What is your philosophy on captaincy, Joe?
- Darren Gough: Just wait and see. Our team is going to look like the Black and White Minstrels. Oh dear, what have I said…
- Tim Murtagh: If they have dropped Anderson and Broad perhaps they will need to turn to an alternative experienced performer.
- Mark Ramprakesh: I’ve been brought in as Coach but from what I have seen I’ll be in the team by June.
- Shaheen Shah Afridi: What do you mean I will be playing for Middlesex this year? I understood from my agent that I would be bowling against them!
Out and About with the Professor
February is a good month for catching up on some reading, and this February, with its line-up of “named” storms, has given plenty of time indoors.
A golfing chum heard that I had a passing interest in cricket and got in touch. He is a life-long Yorkshire supporter and had a couple of books he thought I might like. He arrived on the doorstep with the generous loan of five: three were about Hutton (his boyhood idol, of course) one about Bradman and the last about Constantine. It is difficult to imagine three cricketers – three of the finest ever cricketers – who went about playing the game in such different ways.
Two of the Hutton books were autobiographies and I think were the least successful. Autobiography is a difficult art form, or so it seems to me (objectivity being, obviously, a particularly tricky issue) and there is no obvious reason why someone who is good at opening the batting should also be a gifted writer, even one who made a living from journalism. Oh I know that ghost writers are often involved (“My life in sport – as told to” .…or somesuch) but I still think it is awkward. I guess many Googlies readers get cricket books as presents, and some are truly dire. A Jimmy Anderson autobiography turned up in my Christmas stocking last year and, sadly, it didn’t sound like Jimmy at all. (An unkind aside here might suggest he will now have more leisure to develop his writing style). It is difficult to believe that some celebrity sports books have even been read by their authors.
Gerald Howat’s “Len Hutton” was a much better read – not quite warts and all but a deal more analytical about the great man. Howat’s cricket biographies will be known to many and this, I think, was one of his later ones. Googlies readers will know a lot about Hutton and I think the most impressive thing (the most “Yorkshire thing”) is the dedication and single mindedness that he employed as he went about his batting….and, perhaps, everything else. His story is of the prodigy, playing for Pudsey St Lawrence while still a child; being the youngest Yorkshireman to score a First Class century; the 364 in only his 6th Test; the professional captaincy of England and so on. What I thought was more interesting was his response to the constant criticism of “caution” both in his batting and captaincy and “reserve” – he “invited admiration rather than affection”. From team mates that might perhaps have been true, but not on the terraces, where they loved him, and for those who saw him play, which includes my golfing chum, still do. The description of his style (from one who never saw him play) was described as largely back foot (although his off drive was “the glory of the game” – Alan Gibson) and as late as possible. Difficult not to think of Joe Root from that description, and his Test average of 56.7 might also be close to Root’s when he finishes. Hutton also had to confront (but perhaps never quite overcome) class distinction in a parallel, but lesser, of course, manner to Constantine and racial discrimination.
Roland Perry’s “The Don” is one of many books about the greatest ever batsman and he makes the case for that description time and again… and it’s not too hard a case to make. This is a hefty 650 page book which goes almost innings by innings through his career, which can be a touch hard work, but two things are made clear and they are the two things that I’ve always thought amazing about Bradman. First, he hardly ever got out. He played his first game for a men’s team as a little boy aged 12. The classic story of the scorer getting to play when the team was one short. He only (sic) got 37 and 29 in his two inning, but they couldn’t get him out…in either innings…he was 12!
When he played for Bowral in a “Bush” (i.e. club) game at 17, the opposition included Bill O’Reilly. O’Reilly had him dropped early on and then later bowled him. In between those two events he scored 234. He got a hundred on debut in Grade cricket and again in First Class cricket. In fact he didn’t play that many games before his First Class debut, because there wasn’t that much cricket to be played: no “under 12’s”, “under 13’s” etc., etc.. Bowral was, at least on its way to, the back of beyond. Indeed he played just 10 First Class matches prior to Test selection. Perry says that Bradman only played 338 “major innings”; he scored a hundred or more, 117 times.
The second thing is the speed at which he scored runs. Not by swiping the ball to the fence – his aversion to hitting sixes after getting into First Class cricket is very well-known – but by scoring off almost every ball. Famously he would look to get a single off his first ball and look to score from everything else. In other words, he rarely left a ball. Rarely “shouldered arms”. Now, how can we square those two things? One way of not getting out much is to let balls outside the off stump go by if they are doing a bit. Nasser, as he likes to tell us, enjoys a “good leave”. Presumably the ball moved about a fair bit when Bradman played; he certainly batted against some great exponents of seam and swing. But, he didn’t leave it alone and he didn’t get out. Hutton’s 364 came from 847 balls and Perry estimates that had Bradman batted for that long he would have been near to 800. I have been to the Adelaide ground and had a go in the mock-up of the water tank and the stick and golf ball that Bradman played with as a child. I’m sure it sharpened up his reflexes, but is that it? How can you play at almost every ball against Test bowlers and not get out? Answer…you have to be Don Bradman.
The book I enjoyed most was the biography of Learie Constantine. It is by Harry Pearson (he of “Slipless in Settle”) and is a book with more pace and drive, and indeed fun (rather like the subject). Pearson also puts Constantine’s career within the context of black people’s struggle for equality which makes it all the more admirable. Indeed, much more admirable. By contrast to the other two, it wasn’t the scores or wickets that Constantine got which stayed in the memory of those who saw him, but the way he played the game. And that was, pretty much, flat out. He only played 18 Tests (remember West Indies Test status in his early years) and only got 641 runs at 19 with a highest of 90 (plus 58 wickets at 30). But people who saw him play never forgot it. In a match at Lord’s for the Windies he scored 50 from 22 balls in 18 minutes. In the same game he had a spell of 6 for 11. He bowled Ian Peebles with the fastest ball Peebles had ever seen: “Except I didn’t see it”. He got a First Class hundred in an hour, and so on and on. Lancashire League cricket, which offered a chance for a black professional cricketer, denied to him by the white establishment in Trinidad, was perfect for the complete showman, blasting the opposition bowlers and batters and – taking catches in the outfield behind his back. How he would have loved T20.
There were things in this book that I didn’t know. I didn’t know that in March 1935 Constantine was the first black man to captain the West Indies – not selected to do so (of course) but taking over from Jackie Grant when he was injured in the outfield. I also knew little about his cricket pedigree which included his father Lebrun (who also played for the Windies, came on a tour to England where he became firm friends with an Irishman called “Learie”) a number of uncles and cousins and his Mum who was "good enough to have kept wicket for a county”. One of Constantine’s team mates in the 1930 side was Frank deCaires, great-grandfather of Atherton fils. There were also some spicy little asides: Pearson repeats the story that Pelham Warner (who was born in Trinidad) may, in addition to his own children, have fathered Gubby Allen; and the debilitating illness that Hammond suffered on returning from a Windies tour might just have been syphilis (Hammond: “liked a shag”). Best of all, Pearson links his biography to the social and political climate of the times (the link, for example, between Test status and Independence – of real importance for many black cricketers). The best cricket books are always about more than cricket.
A couple of other things link these three brilliant players: religion and money. Faith was important in each of their lives: Hutton as a Moravian, Bradman a Protestant and Constantine as a Catholic. I’ve heard the story many times about Fingleton and O’Reilly collapsing in laughter when Hollies bowled Bradman, which some put down to a long antipathy between Fingleton and Bradman going back to Bodyline, but others have located in the latter two’s Catholicism. In each one of these books, however, there are references to the importance of religious belief. Of similar, but perhaps slightly less devotion (?), was their concern about making money from their prodigious talents. None came from really poor backgrounds but each had to make their way and knew the value of what they could do and were seldom tempted to lavish, and certainly not squander, their earnings. “Mean” is perhaps too unkind a word (notwithstanding Bradman’s refusal to buy drinks from his windfall payments) but “careful” certainly seems to fit and money was perhaps a third thing that Hutton was cautious about.
So, some dark, cold and miserable February hours well spent I think….I hope you think so too.
This & That
I commented last month about the amusingly titled Islamabad United in the PSL and their unlikely opening combination of Stirling and Hales. Stirling is only there for a few games before returning to Irish duties. However, I watched their second partnership against the Quetta Gladiators when Hales was out in the fourth over for 22 from 9 balls with the score on 55. Stirling went on to make 58 from 28. Stirling seems to be one of the very top performers in T20 at present and given his position in ODIs in 2021 he may well be currently the best white ball batsman in the world. On one of my more recent visits to Lord’s (probably longer ago than I am recalling) he batted at four and top scored with 82 in a four-day game and looked easily Middlesex’s best batsman. He may have been underrated for a long time.
Meanwhile Islamabad had to move Colin Munroe down to three to accommodate him but in this match he made 72 from 39 with five sixes and Azam Khan made 65 from 35 with six sixes. They are a good batting line up to watch. I hope that at some point Stirling will get to bat with Azam as they could make the world’s largest ever pair at the wicket.
I was late joining the action when Lahore Qalanders batted first against the Quetta Gladiators but was in time to see Harry Brook’s cameo. He came in when the commentators had written the pitch off as too slow for stroke making but he made 41 not out from 17 balls and, accompanied by David Wiesse, 22 from 9, took the score to an hitherto unlikely 204 for 5. Jason Roy had recently arrived from England duties in the West Indies and completed his quarantine the day before the match and had had no practice sessions. He opened for Quetta in reply against Lahore’s formidable bowling attack which included Shaheen Shah Afridi, Haris Rauf and Rashid Khan. He proceeded to give an extraordinary display of clean hitting and indeed remonstrated with himself whenever he failed to reach the boundary. When his partner Ahsan Ali was out for 9 off 8 balls the score was 71 after 5 overs. He went on to his hundred from 49 balls and was finally dismissed for 116 from 57 balls in an innings which included 8 sixes and 11 fours. Viv Richards led the standing ovation as he left the field.
Azam Khan normally threatens to do terrible things to a bowling attack but rarely delivers. However, against Peshawar he got it all right and made a magnificent 85 from 45 balls with 7 sixes. He seems a humourless individual and never smiles even when he dispatches a length delivery 100 metres into the night sky.
A precocious talent to look out for is the twenty-year-old, ultra-self-confident Mohammad Haris. He is one of a very select band who has despatched his first ball in the PSL for 6. Opening for Peshawar against Islamabad he reached his fifty in 18 balls and was dismissed for 70 from 32 balls in an innings which included 5 sixes. Like Jason Roy he expects to score a boundary from every ball he faces. Recently he played for Pakistan in the Under 19 World Cup final and was interviewed before the match. He told the interviewer he would be back after the match to claim his Man of the Match Award.
I often thought that Harry Brook was batting too low for Lahore and his innings against Islamabad rather proved this. He came in at 12 for 3 in the Powerplay and proceeded to give a masterclass in modern T20 batting. He hit the ball cleanly all round the wicket and reached 102 not out from 49 deliveries. I liked the look of him in the Hundred last year and he will be knocking on the door of both international white ball sides soon. He later played the decisive innings in the final with 41 not out from 22 deliveries adding 43 with David Wiese from the last 16 balls of the innings
Another promising Englishman is Will Smeed who looked good in The Lord’s final last year and has made two scores in the 90s. Englishmen who have not progressed their careers in this tournament include James Vince, Phil Salt, Joe Clarke, Tom Lamonby, Will Jacks and Liam Livingstone. George Garton also did poorly on his rare appearances.
I was not familiar with Tim David when he appeared in this year’s PSL, although I now understand that he turned out at the end of last year for Surrey. He is 6’ 5” and plays for Singapore. He has what is described in the franchise fraternity as long levers. He plays for the Multan Sultans and when Shan Masood and Mohammed Rizwan eventually get out he arrives at the crease and tees off immediately. He clears the rope (or as it is now called the Toblerone) with effortless ease all round from square cover to square leg. Against Peshawar Zalmi he made 51 not out from 19 balls.
A feature of the PSL has been the number of overthrows generated. This arises because the fielders all throw hard at the stumps regardless of whether the batsmen has already made his ground or not. Wicketkeeping (often performed by stand in batters) becomes a nightmare and the bowlers regularly don’t make any attempt to field the returns. If the ball hits the stumps overthrow chances are greatly increased. I remember Steve Caley saying his lasting memory of fielding in the Hong Kong Sixes was how hard the ball was hit. Now any attempt to collect throw -ins joins this jeopardy. Many of the fielders wear plasters and bandages on their fingers and hands and the commentators have suggested that this often disguises padding. I suspect that there will be some law changes soon to accommodate this armour. If not the fielders will have to ignore their coaches directions.
Shahid Afridi made an early appearance in the PSL and other performers in their fifth decade have starred throughout- Shoaib Malik, Mohammed Hafeez and Imran Tahir. Samit Patel is also there and he is, of course, 56.
In the India v West Indies T20 series it is not the established Indian batsmen who have caught the eye, although Rohit, Kohli and Pant all made scores, but rather Suryakumar Yadav and Venkatesh Iyer who both demonstrated extraordinary clean hitting skills. Suryakumar knows the way to a big score is by hitting sixes. In the third T20 he made 65 from 31 balls with 1 four and 7 sixes.
In the ODI between Bangladesh and Afghanistan, the tourists made a modest 215 but in reply Bangladesh slumped to 45 for 6 before A Hossain (93 not out) and Mehedi Hasan( 81 not out ) added and an unbroken partnership of 173 to see their side home.
Brice Samba, the Nottingham Forest goalkeeper, became every mother’s nightmare when he appeared in their cup tie against Leicester in an all-white kit. The only colour on display was the green of his boots.
I have previously been a critic of the penalty taking abilities of professional footballers, which, of course, is highlighted in penalty shootouts. I was therefore amazed and pleasantly surprised by the quality of spot kicks in last weekend’s Wembley final. All outfield players scored on both sides and it was only the ridiculous Kepa who had come on specifically for the Shoot Out who blasted his kick over the bar. His antics precluded him from saving at least one of Liverpool’s kicks. It should also be remembered that he refused to be substituted in the Cup Final a couple of years ago.
Some interesting names were ignored at the IPL auction. Eoin Morgan Adil Rashid, Sam Billings, Chris Jordan, Sam Billings, Steve Smith and the world’s top all-rounder Bangladesh’ Shakib Al Hasan were all left unsold.
Morgan Matters
We are all wondering whether the GJM will emerge from his exile from Lord’s next month
Warwick's former England allrounder Tim Bresnan has retired aged 36. He played 23 Tests and was an Ashes winner in 2010/11 and 2013 and a WC winner in 2010. He played 85 ODIs and 34 T20 internationals.
Middlesex have become the first County Championship side to sign the Muslim Athlete charter, ensuring cricket is a game "that can be enjoyed by everyone"... even those watching this winter? Middlesex have re-signed Afghan spinner Mujeeb Ur Rahman for this year's T20. S Robson (32) has extended his Middlesex contract until the end of the 2024 season.
B Stokes will have a camera crew following him during the Caribbean tour as he has signed up for a documentary about his life: how much do you think this will improve his performnces?
The ECB has lifted the suspension on Headingley staging internationals and they might be allowed to stage the third Test v NZ (June) and an ODI v SA in July.
J Liew, in the G, thinks that Anderson and Broad could be the last red-ball specialist seamers we ever see.
Worcestershire have signed Pakistan batsman Azhar Ali to replace Matthew Wade (who has gone to the IPL) for the 2022 County Champ season. Meanwhile Durham have signed SA batsman Keegan Petersen for 7 Championship games before he joins up with the SA squad.
The March Cricketer tells us that
- India lifted their fifth U-19 World Cup title, beating England in the final by 4 wkts, Somerset left hander James Rew made 95;
- retired former Zimbabwe capt Brendan Taylor was banned by th ICC for 3 and a half years due to a delay reporting a corrupt approach;
- former Lancashie keeper Alex Davies was banned from the opening game of the season for his new county Warwicks with four matches suspended and fined £1,500 for historical tweets;
- Jon Trott has been appointed assistant coach at Warwicks; and Jim Troughton has accepted a similar role at Surrey;
- Chris Cairns has bowel cancer;
- Scott Boland is Mike Selvey's new favourite cricketer;
- Paul Collingwood is Melissa Cole's new favourite cricketer;
- Andrew Samson gives us some depressing statistics that show that T20 is taking over from first class cricket as the most popular format in world cricket;
- lead singer and guitarist of Half Man Half Biscuit Nigel Blackwell tells us about his "lifelong attachment to Test cricket";
- JM Brearley thinks that J Root should stand aside as Eng captain, but unfortunately he wants B Stokes to take over;
- Richard Johnson says he has returned to a club "close to his heart" after being appointed Middlesex's first team coach;
- and xi) the traditional way of displaying the averages is to have the highest average at the top of the batting averages and the lowest average at the top of the bowling averages, but the Cricketer has broken with this tradition and displays the top run scorer at the top of the batting averages and the top wicket taker at the top of the bowling averages, this allows, for example, J Root's average of 32.2 to be well above the top average of 48.5 which belongs to J Bairstow, while M Wood's bowling average of 26.64 is well above J Anderson's 23.37.
West Iindies off-spinner and last survivor of the famous 1950 Test side, Sonny Ramadhin is dead aged 92.
What’s wrong with English Cricket?
Douglas Miller shares some views
A poor performance in the Ashes invariably calls for heads to roll in all directions, some of them to be severed from track-suited bodies, others from blazers or suits. The truth, of course, is that if the players were more talented, the organ grinder’s monkey could open the champagne as coach. When England last won in Australia the top seven in the batting order ended their Test careers with averages over 40. This past winter we have been trying to make do with a majority of the top order struggling to reach 30 and plummeting. That is the essence of the problem. No wonder Middlesex didn’t bother to add Graham Thorpe to the short list of candidates as their next coach.
There is an immediate cry for a re-vamp of the domestic fixture list. Whilst seeing some sense in this, I wonder to what extent it is truly relevant. I rather suspect an underlying motive is the wish for more first-class cricket to be laid on for the benefit of the thermos and sandwich brigade relaxing under the limes at Worcester or Chelmsford. Elsewhere in the world Test batsmen emerge and thrive without much long-form cricket beyond their international commitments. In a career spanning 25 years Sachin Tendulkar played 200 Tests but just 110 other first-class matches. For Ricky Ponting the figures are 168 and 121, while Vinod Kohli has played only two other first-class matches since winning the first of his 99 Test caps in 2011. It is true that a few of the Australians had enjoyed a couple of Sheffield Shield knocks ahead of the Ashes, but David Warner, with three Shield appearances in four years, and Steve Smith, with only four over the same period, were not among them.
Ten matches per team is the ration in the Sheffield Shield, while New Zealanders manage well enough on just eight in the Plunket Shield. Eight is also the ration in South Africa and there are no more in the Ranji Trophy, a competition Kohli has not graced for eleven years. If there is a message about our own championship it is surely that we should not be sacrificing quality for quantity. Once this is established and we slim down to perhaps ten matches per team, neatly spread across three divisions of six teams, the need to start on April Fools ’ Day recedes. Under such a scheme each match would count for more and, with talent migrating to the stronger teams, the gap between county and Test cricket would narrow.
A benefit of not overcrowding the first-class programme is that adequate time is retained for the shorter forms of the game. The format that most closely replicates the cricket with which most of us are familiar as players is the 50 over game, where there is time to build an innings in the traditional manner. It is a format which has suffered from the determination to run two competitions of 20 overs or less. Yes, this may be one too many, but it is a format that is vital to the welfare of the wider game. The attraction of a match that starts and ends in a single evening, as a football match might, seems well proven by the attendance figures and the obvious excitement in the crowd, even more notably overseas. These matches cost far less to stage than a four-day game with all its attendant catering and hotel bills, usually played out before a few hundred spectators and offering little to interest the television channels.
The case for a thriving short form game is even stronger once one begins to look at cricket in a truly global sense. Anyone who doubts this should read Evita Burned Down Our Pavilion, a remarkable book by two cricket journalists, Timothy Abraham and James Coyne, the latter the assistant editor of The Cricketer. Together they back-packed their way round Central and South America to seek out and record the origins and subsequent fortunes of cricket in each of the countries. What relevance can four- and five-day cricket have to those struggling to sustain the game in ICC Associate member countries such as Peru or Costa Rica, let alone those who hardly aspire to such recognition like Ecuador or Guatemala? The shorter the game, the more accessible it becomes and, perhaps, the closer to its roots when farm labourers played casual games as the sun set or factory workers found time for a few balls against a chalked wicket in their lunch hour.
Bridging the gap from short form cricket will always be a challenge facing those who aspire to succeed as Test cricketers. Inevitably they will have been reared on games where the mindset must be focused on scoring opportunities, whereas keeping one’s wicket intact is a first priority in longer forms. This easily, and sensibly, leads to some batters adopting different stances at the crease and finding that traditional text book methods can be abandoned against white Kookaburra balls. Many find adjustment to the longer game difficult, as those who clamoured for Jason Roy as an Ashes opener soon came to recognize.
Moving to the business of selection, is not the choice of Roy exactly the kind of decision one might hope a highly paid professional selector would have resisted? Where the rest of us may place undue emphasis on raw statistics, one with the sagacity of Duncan Fletcher was able to see Chris Adams in the nets and correctly predict failure. Commentators in Australia made constant reference to the positioning of Hameed’s hands. All highly technical talk well above my pay grade, but indicative of the kind of shortcoming that we might hope a selector mindful of Australian conditions would have been able to spot to justify his salary. These are not easy calls to make. Should Dominic Sibley’s patent offside limitations be ignored and judgements based on the impressive statistic of facing more championship deliveries than any other player? Should we fall into the trap of believing that Zak Crawley’s classically high elbow means that his meagre average is misleading and that he will compensate for the looseness of technique that has so often cost him his wicket? Should Rory Burns’ shuffling around be discounted by the weight of his championship runs? Why have Ollie Pope’s early runs dried up?
Regardless of whether the team coach or a panel of selectors make the decisions, these are some of the questions that must be asked. It is such choices that bring success or failure. There is, too, the paradox that the putative best eleven took the field, so why might the second choices perform better? At the time of writing a party for the West Indies has just been announced. Of one thing I feel certain: those chosen will not meet with universal approval, and the probability is that most of the sceptics will be justified one way or the other at the end of the series until there is a stronger pool from which to pick. Or, perhaps worse still, West Indies, where we have not won since the days of Michael Vaughan, will prove supine opposition and easy runs will flow from the bats of those who will only later join the long queue of batters proven to be below Test class.
Tom Harrison was out in Australia to see some of the Ashes carnage. Hardly a necessary journey given the quality of television coverage, but what is he to do about it all before his time at the helm expires? Let us be clear about one matter: the resources now available for coaching and match play down the age groups far exceed anything that was possible or even attempted before the Sky money came flowing in. The implementation and administration of much of this helps to understand the bewildering number on the payroll at the ECB. It contrasts with how things were less than fifty years ago when Cedric Rhoades, chairman of Lancashire, was outlining his plans to remove the TCCB, ECB’s predecessor, from Lord’s to offices at Nottingham where he estimated a salary bill of £5,600 would be enough to keep the show on the road.
We now have two million pounds of government money coming into the ECB, almost enough to cover the pay and bonuses finding their way into the pocket of the chief executive. Such remuneration cannot be right. Whereas Harrison may point to television contracts won that justify his pay, the game will be the healthier for pegging the financial reward to, say, £250,000, thereby attracting those whose prime motivation is more likely to be the welfare of the game. The swing away from distinguished past players to businessmen with scant experience of the game beyond club cricket appears to be one of the contributing factors to the structural weaknesses that have not helped our Test teams in recent years. We still need the money as much as when the first £6,000 was extracted from Gillette, but the need for a deeper understanding of the game at its highest level has now become paramount.
Hall of Shame
I find it increasingly puzzling that professional footballers are so lacking in the basic skills even at the highest level. In front of goal the vast majority of them lean back, don’t get their weight over the ball and blast it over the crossbar. Even the beloved Trent is guilty of this. What do these guys do in training? Do they not do any practice of the basic skills?
Barnet Watch
Manchester City’s Nathan Ake hasn’t changed barbers since his Southampton days and he still looks like an old-fashioned floor mop stood in the corner.
David Weisse the South African itinerant cricketer hasn’t been to the barbers this century and looks like a base player from a mediocre seventies rock band.
Meanwhile Marcus Rashford and Joelinton keep everyone happy by maintaining their “cheese on toast” styles.
Phil Foden can do no wrong in many eyes but he certainly needs to change his hairdresser. In January he was sporting a shaved at the sides look with the remaining hair on top dyed blond. He joins Benrama and Richarlison in the Crème Brulee camp.
The West Indian cricketer, Kyle Mayer, unusually in the current era, fields without a cap and shows little hair except a patch at the back of his head held together, presumably, by a rubber band. This looks like a sprouting carrot and he would not look out of place on a vegetable allotment.
The mercurial leg spinner, Imran Tahir, grew his hair long in the lock downs and it is now streaked with grey. When playing he ties it into a bun at the back and looks just like a Victorian granny.
The Liverpool defender, Fabinho, has given up completely on hair styles and has shaved it all off.
Odd Man Out
Ian Harris (Ged) and John Williams both identified Laurie Evans as last month’s Odd Man Out since he has never had a Middlesex contract.
Why not have a go at making up your own Jazz Hat XI or setting an Odd Man Out? All suggestions will be welcome.
Old Danes Gathering
The Last Old Danes Gathering will take place on Friday 29 July at Shepherds Bush CC. The day is the final day of the club's cricket week. The Gathering will commence at 2pm but attendees will be welcome throughout the afternoon.
This is not a gathering of cricketers and all Old Danes, their partners, friends and even non Old Danes will be welcome. There is no dress code for the event and no prizes will be awarded for the oldest attendees.
I am circulating a list of attendees and apologies on a separate circulation list. If you would like to be added to this list please let me know.
Googlies Website
All the back editions of Googlies can be found on the G&C website. There are also many photographs most of which have never appeared in Googlies.
www.googliesandchinamen.com
Googlies and Chinamen
is produced by
James Sharp
Broad Lee House
Combs
High Peak
SK23 9XA
[email protected]
