More to a Life than Cricket

Martin Chandler | 2:20pm GMT 14 January 2024

Published: 2023
Pages: 169
Author: Smith, Rick
Publisher: Apple Books
Rating: 4 stars

I wonder if Rick Smith might have started something here, as I certainly don’t recall reading anything quite like More to a Life than Cricket before. The formula is simple enough and comprises a collection of pen portraits. There is nothing unusual about that of course, but the theme is what makes the 21 men featured so interesting.

In common to all the subjects are appearances in First Class cricket, but that is about it. Success in the games in which they featured is not a necessary qualification, and the cricket careers of some were far from memorable. Henry Allison for example, who played twice for Tasmania in the 1850s, scored just four runs in four completed innings and did not bowl a single delivery.

Outside the game Allison came from a background of some privilege and was an auctioneer. But there was matrimonial and financial scandal and eventually he decamped to the US and made a new life for himself and a new family.

Of a similar vintage is Melmoth Hall, who also played two First Class matches in the 1850s, albeit with a little more success than Allison, making 29 runs from his four innings, one of them unfinished.

Hall came from a wealthy background in England, but he gave that up for the love of a servant girl to whom he remained loyal. Banished to Australia he did not enjoy too much good fortune, but unlike Allison seems to have been a thoroughly decent man.

Two of the men featured played Test cricket, one who played for Australia twice and the other once. John Hodges first First Class appearance was in the inaugural Test and despite being, perhaps, fortunate to be selected he took three wickets. That was enough for Hodges to retain his place for the second match, and he took three more then. Thereafter his life was a mystery, until Smith, Rodney Ulyate and Ray Webster pooled their resources and managed to largely reconstruct it. A man with serious issues and jailed on four occasions for exposing himself Hodges spent time in Australia and South Africa before, probably, dying back in Australia in 1919.

More to a Life than Cricket concludes with the second Test cricketer to feature. Like many I believed for years that the Ray Robinson who appeared in the first of the 1936/37 Ashes Tests was the man who went on to become the celebrated cricket scribe. I did eventually realise they were two different men, but had not realised before now what a remarkable and sad back story the Test playing Ray Robinson had.

Hunter Poon was the first cricketer of Chinese descent to play First Class cricket in Australia when he appeared once for Queensland in 1923/24. Poon was an all-rounder, a right handed batsman and leg spinner who made that appearance notwithstanding the loss of the use of two fingers in his right hand as a result of war time injuries. In the century that has passed since then Richard Chee Quee is so far the only other man of Chinese descent to emulate Poon.

Other stories include Charles Pitt Hammond, a man who played twice for Tasmania in the closing years of the 19th century, before emigrating to the USA and forging a career as a film actor. Alfred ‘Rocco’ Atkins, a contemporary of Hammond, was a rather better cricketer, but ended up serving a prison sentence for bigamy.

The remaining men featured have a variety of back stories, but all are unusual and none were in any way familiar to me. There must be many more out there, and indeed it is clear from Smith’s introduction that he has his eye on several others. As experiments go More to a Life than Cricket is a complete success, and I will certainly be at the front of the queue when the second selection is released. This time the book appears as an individually numbered and signed limited edition of 150 copies, although the cost is in no way prohibitive. Copies are available from Roger Page.