Fancy that! Godfrey Evans as Carmen Miranda on Board ship

 GOFFERY EVANS was the first cricketer really to impress himself on my memory. Not as a result of deeds on the field, oddly enough. I came to know him better through his autobiography, published shortly after his Test career finished in 1959.

The Gloves Are Off, it was called, in that snappy, punny manner of all such volumes. I can still picture the smart, white cover, with its portrait of an affable-looking man in an England sweater and MCC touring blazer. His hair was dark, wavy and brilliantined, he smoked a pipe at a jaunty angle, and tucked beneath one arm were the wicketkeeping gloves that had collected 219 dismissals in 91 Tests.

The text told of matches and great players, and of arriving at shipboard fancy-dress parties dressed as Carmen Miranda, complete with bowl of fruit on his head. But the photos told the real story. There was a headlong legside where he had anticipated a genuine leg-glance. And there was a piece of stumping so deft that a single bail had been flicked away with a strike like a cobra. People said that being stumped by Godfrey was like having your pocket picked.

 Jim Parks, J. T. Murray and Alan Knott were behind the England sticks when I really began to pay attention to the game, and the likes of Bob Taylor, Keith Andrew, Jimmy Binks and Arnold Long were playing for counties when I hit that circuit. But older players told tales of Godders – how unbelievably good he was, both technically and as the hub of the team. But time lends enchantment: I'd seen Knott and I'd seen Taylor and there was no way that Evans could have matched their standards.

Then one day I was allowed a glimpse into the past. I was a Test player by then. The winners of a brewery's seven-a-side competition played at The Oval against an invitation side which included myself and Godfrey.

It was not an occasion for pulling out all the stops, but neither was it one for patronising the opposition. So I bowled a livelyish compromise pace. Godfrey, as I hoped he would, insisted on standing up to the stumps, just as, rather more famously, he used to do to Alec Bedser.

My experience was an education. The ball swung around waspishly, but late outswing just whispered into his gloves. I slipped in a full-length inswinger on leg stump – the most difficult to take – and there he was, down the leg side as if by telepathy, flicking the bails away as the batsman changed feet. An inside-edge was gathered cleanly and without fuss and the appeal roared out.

For an hour or so he gave at first hand a display of wicketkeeping the like of which I had never seen and to this day have not seen bettered: not by Knott nor Taylor, not Marsh nor Healy nor anyone. And Godfrey Evans was less than a month past his 56th birthday.

Mike Selvey

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