A Corinthian spirit

posted by John Winn

With Arthington behind us and Boxing Day still more than ten weeks away the pcw must find alternative ways to quench his/her thirst for all things cricket and for this blogger the winter provides the opportunity to catch up on reading and I have this week finished 

‘ Runs and Catches' the slim autobiography of Tony Pawson. 

Pawson, who died in 2012 aged 91 is described in his Wisden obituary as 'one of the last of the brilliant all-round sportsman who emerged from the public schools and bestrode English sport in the first half of the twentieth century'. His cv certainly supports this view for coming from a privileged background, his father captained Oxford in 1910, Tony followed in dad's footsteps and went to Winchester and after a distinguished war he entered Christ Church College, Oxford, made a hundred in the 1947 Varsity match then captained the Dark Blues the following year.  That would be enough for most of us but he had played for Kent after being demobbed and made 90 on debut..A good county player Pawson freely admits he was not good enough for test cricket but given his credentials it would not have been surprising had he been selected. Think JG Dewes and JJ Warr.

Away from cricket HA Pawson was also an outstanding footballer in the halcyon days of the amateur game. An Oxford blue he was selected for the England amateur XI, played for Pegasus when they won the Amateur Cup in 1951, and fitted in a couple of games for Charlton Athletic, scoring on his debut against Spurs .If all this adds up to something out of the pages of Hotspur rather than Wisden then the icing on the cake is yet to come for in 1984 Tony became world champion in the sport that gave him most satisfaction, namely fly fishing. Born in Sudan he first fished in the Nile as a four year old and after his successful debut for Kent announced to his skipper Bryan Valentine that he was not available for the next match, 'gone fishing, there's a sign upon my door' to borrow from the Louis Armstrong song. 'Runs and Catches' has on its cover a photo of Pawson batting for Kent against Middlesex at Lord's in 1947 and on the back he is shown landing a salmon on the Scottish Avon.

Like most of us HA had to make a living and after a spell as a schoolmaster at Winchester he had a very successful career with Reed International where he was Personnel Director but then turned his hand to journalism and it is for his writings on cricket in The Observer that I best  remember him. When asked how he had the patience for fishing his reply was

that 'the only patience needed is to endure the months and days when you can't fish'. Substitute watching cricket for fishing and that sums up quite nicely the philosophy of the pcw

The umpires set forth to start the last game of the season at Arthington