see how the next ball fared, and then, uplifted and enlightened, pass on their way. Observation tells us that people do so still. So we know the fascination of cricket from its birth. We know, too, its historic moments and its famous players. But how did cricket come to be built into the warp and weft of the English language? How did it develop into the favourite pastime of a large part of the English- speaking world? Why – in all sport – does cricket possess a literature that no other can match? Why do grown men babble of games they never saw and cricketers who died a hundred years before?
A wet day makes a conversationalist of the most taciturn cricket- lover. One rain-drenched hour at The Oval was filled with a discussion about Don Bradman’s last Test innings, when the great man was bowled second ball by Eric Hollies for a duck in the final Test of the 1948 series. It is a story every cricket-lover knows, and, cheated of cricket, we were debating at which end the Don was batting. Someone turned to Arthur Morris, the former Australian Test batsman, who was listening silently as he sipped a glass of red wine. ‘Surely, you must know, Arthur? Were you in that team?’ asked an ignoramus. Raman Subba Row, the former England batsman, who knows his history, choked. ‘Yes,’ said Arthur, sipping placidly. ‘I was at the other end when Don was out. I scored 196.’
There is a postscript to this story. As Bradman returned to the pavilion he was stopped in the Long Room by Field Marshal Montgomery, once captain of cricket at St Paul’s school, who had famously encouraged his troops to ‘hit Rommel for six’. Montgomery barked at him, ‘Sit down, Bradman, and I will tell you where you went wrong.’ The absurdity of anyone telling the most prolific run-getter of all time how to bat apparently escaped the old soldier. Bradman revealed this vignette in a letter to the Surrey Club many years later; he did not mention whether he had taken the opportunity to criticise the Field Marshal’s battle plan at El Alamein, but probably he did not. This was wise, as Montgomery was never plagued by self-doubt. A man who can say, ‘As God said – and, on the whole, he was right …’ is not a man to be crossed. Bradman was prudent to keep his own counsel. Moreover, he was courteous even when a sharp response was justified.
I discovered this for myself that same rainy day at The Oval. I had never met Bradman, but I did occasionally speak to him on the telephone. As we debated his last innings during one of the showers, Raman remembered it was the Don’s birthday, and someone suggested I phone him with our congratulations. I did so. As we spoke, I described the day’s cricket and the wretched weather. ‘How is it in Australia?’ I asked. ‘Dunno,’ came the reply. ‘It’s two o’clock in the morning here.’
Sir Donald Bradman is from the aristocracy of cricket. He is one of the rare breed of cricketing knights, all of whom are from the upper class of talent. But the honours system is haphazard, ultimately at the whim of subjective judgements and sometimes perverse. In the more class-conscious Victorian age, even W.G. was overlooked. As Prime Minister, I wished to put right some injustices. I could not simply award honours, but I could nominate for the appropriate independent scrutiny committee to adjudicate.* My first nomination for consideration was Harold Larwood, one of England’s greatest fast bowlers, who had been disgracefully treated by the cricketing establishment after the notorious ‘bodyline’ series against Australia in 1932–33. He had been driven out of Test cricket for obeying his captain’s instructions.
The Scrutiny Committee were startled at a nomination for a cricketer who had ceased playing nearly sixty years earlier, and I daresay sucked their teeth before deciding to award Larwood an MBE – below tariff, I thought, but welcome nevertheless. I had a further small list of names, but thought it proper to proceed cautiously, a decision I came to regret, for the Grim Reaper struck before I did, and my other nominations came too late.
When Harold Larwood was awarded his honour, I received a message that he wished to speak to me. I telephoned him in Australia, and learned something of the generous mind of cricketers. Within two minutes he was talking not of himself but of Jack Hobbs and his skill in batting on treacherous wickets. Larwood spoke with affection of Hobbs, as well as awe, and that conversation remains imprinted on my mind for the generosity of spirit it showed. It is a trait that is uplifting in all walks of life.
The statistics of cricket are a total fascination to the aficionado. For years my Cabinet colleague Peter Brooke and I used to pose one another abstruse cricket questions across the Cabinet table, or in restaurants, or on any occasion we met. Peter’s knowledge of cricket is encyclopaedic: who else could name any cricketing parson who scored a hundred before lunch at Bangalore during the Indian Mutiny? My old friend Robert Atkins, an MP once and then an MEP, has telephoned me each Sunday morning for years to discuss the state of English cricket and bemoan the loss of Corinthian values. Sometimes he even talks of politics: he bemoans the loss of Corinthian values there, too. But not every politician is a cricket-lover.
When I was Prime Minister Cabinet met on Thursday mornings, at the same time as Test matches began. In those days Cabinet debated policy and took decisions, so the meeting stretched on until lunchtime. From time to time folded messages would be brought in to me by the Duty Clerk. I would read them before passing them to Robin Butler, the Cabinet Secretary, a descendant of the great Victorian cricketer Richard Daft, and from him they would cross the table to the Chancellor, and later President of Nottinghamshire County Cricket Club, Ken Clarke. Grimaces or smiles would follow. These notes drove my Deputy Prime Minister Michael Heseltine, who sat on my left, to distraction. Prime Minister, Cabinet Secretary, Chancellor … was sterling crashing? Was there a crisis? A ministerial resignation? No: they were the Test scores: disbelievingly, Michael filched the notes from my blotter for the Heseltine Papers.
Cricket can be a bridge between opposites. The late Bob Cryer, a very left-wing Labour MP, would always stop to talk cricket with me. John Redwood, a very right-wing Conservative MP, who in 1995 attempted with a great deal of gusto to pitch me out of No. 10, would do the same if, by miscalculation, we found ourselves at the same dining table in the Commons. Even the journalist Simon Heffer, a persistent and hostile critic, was able to summon up a bleak smile if we passed one another at the idyllic cricket ground at Wormsley Park in Buckinghamshire that was Paul Getty’s pride and joy.
Cricket can also bind friendships. When the Conservative Party lost the election in 1997, John Howard, Prime Minister of Australia, and his wife Janette were among my first visitors: as a consolation John presented me with that Australian symbol, a baggy green cap: it is a treasured possession. Four years later I was talking about cricket caps and helmets to the old Australian Test all-rounder Sam Loxton. ‘Helmets,’ scoffed Sam. ‘I didn’t even wear a helmet at Tobruk!’ In 2005, when we met at Lord’s during the Ashes tour, a chortling Sam presented me with an authentic Australian helmet. I was forever grateful we’d talked of helmets, not protectors – although I doubt Sam wore one of those at Tobruk either.
A love of cricket is for everyone. As the great batsman K.S. Ranjitsinhji pointed out early in the twentieth century:
Go to Lord’s and analyse the crowd. There are all sorts and conditions of men there round the ropes – bricklayers, bank clerks, soldiers, postmen and stockbrokers. And in the pavilions are QCs, artists, archdeacons and leader-writers. Bad men, good men, workers and idlers, are all there, and all at one in their keenness over the game … cricket brings the most opposite characters and the most diverse lives together. Anything that puts very many kinds of people on a common ground must promote sympathy and kindly feelings.
That has been my experience, too. A few years ago I was invited to the beautiful island of Barbados to deliver the annual Frank Worrell Lecture. The following evening a galaxy of Caribbean cricketers – Everton Weekes, Clyde Walcott, Garry Sobers, Wes Hall, Charlie Griffith, Richie Richardson – attended a dinner for me at the British High Commission. Cricket conquers all differences, and I – an ex- Conservative Prime Minister – enjoyed some memorable (to me, at least) cricketing exchanges with the old West Indian opener Alan Rae, whose politics were very different. No one cared, and someone on that lovely evening,
