Then Came Massacre
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Then Came Massacre The Story of Maurice Tate, Cricket's Smiling Destroyer by Justin Parkinson, Published: 2013 Pitch Publishing, Durrington J J J J J I I I I I Table of Contents Dedication Introduction & Chapter 1 … Fred‘s Match. Chapter 2 … From Humble Beginnings. Chapter 3 … Sprint to the Altar. Chapter 4 … The Making of Maurice. Chapter 5 … At the Nursery. Chapter 6 … A Slow Start. Chapter 7 … Finding a Role. Chapter 8 … Gaining Pace. Chapter 9 … Polishing the Diamond. Chapter 10 … The Big Mo. Chapter 11 … Unlocking the Machine. Chapter 12 … Australia Bound. Chapter 13 … Success by the Sea. Chapter 14 … Australia Again. Chapter 15 … Sell, Sell, Sell. Chapter 16 … Arthur’s Eastern Promise. Chapter 17 … Business as Usual? Chapter 18 … Caribbean Cruise. Chapter 19 … Victorious Down Under. Chapter 20 … Ton Up. Chapter 21 … Here‘s Donnie. Chapter 22 … Benefit Blues. Chapter 23 … Goodbye Dodger, Douglas and Percy. Chapter 24 … In and Out. Chapter 25 … Should I Stay or Should I Go? Chapter 26 … Watching the War. Chapter 27 … Leading the Charge. Chapter 28 … Sacking. Chapter 29 … Homecoming. Chapter 30 … Poor, Poor Fred. Chapter 31 … Game Over. Chapter 32 … Remembrance. Career statistics Bibliography Index Acknowledgements J J J J J I I I I I For Caroline, Iris, Nora, Alan and Lynda Introduction THE WORDS ON the front of the bus screech into view. It is only a little bus, a single decker. No one really notices the number 46 as it begins its journey from Coldean to Southwick. Yet the bus is not just a number; it has a name. Its name is Maurice—Maurice Tate. The words are printed above the bumper in letters a few inches high. Unbeknown to almost all of Brighton and Hove Bus and Coach Company’s customers, the bored teenagers and middle-aged women waiting on a dreary afternoon, the vehicle is proclaiming the name of one of Britain’s greatest sportsmen. Maurice Tate walked along much of the bus’s route, was born a street away from it, and devastated cricketing records not far from the other end of it. He was one of the greatest bowlers ever to pull on an England sweater, and one of the greatest characters. For a decade and a half he was among the most famous men in the British Empire. It all changed so suddenly. Maurice Tate rose, within two-and-a-half years, from being an obscure county spin bowler to being universally recognised as the best pace bowler in the world. Even the shrewdest observers instantly ranked him among the most magnificent performers in the history of cricket—an innovator, an accelerator of the game’s evolution. Tate’s feats of physical endurance, and his mental and physical condition, made the front pages of the world’s most popular newspapers. They provoked Fleet Street’s finest to campaign against the mandarins at Lord’s on his behalf. His outsized feet were a source of amazement to rank alongside the fictional King Kong. His smiling, pipe-smoking persona demanded affection even from Australians. Maurice Tate, in his day, enjoyed a celebrity, a fascination, which transcended his sport, and all sport. On 5th July 1930 a newspaper, South Australia’s Register News-Pictorial , printed a letter written by 16-year-old Gladys Boorman, who lived in the village of Port Willunga: “We have a sulphur-crested cockatoo named Maurice (after Maurice Tate). He is very clever. As soon as an aeroplane shows over the hilltop, he cries out ‘Aeroplane’ until we run and have a look. He lives in a big cage all day, but in a little round one at night that just fits a kitchen chair. After tea we all sit in the dining room reading and Morry comes out and sits on mother’s lap to be petted. Early in the morning he wakes us up by calling, ‘cup o’ tea!’ Altogether he can say about 50 phrases. You ought to see the neighbours run when he says ‘Aeroplane!’” The real Maurice was just as chatty and demanding of adoration. As young Ms Boorman’s letter demonstrates, he was known well beyond cricket. His was a genial fame. There was an easy familiarity, an unusual informality. Unlike today’s stars, surrounded by security guards and publicity agents, one could knock on the door of Maurice Tate’s humble home and engage him in conversation. Boys in the park could play knockabout games of cricket with him. All the while he destroyed first-class and Test batsmen in their hundreds. He did not profess fully to understand his powers, leaving that to those of a more analytical persuasion. The success, an apparent fulfilment of a gift beyond its owner’s comprehension or making, was beautifully summed up in a report published in the Sussex Daily News in 1925. During a spell of sustained hostility which left Glamorgan’s batsmen groping helplessly, seven wickets fell entirely to Tate—no fielders or wicketkeeper needed as five were bowled, one was out leg before and the other was caught and bowled. The unnamed journalist, in the middle of an otherwise sober and factual account, wrote a simple, three-word sentence: “Then came massacre.” Indeed it did. Such destruction of wickets and opposition morale was, at one stage of Tate’s career, happening at least once a week. The brilliance was so sustained that to repeat the statistics in too much detail risks becoming banal. Yet who today, even those using the bus in his home town, could tell you who Maurice Tate was? Who could recall the wonder contemporaries showed when, by some superhuman ability, his bowling seemed to ‘gain pace’ off the pitch? And where is the replayed footage of the six-hitting with which he entertained crowds around the world when he had his bowling boots off? Only a bus, one of a fleet renamed to commemorate Brighton and Hove’s great and good, pays clear homage to him. No statues stand in the city whose people he gave so much entertainment in politically and economically troubled times. There are other reminders, visible only to the few who already know of his greatness: a plaque here, a set of gates there. People who witnessed his achievements would scarcely comprehend how little is remembered. The names of Harold Larwood, Douglas Jardine, Jack Hobbs and Wally Hammond flow quickly from the tongues of those possessing the tiniest knowledge of cricket’s history. Criminally, Maurice Tate’s does not. His fame was based not only on his achievements but the circumstances from which he came. His father, Fred, had been an England cricketer, at least very briefly. Normally, having international sporting experience in the blood would be seen as an advantage, a way in to a career. But that would depend on the deeds of the father. It is to this Fred, perhaps the most infamous and pitied man in the history of Test match cricket, that we must turn as we begin the story of the truly extraordinary Maurice Tate. Chapter 1 Fred‘s Match. “Tate had not the stern fibre of character that can survive in an air of high tragedy; his bent was for pastoral comedy down at Horsham .” —Neville Cardus FRED TATE’S 35TH birthday promised to be unlike any other. This increasingly rotund county cricketer—affectionately known as “Chub” by his many friends in the game—was finally going to the big time. An uncomplaining county off-spinner, he was one of the supporting cast in what later became known as cricket’s ‘golden age’—the late Victorian and early Edwardian run-fest where gentleman stroke-makers were rulers of the public imagination. Tate, a little quicker through the air than most spinners, had been steadily accumulating wickets for Sussex since 1887, while the glamour boys of the team—the technically brilliant CB Fry and the sumptuously wristy and exotic Kumar Sri Ranjitsinhji, or “Ranji”—scored and scored on the batsman-friendly wickets at Hove. Tate’s career thus far had been a good one. Not a household name, he would have been well known to true devotees of the game, the collectors of scorecards and accumulators of Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack . Up until now he had teased out more than a thousand batsmen, earning little financially or in plaudits for his hard work. There had been high points, including nine wickets in an innings against Hampshire in 1891. But 1902 was different. Surpassing the expectations of others, and probably himself, Tate was consistently brilliant. By the end of the season he had taken 180 wickets at an average of just 15.71. Touring the shires and cities, this moustachioed man tormented team after team. Normally more of a containing bowler, one against whom even the best batsmen did not take liberties but could survive with a bit of watchfulness, a wet summer was helping to turn him into an insatiable, corpulent predator. Nine wickets came for 73 runs in the first innings of Sussex’s match at Leicester in June and 15 wickets in the Middlesex match a fortnight later. At the same time, England were playing Australia in what turned out to be one of the most absorbing Ashes series in history. The likes of Victor Trumper, Hugh Trumble, Monty Noble, Clem Hill and Warwick Armstrong made the side one of the greatest to have visited ‘the Old Country’. England had a pretty decent line-up too, with names like Fry, Ranji, brilliant medium-pacer Sydney Barnes, dashing batsman Stanley Jackson and all-rounder George Hirst at their disposal, led by the imperious Archie MacLaren.