My Favourite Cricketer sees the teams at Balanced Sports and World Cricket Watch invite the best cricket writers and bloggers to tell us who their favourite cricketers are - and, more importantly, tell us why they stand out. Today's submission is by S.A. Rennie of Legside Filth. You can find Legside Filth on the web at www.legsidefilth.com, or on Twitter at @legsidefilth
I
never saw my favourite cricketer play; he died 56 years before I was
born. But like a cricketing Alexander the Great he left behind him a
legacy of achievement, literature, and myth, and changed the face
of batting forever.
It
could have been my first reading of Arthur Mailey’s recollection of
bowling to him in club cricket, with its famous last line (“I felt
like a boy who had killed a dove”). It could have been my first
viewing, in the Lord’s museum, of that iconic photo by George
Beldam of Trumper jumping out to drive, taken at the Oval when
Australia played Surrey in July 1902. Whatever triggered it, my
obsession became total and all-absorbing. I read everything I could
about the man, spent a fortune on books and ephemera and bitterly
rued the impossibility of time travel, because unlike Harold Pinter
with Len Hutton, I never saw Trumper in his prime, and it was another
time - a time when a batsman could successfully break the shackles of
orthodoxy, could have stories told about his greatness as a human
being and as a cricketer. That fascinated me just as much as the man.
Courtesy: arcadia.com |
His
accomplishments glow like an illuminated manuscript amongst fusty
tomes. 300 not out against Sussex at Hove on his first tour to the
“mother country” in 1899; first man to score a century before
lunch on the first day of a Test match, at Old Trafford in that damp
but glorious annus mirabilus of 1902; 335 in 180 minutes for
Paddington against Redfern in 1903; that last, poignant hurrah at
Lancaster Park where he contributed 293 to a record 8th wicket
partnership of 433 with Arthur Sims for a touring eleven against
Canterbury. That was in 1914; fifteen months later he was dead from
kidney disease. News of his passing knocked the Great War off the
front pages, and thousands of Sydneysiders lined the streets to watch
his funeral cortege on its way to Waverley Cemetery.
He
excelled on sticky wickets and his career encompassed innings of
adamantine resistance and furious blitzkrieg, with a distinct
preference for the latter; he broke windows while breaking bowlers’
spirits. True, there are others whose achievements impress more, by
sheer weight of numbers - Trumper’s Test average was 39.04 - but it
was in the manner of their making that he assured for himself
sporting immortality. “He has no style, and yet he is all style,”
CB Fry wrote. “He has no fixed canonical method of play, he defies
all the orthodox rules, yet every stroke he plays satisfies the
ultimate criterion of style - minimum of effort, maximum of effect.”
Mrs Fry seemed rather taken with him as well, rhapsodizing once in a
magazine of the time over his “splendid neck bared to the wind...
Trumper is an artist... a white-flannelled knight”. The reactions
of a mongoose, the looks of an Adonis, with feet that danced like
Fred Astaire’s; as Cardus has noted, he was the eagle to Don
Bradman’s jet plane, the free spirit that emptied the bars compared
to the relentless run-machine that would often prompt merely a
cursory glance up at the scoreboard to register that another hundred
had been added to the total.
His
achievements have gained mythical status through the lens of time and
distance, and stories of his kindness and generosity are legion -
cricket equipment given away to needy youngsters, newspaper boys sent
home in the rain with pockets full of money, team mate Reg Duff’s
funeral paid for out of his own pocket when a whip-round failed to
produce enough. The other side of the coin tells a rather different,
gloomier story; he was a failure in business, and died debt-ridden,
leaving his wife and children in poverty. His pecuniary incompetence
was notorious enough that the New South Wales Cricket Association
kept the money raised during his 1913 testimonial in trust, for fear
he would mismanage it.
My
plan to make a pilgrimage to Victor Trumper’s grave was hatched in
the winter of 2006. A nebulous daydream, over time it coalesced and
merged with a desire to watch England play the final two Tests of the
2010-11 Ashes series, at Melbourne and Sydney. I didn’t care that
the distinct possibility existed that the series would be over by
then: I wanted to see England play overseas, and I wanted to visit
the land of my hero, visit the places that were important to him,
walk in his footsteps.
Wikimedia Commons |
Hell
and high water didn’t come, but the big freeze did, in the form of
ferociously cold weather and snow-storms that brought the UK and
Heathrow Airport to a standstill. Flight QF030 to Melbourne was the
last plane to leave that day. Nothing does more to remedy a
nervousness about flying than desperation for your journey to begin.
That
journey ended at a hilltop cemetery overlooking the Tasman Sea, the
sun beating down, the waves booming against the sandstone cliffs.
Chris Tremlett had taken the final Australian wicket that won England
the series shortly before noon that day; by 3 o’clock I was
standing at Trumper’s grave.
As
resting places for great men go, it’s a pretty humble affair. The
large celtic cross that I used as a pointer to its location doesn’t
even belong to him; it merely backs onto his plot from someone
else’s. As I placed my flowers, there seemed no evidence of recent
visitation, and that surprised me. I’ve seen photos of John
Goddard’s West Indies team paying tribute at the grave back in
1950, and in 1977 Bob Simpson laid a wreath to commemorate the
centenary of Victor’s birth. I don’t think I was expecting
anything along the lines of the litter of tributes that adorns Jim
Morrison’s grave in Père Lachaise, but it felt like no-one had
been here for a long time. The leaded letters that spell out Victor’s
name are cracked and falling away; a tangible reminder that he is, as
Cardus wrote, “now part of the impersonal dust”.
But
it was a peculiarly moving moment for me, standing in this deserted
place of rest next to a neglected grave, still buzzing a little from
the excitement and emotion of watching England win, and the slightly
surreal feeling of actually being there. During my stay in Sydney I’d
also managed to visit some other locations central to the Trumper
legend: the sites of his old sports stores, the house he lived in in
Paddington - with its Audis, BMWs and Saabs a considerably more
gentrified area than it was in Victor’s day - and I’d retraced
his footsteps up through Surry Hills and through the park he played
cricket in as a boy each day as I walked to the SCG. The streets of
Sydney achieved an almost psychogeographical significance; by the
time the day of my departure came and the coach was taking me to the
airport I felt like I was seeing the city through Victor’s eyes.
This
June, Victor Trumper will have been dead for 97 years, but those who
came after him and named him as their inspiration carried on his
legacy of winged batsmanship, with a line of descent that included
Charlie Macartney, Archie Jackson, and Alan Kippax, and more recently
in spirit with Viv Richards and Virender Sehwag - torchbearers and
gamechangers all. I like to think that if Victor was alive now he’d
still be playing that raised-leg yorker shot to the square leg
boundary for four, still clashing heads with administrators over
players’ earnings, maybe even coining it in for an IPL franchise in
between scoring 56-ball hundreds for Australia; he knew his worth as
a player when he was alive, and I’m sure he would be as conscious
of his power to pull in the crowds now.
I’d
love to go back to Australia some day. I’m a Scottish-born England
fan whose favourite cricketer is an Australian; I’ve never had much
time for jingoism or loyalties that are defined only by borders. My
admiration for Victor Trumper took me to Australia; I fell in love
with the country and its people as well. England waited 24 years to
win a series in Australia; I had been planning my journey for four of
them. One day, I hope I can return, and follow in Victor’s
footsteps once more.
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