Rolph Stewart Grant

posted by John Winn

West Indies played no tests between their victory at Sabina Park in 1935 and 1939 when they visited England for a three match series, a tour which was cut short by the outbreak of war in September of that year. Rolph Grant, the youngest of ten children had made his international debut in the 1935 series playing under his brother Jackie's captaincy but with Jackie retired it was Rolph who led a side that included what had become household names like Headley and Constantine.

The Grant family had settled in Trinidad from Canada and were a wealthy merchant family. Rolph trod the family path to Queens Royal College and Cambridge University where he made his first class debut v Kent at Fenner's in 1932. He was not a regular in the side but gained his blue in 1933 and curiously played for the West Indians v the University that year. Michael Manley, the former Jamaican PM writing in his 'History of West Indies Cricket' described Rolph as 'a man of great decency and intelligence' but in his qualifications for captaincy he was 'far more importantly the son of a wealthy and powerful Trinidadian family...the families who were accustomed to ruling who were accustomed to produce the sons who were capable of leading.'

This evocative photograph shows Martindale and Sealy* leaving the Oval on August 22nd at the end of the third test, just ten days before Poland was invaded precipitating Britain's participation in the war. The sun sets not just on the Oval but on test cricket which would not return for seven years until India visited in 1946. For 14 of the players in this match it was to be their last test match. Amongst them was RS Grant who was never to play first class cricket again. Before closing one should pay tribute to his other sporting talents for he was also a soccer blue and an international goalkeeper (like his brother Jackie he was an outstanding fielder). As a side line he was heavyweight boxing champion of Trinidad. Although his Wisden obituary gives him twice as much space as his older brother there is no reference to his pugilistic skills. 

* Although not shown on the photograph but also leaving the field is Len Hutton who was 165 not out at the close. Those lucky enough to be there on that historic day had seen Hutton and Hammond join in a stand of 264 in three hours. If it was to be their last glimpse of cricket what a memory. 

58th Scarborough Festival

By Brian Sanderson


Looking through my collection of photographs I notice this of Yorkshire at Scarborough on Saturday
3 September 1938. Yorkshire had just beaten Sussex to win County Championship the twentieth time
in all land the eleventh since the First World War, Wisden stated that team work was the main asset. The batting was solid as usual with somebody nearly  always at hand to check a threatened breakdown ,and the quality of the bowling was illustrated by the fact that ,in all matches four men, Verity ,Bowes,Smailes and Robinson,each took over 100 wickets.

The Yorkshire team from left to right was Verity, Mitchell,Sutcliffe Sellers, Smailes Wood, Leyland
Bowes, Hutton, Robinson and Barber.

On the Saturday the weather was bitterly cold with wind and rain.The match did not start until
12 O'Clock because of the rain. At the end of the day M.C.C had reached 190 for 4.

On the Monday the weather started sunny but soon came cold again.M.C.C went on to score 345.
Yorkshire finished on 46 for 3.On the final day Yorkshire saved the follow on by scoring 221.M.C.C batted again to score 132 for 4 setting a target of 257 in two hours. Thy never went for it but finished up 35 runs short of victory after being to some extent outplayed .Smailes was allowed to come in three to complete a double of 100 wickets and 1000 runs. There had only been two people who had done that at this stage.Wilfred Rhodes and Roy Kilner. This surprised me as I thought George Hirst would have achieved the feat.

This would be the last Festival until 1945 when Cec  Pepper hit the ball over the houses into
Trafalgar Square.

Cricket report with a difference

By Brian Sanderson

Further to Tony report which appeared on Cricket Archives, I looked in Wisden fsor 1944.
It stated that The Army were deprived of their opening bowlers G.O.Allen and G.Lambert.
so that is why Sellers opened the bowling .Lambert played for Gloucester and in 1949  was
regarded s the fastest bowler in English County cricket.  the match as Tony thought was curtailed by
rain which caused a draw.

Looking last night through on of my favorite website archive newspapers ,I found the report of the
match which brought a smile to my face and thought it should be shared.

 The Army were Nearly Torpedoed

The Navy should have torpedoed the Army at Lords's .The Senior Service only wanted 31 runs
for victory,and had six warships in line when the last shot was fired.
Solders naturally won't agree but neutrals will regret that the"Sailors"did not get away with the loot.
It would have been one those smashing surprises for which the British fleet is famous.

When the scorecards were printed the Army with their batting order studded with famous cricketers
seemed to have on hand an easy pushover.
But as often before a small landing party of Royal Marines did terrific execution for the ships.
Lt.T.G.Bailey took 5 of the best Army wickets for 45 runs .About the most impressive feat of his
career.He clean bowled Halliday and also accounted for Sellers.

Another sea-solder Lt. W.H.Mallett  proved  the outstanding personality of the match.He took three
wickets for 36-made a great catch and then when Sellers threatened to treat the bluejackets
as nine-pins -hit a hurricane half-century in forty minutes that turned the game.

The most blinding flash of memorable cricket of the day was,however soldier stuff .It was Bill
Levett's stumping  of Lt Sinclair off Sellers (3 for 17 ) on the leg side .
This was forked lightening in gloves and pad/

 I could imagine this being a scene from Monty Python show.The report was in the People newspaper.

On the same page there were reports of battles in the Pacific and Normandy.

On the wireless on General Forces you could listen to a report o the match and the Priestly Cup Final
from 4.15 till 5.00.The final was between Spen Victoria and Yeadon at  Park Avenue Bradford. There was only twoovers bowled and would be resume on the 16 September On that date Spen Victoria won the double
by bowling Yeadon out for 79.

Wartime detective work

Posted by Tony Hutton

Delighted to see Brian Sanderson back in action on the blog. I was immediately fascinated by his team picture of a wartime match at Lord's which features three Yorkshire players Brian Sellars, Maurice Leyland and Harry Halliday, who he wrote about. I also managed to identify Jack Robertson of Middlesex, third from left on the back row and C.H. Palmer, then of Worcestershire, is the man in glasses.

I must admit to being stumped by the rest of the side, although one or two looked vaguely familiar. However this set me off to try and track down what the team was and who they were playing against at Lord's. I was aware that an England XI played the Australian Services XI in several games at Lord's but this did not look quite good enough for an England side. The clue of course lay in the two uniformed officers on the picture who were quite plainly in the Army.

I started my search on the wonderful Cricket Archive website which has full scorecards of important games played during the war years (and every other year for that matter). I started looking at matches in 1945 and soon found out that Robertson and Halliday were fairly regular performers for the Army XI, but could find no trace of Sellars or Leyland.

I then ploughed my way through matches played in 1944 and found that there were rather a lot of them, much to my surprise. However, shortly before I got to the end of the season, I struck gold with the full scorecard of a one day match between the Army and the Royal Navy at Lord's on 19th August 1944.

The Army batted first and opened with Robertson and Halliday. At number three was R.H. (Dick) Moore who had captained Hampshire for two seasons just before the war and is probably the distinguished looking gentleman on the left of the front row in Brian's picture. I believe he still holds the record for the highest Hampshire individual score of 316 against Warwickshire in 1937.

Number four was Yorkshire's Maurice Leyland who top scored with 33. The bespectacled Charlie Palmer followed with 21, but the remaining batsman including Yorkshire captain Brian Sellars, footballer Reg Halton and Essex leg spinner Cecil Boswell were dismissed by two youngsters in the Navy ranks Trevor Bailey and Tony Mallett.

The last three in the order also fell cheaply. They were 'Tim' Warr, who kept wicket for Oxford University early in the 1930s, Len Wilkinson leg break bowler for Lancashire and England and at number eleven 'Hopper' Levett, Kent and one match for England as wicket keeper in 1934. The Army were bowled out for 153. 20 year old Trevor Bailey taking 5-45 for the Navy.

Len Wilkinson, who had impressed during the 1938 season with 151 wickets for Lancashire and toured South Africa with England the following winter, was very unlucky to have his career cut short not only by the war but by several injury problems. His county career ended in 1947 and I remember seeing him play as professional for Morecambe a few years later.

Len Wilkinson is extreme left on the middle row of England's touring party in South Africa.

The Navy in reply made only 123-4 in just 32 overs and the match was drawn, possibly the weather intervened. Brian Sellars in the unusual position for him as opening bowler took 3-17 with Mallett 57 not out and Ken Cranston of Lancashire, who would play for England in 1947, 26 not out. So rather an unsatisfactory finish to the game, but some interesting characters taking part.

Reg Halton, who only played cricket for Staffordshire, was better known as a footballer, playing wing half for Bury, Chesterfield and Leicester City after the war. He guested for Arsenal in their game with Moscow Dynamo in 1945. Anthony 'Tim' Warr was a pupil and teacher at Leeds Grammar School. He was better known as a rugby union winger, who played for Old Leodensians, Wakefield, Yorkshire and England (2 caps in 1934).

Halton is second from the right on the back row, Halliday third from right and probably Levett is fourth from right. Of the others I am not sure. All interesting stuff and thanks to Brian for producing such a great photograph.

George Copeland 'Jackie' Grant

posted by John Winn

GC Grant was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad in 1907, one of ten children and twin brother of Janet together with whom he made the eighth and ninth. George and Janet were known as Jack and Jill  and the Jackie stuck for the rest of his life. Jackie attended Queens Royal College where he captained the school cricket and football teams. Distinguished alumni of the school include the cricket writer CLR James and West Indies wicket keeper Deryck Murray who played in 62 tests between 1963 and 1980.

From Queens Jackie went to Cambridge University where he gained his blue for both cricket and football, the round ball version. His first first class match was at Wantage Road in June 1928, his only first class game that year and although his contribution was modest he had the pleasure of being on the winning side and playing in the same team as Duleepsinhji. Modest also best describes his performances in the two varsity matches he played but he had the satisfaction of being on the winning side at Lord's in 1930, Oxford, Nawab of Pataudi and all, being bowled out on the last day for 101, the last seven wickets going down for fifteen runs.

After Lord's Grant was selected to captain West Indies for their first tour of Australia in 30-31 which surprisingly began with a two day game at The Basin Reserve v Wellington. Ten days later Grant, who had not captained since his school days, led his men against New South Wales at the SCG, the start of a tour that was to be financially disastrous and during which they were to spend a lot of time watching a young Bradman take them to the cleaners. They came to the first test in Sydney on the back of three defeats by state sides and had the team been selected on form Jackie would have struggled to be picked. The match was lost by ten wickets and Jackie became the first man in test history to make two unbeaten fifties in the same match. Bradman batted only once and made only four. The second, third and fourth games were lost by similarly wide margins and Jackie did little with the bat and perhaps wisely bowled only one over. That was in the third test at Brisbane when Bradman scored 223, good call skipper.

By the time of the fifth test, back at Sydney, the financial situation was such that the West Indians had to use trams rather than taxis to travel to the ground for practice. After four defeats few would have given Grant's men any chance of avoiding defeat but having persuaded the Australian authorities to prepare a wicket with more pace the visitors rattled up 350 for 6, centuries for Martin and Headley and 62 for Grant, they restricted Bradman to 43 and a second innings duck and ran out winners by 30 runs.

It was two years before GC was to captain his country again, such was the gap between tests at that time, when he brought a nucleus of fifteen to England in 1933 for a demanding programme of thirty first class matches with the squad supplemented by recruits from league cricket. The most notable of these was Learie Constantine but he played in only one of the three test matches. The summer was a good one and batsmen thrived but only Headley of the tourists took full advantage of the firm wickets. He scored over 2000 runs including seven scores of over 100. Jackie Grant fared well enough with the bat to score almost 1200 runs but his test match performances were poor.

If this was disappointing Wisden could not speak highly enough of his captaincy, words like 'clever', 'enthusiastic', astute, 'sporting spirit' appear against Grant's name in editor Sydney J Southerton's report of the tour. Much too is made of his brilliant close fielding, especially at gully. The last match of the tour was played against Leveson-Gower's XI at Scarborough in early September 1933 and Grant did not lead his country again until they faced England in Barbados in January 1935, during which intervening period he had played only two first class matches, both for Trinidad. England, captained by Bob Wyatt, whilst not at full strength, took a stronger side to the Caribbean than in 1929-30. Not strong enough however.

The first match played on a freakish pitch was remarkable for its low scores and declarations, England declared their first innings at 81 for 7 and West Indies their second at 51 for 6. Despite Martindale taking five wickets England got home by four wickets. Hammond kept back in the order to number six hit the winning runs with a six. That was the height of it for England for at Port of Spain and Sabina Park they lost heavily with a draw at Georgetown in between. GC Grant was joined by his brother Rolph for all four tests. Sadly Jackie was off the field when the series was clinched in Jamaica and this was to be his last first class match. Still only 28 and at his moment of triumph he gave up cricket to join a missionary school in Durban. Life was far from dull for him there but that is a story for another time and perhaps another place.

Finally I must welcome Brian back to the team after a sabbatical of over three years. We look forward to more of his Yorkshire reminiscences as we all seek ways of enduring isolation and social distancing. From me next time more about the Grants and particularly brother Rolph, the tenth and last child of the family who succeeded brother Jackie as captain of his country. .

George Copeland 'Jackie' Grant

1907- 1978
A man who deserved more than the eight lines Wisden could spare for his obituary. 

Starting Again

By Brian Sanderson

As I am isolated in my  house for 23 hours , I have been sorting out my cricket memorabilia which is
not a quick job as there are two rooms full. During this time I have been thinking
how to show my photographs and tell their stories. So I decided to rejoin Tony and John back on this
valuable blog which records visit to grounds and the history of cricket. Who know what the situation
will be after the virus. Local cricket ,I think will not be played in the leagues but hopefully
there will be some friendly cricket but who knows.

However back to the above photograph above of Billy Sutcliffe and Harry Halliday walking out at
Harrogate  in the sunshine in the 1950's with Harrogate still at i's best.

Billy Sutcliffe was the son of Herbert, one of the greatest of Yorkshire batsmen, so must have great
pressure on him when playing for Yorkshire..His full name was William Herbert Hobbs Sutcliffe
and of course born in Pudsey in 1926. That must have taken some thinking about.
He batted in the middle order for Yorkshire from 1948 to 1957 and took over the Yorkshire captaincy
in 1956 for two years after Norman Yardley retired.. His best season was in 1955 when he scored
1261 runs at average of 33.18. It could have not been easy to captain the side with many stars
with their own ideas to run the side. It was not until Burnett took over the captaincy when a number
of players were sacked or retire that Yorkshire won a Championship again. That is another story.

Harry Halliday was also born in Pudsey in 1920. He was also a middle order batsman and played for
Yorkshire from 1938 to 1953. He hit 1000 runs in a season four times ( best 1484  averaging
8.05 in 1950). He also went on to play for Cumberland.

Hope you enjoyed one of the many stories about Yorkshire players and Yorkshire Cricket.More to
come hopefully.

   

Harry Halliday  during Second World War.

Who got there first? Ivanhoe by George!

posted by John Winn

'Barrow did have his better days for in 1933 he had become the first West Indian to score a test century in England (105 at Old Trafford).' John Winn last week.

'Headley only just beating him(Barrow)  to the honour of being the first West Indian to score a test hundred in England'. Tony Cozier in The West Indies: Fifty Years of Test Cricket published 1978

but 'A wicket-keeper and opening batsman, he (Barrow) became the first West Indian to score a century in a test match in England which he did at Old Trafford', Wikipedia (this morning) but of course Wiki is riddled with mistakes and the odds must still favour George Headley being the first to reach three figures. HOWEVER

(Barrow)…...has a place in cricket history as the first West Indian to score a hundred in a test in England, and when he achieved the feat George Headley was on 99  (Wisden in Barrow's obituary 1980) So whilst in their match report Wisden says Barron was 'overshadowed by his more famous partner' they appear to have evidence that the relative unknown got there first.

The research I have done for this post has served to show that my collection of cricket literature rather underserves West Indian cricket but perhaps this is true of cricket literature in general. Barrow was dismissed by 'a cleverly flighted ball' from Bob Wyatt but in 'RES Wyatt-fighting cricketer' Gerald Pawle's biography of Wyatt, the 1933 West Indies tour is condensed to three lines. The book was never likely to have been called 'The Hand that Bowled Barrow.'

I should not conclude however without a little more praise for Ivan Mordecai Barrow born Jamaica 1911, died same island 1979. As his second forename suggests he was of the Jewish faith and Wiki says that as of 2010 he was the only Jewish cricketer to have scored a test century. That day at Manchester was by a long distance his shining hour, for his next highest score in 11 tests was 27 v Australia at Adelaide in 1930. How he must have enjoyed that day in Manchester.

IMB