Another quiz about Pullar

posted by John Winn

Following the recent quiz question asking for the names of the lately deceased Geoff Pullar's six opening partners in test matches I offer another teaser which may tax even our readers of the red rose persuasion. Diligent research by Tony Hutton has revealed that there were eleven, in Tony's words 'a very varied bunch, some long forgotten'. Answers next time. If it is any help Pullar's career with Lancashire stretched from 1954 until 1968 when he joined Gloucestershire. For a bonus point you might like to consider who accompanied him to the crease for the west country men but in all fairness I should mention that he didn't open for Gloucestershire. Thanks again to Tony for that information

Old Trafford but not as in Pullar's time.



My recent reading has been of a book in the ACS Lives in Cricket series, a biography of WE Astill 'All-rounder debonair' by AR Littlewood. Although Littlewood has spent much of his life in Canada he is very much a Leicestershire man and his previous contribution to this series was an account of another running fox, JH King. Ewart Astill played nine tests for England but was never selected to play on English soil or for an ashes tour, He played five tests on matting in South Africa in 1927/28 and four in the West Indies in 1929/30. Astill was a nephew of Thomas Jayes who played for Leicestershire between 1903 and 1911.

Littlewood's is an extremely diligent researcher, the slim volume has over 300 footnotes expanding on sources, and some may find the early chapters a little too detailed but Astill was unlucky not to have played more tests and were it not for writers like Lockwood even less would be known of people like Astill and King. One footnote that particularly interested me was a reference to the novels of CP Snow. Snow was born in Leicester in 1905 and after a degree at what is now Leicester University he took a  PhD  at Christ's College, Cambridge. In a lecture in 1959 Snow expressed his regrets about the division of culture into science and humanities. He did his best to straddle the divide in a series of novels entitled 'Strangers and Brothers', the best known of which 'The Masters' was adapted for stage and radio and televised in 1984. I enjoyed reading some of them in my late teens and early twenties but suspect that they have rather fallen out of fashion. Perhaps not entirely for they would still cost about six or seven pounds in the kindle version.

Snow was a friend of Astill's and on page 118 of 'All-rounder debonair' Lockwood reveals that the cricketer confided in the novelist that he had lied about his age in order to increase his chances of test selection. The connection to the series of novels is that Snow used the names of Leicestershire cricketers for some of his characters. Now there's an idea for a quiz question.