Jack Hobbs - England's Greatest Cricketer

One of the current mysteries of cricket is how Sachin Tendulkar, the Little Master who for 20 years has scored centuries almost at will has struggled to go from 99 to 100 international hundreds.  Is it bad luck, nerves, some hidden character flaw or a combination of all of these factors that have made that last 100 so elusive? 

A look into the past may be instructive.  The man known in the period after the First World War simply as The Master suffered a similar agony.  By mid-1925, Jack Hobbs needed just one more century to equal W. G. Grace's record of 126 first-class hundreds.  Then the runs dried up.  The newspaper stories strayed from the back to the front pages.  Photographers –and even a film crew - followed him everywhere.  Crowds flocked to matches with the sole purpose of seeing him reach the elusive three figures.  “I felt that every eye in England was focused on me, and I began to get harassed,” Hobbs later recalled.  The pressure overwhelmed him. Half-centuries produced headlines declaring that "Hobbs Fails Again".  Finally, after many failures and near-successes, he equalled and then exceeded the record with a century in each innings at Taunton in August.  And, as no doubt will happen with Tendulkar, the runs then flowed freely again.

All of this and much more comes to life in the pages of a new and definitive biography of Hobbs by Leo McKinstry who has  previously written a "warts and all" life of Geoff Boycott as well as books on Sir Alf Ramsey and the Charlton brothers.  Aside from all that, he writes regularly for the Daily Express and has been described by a fellow blogger as "a nasty, intolerant man who gets paid to churn out deeply unpleasant, utterly charmless and endlessly repetitive rants on the Express op-ed page twice a week".

Those not deterred by such a negative endorsement will find that McKinstry has belied this reputation by writing a well-researched book of considerable charm.  He clearly has a great fondness for his subject, who comes across as a thoroughly decent human being.  He was also a model professional cricketer, the mainstay of England's batting for over 20 years either side of the First World War. ending his career with a tally of 197 first-class hundreds.

Even when, as with the Boycott book, McKinstry  is describing the warts, he is inclined to excuse them.  Thus, Hobbs was a reluctant warrior in the First World War, preferring to work in a munitions factory and be paid for playing Bradford League cricket.  But, as McKinstry points out, he was a married man with four young children; and at the beginning of the War, no-one really understood what the conflict was really going to be like.  Nevertheless, his failure to join the forces until he was conscripted in 1916 caused family ill-feeling and disputes when others had already served their King and country for two years.

Similarly, McKinstry describes how Hobbs failed to blow the whistle on the Bodyline tactics when, shortly after his retirement from Test cricket, he was the one figure of any stature in the English cricketing world reporting on the 1932/3 series in Australia.  But he quickly rushes to Hobbs's defence. Yes, his reports were lily-livered and bland but he was an inexperienced journalist, known to be naturally diffident and, in any event, how could he criticise Douglas Jardine, who was his county captain at Surrey?

The majority of the book’s 400 pages tell the story of a successful career and a largely happy life.  McKinstry has done his homework, bringing to life both his  subject and the era in which he lived.  Mistakes are hard to find.  South African googly bowler Ernie Vogler several times becomes Ernie Volger; and the photo of Hobbs driving into Lord's in 1930 suggests either that he had a left-hand drive vehicle or, more likely, that the image is reversed.

Overall, however, this is a book strongly recommended to anyone who doesn’t believe that cricket history began in 1981 with Botham’s Ashes.  Readable, well-researched, wide-ranging in its scope, it is one of the best biographies of its kind.

What's in a name?

All over the world, parents devote enormous time and effort to choosing just the right names for their children.  Sometimes they don't quite get it right.  Allegedly, a Mr. and Mrs. Kart were so impressed by the star of the film Citizen Kane that they named their son Orson. And please don't get me started on the absurd names celebrities give to their privileged but unfortunate offspring.  I dread to think what happened to Sage Moonblood Stallone and Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen Zappa when the playground bullies got wind of their names.
And then, of course, there is Gerry Shedd.  Maybe I should change the subject.
On a more serious note, however, in the Indian state of Maharashtra, many girls are called Nakusha.  A pretty enough name, you may think, until you realise that, in the Marathi language, Nakusha means "unwanted".
This is just one manifestation of the problem of gender discrimination in India.  Many parents prefer a male child as a future wage earner.Female foeticide is common in India.  The gender imbalance has grown every decade for the last 60 years.  So you could argue that the girls called Unwanted are lucky in that at least they weren't aborted.
Fortunately, there are moves to change the situation.  Recently in Satara, an area noted as having one of the country's lowest female populations, 285 girls named Nakusha took part in a mass renaming ceremony attended by many wanting to combat gender discrimination.  Let us hope that their new names give them renewed hope and that at least some of the parents who inflicted such a name have had cause to regret their cruel thoughtlessness.

What's going on at Lord's?

When I read that Keith Bradshaw, secretary and chief executive of the MCC, was leaving for family reasons and going back to Australia, I smelt a faint odour of rat emerging from the St. John’s Wood area. So I wasn’t entirely surprised to read a statement from the MCC committee denying press rumours that all was not well at Lord’s. The only surprise was that I hadn’t actually read any reports of trouble at the Home of Cricket.
Then I opened my latest copy of Private Eye and it all came spilling out. Allegedly, Bradshaw supported the Vision for Lord’s, the ambitious plans for redeveloping the ground whereas the MCC chairman and the treasurer opposed it. They supposedly called in Edwina Currie's ex-paramour, Sir John Major to persuade fellow committee members to go for a watered down version of the scheme.
The result was the resignation of Bradshaw as well as the departure of the planning consultant hired to oversee the Vision, the early retirement of the deputy chief executive, the disbanding of the development sub-committee and the departure of the real estate brokers advising on the scheme.
The problem with the MCC’s press release about the falseness of these rumours is that it doesn’t actually deal with them in any detail. Instead, it talks in more general terms, stating that Bradshaw "had enjoyed" – notice the tense – a productive and harmonious relationship with the committee and also had excellent relationships with the Chairman and Treasurer. The release also confirms that, but for his resignation, Bradshaw would still be in post, presumably meaning that MCC wouldn’t have had grounds to fire him. Of the detailed allegations, there is nothing.
So there we are. Do we believe a venerable British institution that has over the years secured a strong place deep in most of our hearts or do we go with those seeking to destroy its reputation for truthfulness and straight dealing? My instinct is to go with the venerable institution. So I vote for Private Eye, 50 years old, still going strong and still seeking to tell it like it is.
No doubt this is not the end of the story. In the meantime, it’s not a bad rule of thumb that, when certain matters are denied and others not, you can assume that the allegations that aren’t denied are probably true. or, taking a more extreme view, in the words of Claud Cockburn, Never believe anything until it's officially denied.
Update - January 2012
It would appear that I maligned the saintly Sir John, who has now resigned in protest at the abandonment of the plans for Lord's.
I was certainly right about the bad smell emanating from the Home of Cricket - see here
Ah, well, with a distinguished banker at the helm of MCC as chairman, what could possibly go wrong?

Next to Godliness - a Cautionary Tale

When it comes to buying essential items, I am a traditionalist. If it was good enough for me in childhood and it still exists, I'll buy it.  So when I needed something as basic as a bar of soap recently, I pretty soon narrowed the choice down to two that met these criteria - Pears Transparent Soap and Wright's Coal Tar.  Unable to decide between them and being a big spender, I bought one of each.
I remember both brands from my childhood.  Pears brings back memories of the advertisements featuring the painting Bubbles by Millais; and every year, there was a "Miss Pears" competition to find a brand ambassador.  It wasn't exactly the X Factor but it entertained us at the time.  Wright's Coal Tar soap was less strongly marketed but had an image of a no-nonsense, manly approach to cleanliness.  Women might smell of Pink Camay containing some fancy perfume or other (worth 9 guineas an ounce, according to the adverts).  But give us men a sniff and you'd get a whiff of good old coal tar - not that we necessarily knew what coal tar was.
Anyway, arriving home clutching my two contrasting bars of traditional cleanliness, I took the trouble to look at the words on the packaging and began to wish that I hadn't.
Firstly, Pears.  Well, at least the soap is still transparent but there are a few things about it that aren't.  The ingredients, for one.  Old Andrew Pears who started the business back in the late 18th century for sure didn't put etidronic acid in his early bars; and I'm pretty certain that butylated hydroxytoluene was unknown to him, as would have been many of the other 20 or so ingredients.  A bit of research reveals that, up until 2009, the soap was made to a reasonably traditional formula that old Mr. Pears might possibly have approved of - but not any more.
And then there's Wright's Coal Tar soap.  Same problems. Its founder, William Valentine Wright, died in 1877, ironically of a skin infection.  He probably wouldn't recognise the current version of his most famous product, not least because it doesn't actually contain any coal tar.  That may, of course, not be a bad thing.  The European Union has banned the use of coal tar in non-prescription products.  But, instead of being up-front about this, the manufacturers call it "a traditional soap with a coal tar fragrance".  Innocents like me are naive enough to be fooled into thinking that the product is basically the same as it ever was, instead of being stuffed with ingredients that give it a coal tar smell without  the actual coal tar. 
Oh, and by the way, Pears soap is now made in India and Wright's is made in Turkey.  So they've each travelled many hundreds of miles before they plop down into my bath trailing their carbon footprint.
There it is.  I'm not suggesting that either of these products is better or worse than others on the market, just that, if you want to buy a traditional product, maybe it's best to check the label first.

9/11 and after

Ten years on, there's not really very much new one can say about 9/11; and the little there is, the media have milked for all it's worth.
So I'll just suggest listening to this song by Mary Chapin Carpenter. It's difficult not to be moved by the song and by the observation in the comments about all the cars that were tagged at the train station parking lot so they wouldn't get towed.  They were left there waiting for the return of people who commuted in to WTC on the Hudson line that day - and then.around October 2001 they were finally taken away.
Mary Chapin Carpenter talks about the song here.

Crickileaks - a review

Reading Crickileaks by Tyers and Beach is like watching Sachin Tendulkar bat. Everything looks so easy. Sachin identifies the line and length of the ball, moves the feet into position, swings the bat and away goes the ball. Oh, look, there’s no fielder there – four! Alan Tyers is similarly able to score with apparent ease.
In Tyers’ case, the simple method starts withs identifying an Ashes hero. He spots their (often obvious) Achilles heel, exaggerates it and then puts words into their mouth that illustrate their weakness in an amusing way.
So Mike Gatting is obsessed with food and gets bowled by Shane Warne because he visualises him as a sherry trifle. Shane Warne likes making money and has an errant texting finger; and Mitchell Johnson is a rather dim child bullied by all around him and in a permanent state of bewilderment.
OK, let’s admit that, just as Tendulkar can get out for 91 when going for his 100^th hundred, Alan Tyers too can nod. Geoffrey Boycott’s encounters with Bob Dylan didn’t quite work for me and Ashley Giles’ jealousy of Monty Panesar seemed off the mark. As for the illustrations by Beach, they add value without inducing the same degree of mirth as the words.
Overall, however, this is a highly amusing series of vignettes, well up to the standard of WG Grace Ate my Pedalo, the previous Tyers and Beach offering. I look forward to the next venture. Will Mr. Tyers perhaps be brave enough to enter into the murky world of match fixing?

Can Warwickshire do it?

To the delighted astonishment of their supporters, Warwickshire enter the final weeks of the County Championship with a realistic chance of lifting the title.
Can they do it? Much will depend on their key players. First in the list comes Frank Foster, their young, dynamic captain and all-rounder. He is followed by Frank Field, the fast bowler who is enjoying his best-ever season in this summer of baking heat and rock-hard pitches. And then there is young Ernest "Tiger" Smith, a wicket-keeper batsman whose brilliant keeping standing up to Foster’s fliers has been so spectacular.
I could go on – but I realise that I have slipped back 100 years to sing the praises of those local heroes who lifted the Championship title for the first time exactly a century ago.
If you want to know the full story, I can recommend Robert Brooke’s excellent biography of the heroic but ultimately tragic Foster, The Fields Were Sudden Bare.  Or you can visit the blog of Algernon Halford, chimney sweep extraordinaire, who has chronicled his first-hand impressions of the season.
The truth is that, whilst the present side may not possess a Foster, a Field or a Smith, they do also have a realistic chance of stealing the title from under the noses of the more fancied teams. They have some excellent players and, in the Championship at least, seem to have found the secret of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. Foster’s team had that same knack, as did the team of Jonathan Trott’s grandfather-in-law, Tom Dollery, who also won the title exactly 60 years ago.
What better way to celebrate both a centenary and a diamond jubilee than by replicating the achievements of those giants of the past? Go to it, Bears!
Update  - oh, well, not everything falls into place as it should.  In similar fashion, Warwickshire almost created a pattern of sorts by following up their wins in 1911 and 1951 with another in 1971 but they tied on points with Surrey and lost out on number of games won.  The positive omen is that they went on to win in 1972 - so go to it, Bears, for 2012!