For instance when England were losing a day/night game against the Aussies in Sydney, Graham Stevenson ('Moonbeam' to his teammates) ambled into the middle to join up with his Yorkshire colleague David Bairstow in what seemed to be a lost cause. Stevenson was jeered all the way to the wicket and given the most frightful sledging by the Australian team. As Bairstow tells it he greeted the Aussies with a cheerful ``Ayup lads'' and then walked down the wicket, surveyed the baying crowd and his snarling opponents, and uttered the immortal line: ``Nice out here, innit?'' England won.
I was reading David Foot's excellent biography of Walter Hammond the other day and came across another example of last-wicket phlegm. It concerned that marvellous Gloucester character and slow bowler, Sam Cook, who strolled through life at his own pace allowing nothing or no man to ruffle his amiable nature. Going in last in a hopeless cause against Yorkshire he joined Andrew Wilson, who was batting defiantly. He sauntered down the wicket towards Wilson, who anticipated he was bringing instructions from the dressing room. As the two met Sam said: ``How are your onions this year, Andy?''
Foot recalls that when Cook first joined Gloucestershire in 1946 he walked into the dressing room, coughed, waited for Hammond the captain to turn round and then said: ``I'm Cook, from Tetbury.'' At the end of the season, when he had taken 133 wickets, his captain said: ``Cook, of Tetbury, you'll do for me.''
On the 1928-29 tour of Australia Hammond scored 905 runs in the Tests at an average of 113. After he had scored 251 at Sydney he showed his bat to Ben Travers, the playwright, who was following the tour. Travers wrote: ``Nowadays, in the TV close-ups, one sees bats festooned with the blots of impact. Hammond's bat was unmarked except that, plumb in the middle of the sweet of the blade, there was a perfectly circular indentation.''
Travers also described how after completing an innings Hammond would sit next to him and borrow his field glasses. ``He would say nothing, merely hold out his hand for the glasses. There he would sit, the field glasses making a detailed tour of the Ladies' En- closure, until a few minutes before play was due to start again. Then he would say and they contributed to his downfall in more ways than one.
There has been some criticism of Foot for the frank manner in which he has dealt with Hammond's life, particularly his promiscuity and the way venereal disease and its treatment might have affected his mood and general health. I must say I see no sense in writing a biography unless one is prepared to tell the truth. Hammond was a magnificent cricketer. Bill O'Reilly thought he had never seen a better one. He was also a troubled and complex man whose flaws, and Foot's exploration of them, only serve to make him a more sympathetic human being.
We all need reminding from time to time that our heroes often stand on a cracked plinth. If it makes them seem fallible there is nothing wrong with that. Eddie Paynter, the Lancashire and England batsman, provided the perfect epitaph for Hammond. He was asked for his abiding memory of the great man. He had witnessed Hammond's majesty in its prime and at close quarters. But Paynter was from Oswaldtwistle and spoke plain. ``Wally,'' said Eddie, thinking hard, ``he liked a shag.''
Mention of Ben Travers brought back happy memories. I met him in the Seventies and still have the bad back to prove it. Let me explain. I was doing a talk show at the time and there had been a revival of the farces he had written. He had been rediscovered at the age of 90 and the humour of it all amused him greatly. He came on the show with John Snow, then an England bowler, and demonstrated for us and the audience how he went through a daily routine of exercises including lying flat and touching the floor behind his head with his toes.
He then challenged Mr Snow and myself to do the same. It seemed easy, unless you happened to be 90. Anyway, as I swaggered my legs over my head I felt a terrible pain down my back. Feeling foolish as I was helped to my feet by a nonagenarian I was, nonetheless, in considerable discomfort. Ever since I have periodically had a problem with my back. It would be too dramatic to say I have suffered. Discombobulated, more likely. A small price to pay for getting to know such a rare man.
To talk cricket with Ben Travers was like drinking a wine of fine vintage and great distinction. He told me of watching Jessop's celebrated innings of 104 against the Australians at the Oval in 1902, the match, by the way, which was won by Hirst and Rhodes with the aforesaid famous last-wicket stand.
He also recalled that after the Bodyline series he wrote a farce about cricket called A Bit Of A Test. He set it in Sydney during a Test match and the plot required the audience to believe that if the England captain and best batsmen were kidnapped by the Australians it would make a difference to the result of the game. In those days, of course, it would. Nowadays it would only alter the margin Australia won by. Indeed Mr Travers' skill as a far- ceur would be redundant at present as we have a cricket team ca- pable of rolling us in the aisles without any need of outside help.
We seem to have lost the knack of winning and it has as much to do with a kind of mental paralysis as any lack of form or technical shortcoming. The lads look in need of a laugh as well as a shave, a strange state of affairs in a team run by David Lloyd, who is an authority on comedians and the therapeutic advantages of laughter.
MIGHT I suggest that in their waking moments instead of dwelling on what might have been and getting the hump with the media they try a game invented by Ben Travers and R C Robertson-Glasgow. Roberston-Glasgow, the wittiest of cricket writers, and Travers were bosom friends. Ben liked telling the story of ``Crusoe'' in his playing days returning to the pavilion after a long and unprofitable session against Hobbs on a flat track at the Oval. As he made his way up the pavilion steps at lunch time he stopped in front of Travers and said: ``Like trying to bowl to God on concrete.''
The game they invented is basically a variation of those we played as children when we invented an England team to play the The Rest of The World Plus Mars. In this version teams can be made up of any figure from history or fiction and bonus points are given for dismissals which take into account known characteristics of the participants.
For instance Mr Travers was proud of the time his opening pair were Beethoven and John the Baptist. Beethoven was run out for nought, being stone deaf and failing to hear the call for a quick single. Other members of his side included Attila the Hun (fast bowler), and Torquemada (leg spin and googlies). His umpires were Pontius Pilate and Judge Jeffreys. In my team I had Toulouse Lau- trec and Long John Silver opening the innings. Again the short single was their undoing, Long John Silver, hampered by his wooden leg and not to mention the parrot on his shoulder, was run out by a direct throw from William Tell in the covers.
Toulouse Lautrec was next to go. He was adjudged LBW after an underarm delivery from Sir Walter Raleigh hit him in the chest. When it came to our turn to bat Long John Silver's parrot was reported to the match referee for incessant appealing and we were a man short, Ernest Saunders having forgotten where the ground was. The match was abandoned on the final day when the last man in, Sydney Carton, disappeared in mysterious circumstances and later turned up in a French jail. I have no hesitation in recommending the game to the England cricket team. They have already demonstrated a natural aptitude for the absurd.