The Cricketers of 1945: Rising from the Ashes of World War Two
Martin Chandler |Published: 2024
Pages: 288
Author: Sandford, Christopher
Publisher: Pitch
Rating: 4.5 stars
1945 was, perhaps, the most significant year in the history of the human race. A weapon of such terrifying power was unleashed on the civilians of two cities in Japan that it seemed, for most of my life, that a lesson had been learned. Not until this decade have I ever begun to think that perhaps the lesson has been forgotten. I won’t be quite so unrealistic to suggest that political leaders throughout the world should be required to read Christopher Sandford’s latest book, but they could all do a lot worse.
As you will gather from that observation The Cricketers of 1945 is a thought provoking piece of work but, I stress, one that is undoubtedly a cricket book. The fact is that its reader is also faced with an in some ways counter-intuitive look at the social history of a year that was dominated by austerity and a desire for change, as much as it was with the understandable fanfare and celebration at the end of a worldwide conflict that had lasted six long years.
Four years ago Christopher Sandford’s The Final Innings appeared, in which he looked at the 1939 cricket season and its aftermath. So I suppose this one, if not exactly a companion volume, is a logical sequel. It is also just as interesting an account and in some ways the more so given that, out of necessity, it deals much more with the game below First Class level than its predecessor.
The book is largely a combination of match reports and short biographies of the men involved, geared very much to their wartime experiences. Thus figures like Bill Edrich and Keith Miller loom large, as do all those who played in what have come to be known as the ‘Victory Tests’, a series of five three day matches between the best that England had available (by which I mean a full strength side less only those few such as Denis Compton who were stationed overseas) and the best of the Australian Services men. Of them only skipper Lindsay Hassett was an established Test cricketer, and only Keith Miller would become one, but despite some initial concerns the Australians proved to be stern opponents, and an exciting series full of good cricket was eventually drawn 2-2.
The biographical details are not just a simple rehashing of information that is widely available. It was good, for example, to finally learn something of the life of Bill Roberts, a Lancastrian orthodox slow left arm bowler who attended my alma mater but who, having tragically died at just 36, seems to have largely escaped the county’s historians. I had also heard of the West Indian leg spinner Bertie Clarke, but not that in the 1960s, having qualified and practised as a doctor, he ended up serving a three year prison sentence for procuring illegal abortions.
Many did not survive the conflict of course, and the tragic circumstances that took Test cricketers Hedley Verity, Ken Farnes and Ross Gregory are reprised. Also told are the stories of the young Kent amateur Gerry Chalk, whose remains were not located until 1989, and the young Hampshire batsman John Blake, who certainly fully merited his posthumous Military Cross.
But away from the hostilities of the preceding years the joy of the war ending was tempered by struggles and shortages and if the book is certainly not about those, they are always just below the surface and constantly nagging at the reader’s mind.
There was plenty of hard work as well, and a good deal of that was put in at Lord’s by the 71 year old ‘Plum’ Warner, nominally Deputy Secretary but in truth in charge of just about everything including the selection of the England sides for the ‘Victory’ Tests. The archive at Lord’s is a remarkable resource for any researcher, and Warner’s 1945 correspondence crops up regularly, that with the Derbyshire all-rounder George Pope over his availability for the ‘Victory’ Tests being of particular interest and illustrating perfectly that despite the Labour landslide in the 1945 general election and the inevitability of change in the way English cricket was run, those changes would have to wait.
Not too many cricket books are published at the close of the English season, for reasons I have never really been able to work out. But perhaps with this one the timing of its release, always a time for cricketing reflection, suits the subject matter. In any event it is an excellent book, and highly recommended.
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