The Shorter Wisden 2013 (43 page)

A volatile temperament that repeatedly led him into trouble, allied to technical defects, limited Morton’s success at the highest level. Yet, as several of his team-mates attested, his
love of the game could not be queried. The first of his widely publicised run-ins with authority led to his expulsion from the West Indian board’s initial Academy in 2001. A year later, he
left the Champions Trophy early after claiming his grandmother had died. She turned out to be hale and hearty, which – compounded by further indiscretions on an A-team tour – brought
him a year-long ban. There were later clashes with the law: a year before his death he and fellow Nevisian Tonito Willett were charged by the T&T police with possession of marijuana, an
accusation to which they pleaded not guilty. Friends reported that marriage to a Trinidadian woman, and bringing up their three children, had been a calming influence. After moving to
Port-of-Spain, Morton piled up the runs for Queen’s Park, Trinidad’s oldest and most famous club, where he was a popular mentor to young players; chosen for T&T for what turned out
to be his final season in 2011, he became one of the few to represent two territories in the regional first-class tournament.

The first of two strikes by senior players opened the way to his Test debut in Sri Lanka in 2005. Like many of the first-timers, he was embarrassed by the mesmerising spin of Muttiah
Muralitharan and the swing of Chaminda Vaas. Still, Morton’s breathtaking catching in the slips moved Ian Chappell, commentating on the series, to rate him the best in the position at the
time. In 15 Tests up to 2008, going in mostly at No. 3 or 4, Morton averaged just 22. The closest he came to a hundred was at Napier in 2005-06; unbeaten on 70, he was denied by rain. His 67,
against Australia at Sabina Park in 2007-08 in a fourth-wicket partnership of 128 with Shivnarine Chanderpaul, was probably his best innings – but the next Test was his last.

Morton was more at home in one-day internationals, in which he averaged 33 despite being shuffled around the order: he was tried in every position from opener to No. 7. He scored centuries
against New Zealand and Zimbabwe, although more representative of his belligerence and grit was an unbeaten 90 in Mumbai, in a victory over Australia that helped West Indies to the 2006 Champions
Trophy final. Still, the contrasts which made Morton such an enigma had been typified only a few weeks earlier by an innings in a one-day international in Kuala Lumpur – also against
Australia, he made a 31-ball duck, a record.

In his eulogy at a service in Trinidad which preceded the burial in Nevis, Brian Lara described Morton as “a fighter [who] worked harder than most, a true team man”. And Chris Gayle,
Lara’s successor as captain, tweeted: “We lost a true warrior... heart of a lion. As captain at the time, I wish I had ten Mortons to lead on a cricket field!”

MUNIR MALIK
, who died on November 30, aged 78, was a fast-medium bowler who played three Tests for Pakistan, two of them in 1962 in England, where he took five
for 128 in 49 overs at Headingley. One spell from the Kirkstall Lane End lasted from 3pm on the Thursday to 1.30pm on the Friday. Munir had come to prominence with five for 12 and seven for 27 as
Rawalpindi beat Peshawar in a Quaid-e-Azam Trophy match in December 1958, despite being bowled out for 53 in the first innings. He made his Test debut against Australia the following season, in a
match watched by the American president Dwight Eisenhower. Munir’s speciality, according to the Pakistani journalist Qamar Ahmed, was his “vicious leg-cutter, plus a ball which dipped
in”. His best innings return – eight for 154 – came in what turned out to be the last match of his ten-year career, for Karachi Whites against Punjab University at Lahore in April
1966.

MURRAY
, LANCE HAMILTON, who died on October 21, aged 91, was a significant administrator in Trinidad and West Indies cricket. His flighted off-spin earned him
three first-class matches, only one for the full Trinidad side – in 1956, the year the Trinidad & Tobago Cricket Board of Control replaced his own Queen’s Park club as the sole
authority for the sport in the country, a move he strongly supported. He was the new board’s first vice-president, and their long-term representative on the West Indian board. He became more
widely known as a radio analyst on regional and international matches in Port-of-Spain – and through the success of his son Deryck Murray, the wicketkeeper who won 62 Test caps between 1963
and 1980. In 1992, Lance was awarded Trinidad and Tobago’s second-highest honour, the Chaconia Medal, for his work in sports administration.

NAIDU
, TORAM SHESHRAO, who died on April 1, aged 93, was believed to have been the oldest Indian first-class cricketer at the time of his death. Naidu had made
his debut for Central Provinces and Berar against Douglas Jardine’s 1933-34 MCC tourists, falling to the Kent leg-spinner “Father” Marriott for a duck. He did better in the second
innings, making 32 in a useful stand with his captain, C. K. Nayudu. Naidu played six further first-class matches in a career that stretched to 1951-52, scoring 56 against Hyderabad in December
1945. He was a long-time friend of the former Indian board president N. K. P. Salve, who died on the same day.

NEBLETT
, CLEMENT EVERTON, died on holiday in St Vincent in March, aged 61. Clem Neblett was a powerful left-hand batsman and right-arm medium-pacer whose heavy
scoring for the Police club in his native Guyana merited more than six first-class matches before he emigrated to Toronto in 1978. He soon became one of the leading all-rounders in local club
cricket, and captained Canada in the ICC Trophy tournaments in England in 1982 and 1986. At the time of his death, Neblett had been resident in the United States for nearly 20 years.

NIMBALKAR
, BHAUSAHEB BABUSAHEB, who died on December 11, the day before his 93rd birthday, will always be remembered for an innings of 443 not out in 1948-49.
Nimbalkar was closing in on what was then the world record – Don Bradman’s 452 not out for New South Wales against Queensland in 1929-30 – when the opposition refused to play on.
Kathiawar had been bowled out for 238 on the opening day at Poona, and when Maharashtra reached 826 for four by tea on the third, the Thakore Saheb of Rajkot – Kathiawar’s princely
leader – ordered the Maharashtra captain, Raja Gokhale, to declare. If not, his team were going home. Gokhale offered to stop after two more overs, to allow Nimbalkar a chance of the record
– but Kathiawar simply packed their bags and left. “Their skipper felt the name of his team would figure in the record books for the wrong reasons,” said Nimbalkar. “I was
left stranded in the middle of the ground.” Only at tea had Nimbalkar been told how close he was: “Had I known, I would have gone for the runs.” He had hit 46 fours and a six
during more than eight hours at the crease, but there was, though, some consolation. “I got a personal message from Sir Don Bradman,” he said. “Even though he had the world
record, and I had only the record in India, he still rated my innings as better.” Strangely, Nimbalkar never won a Test cap, although he averaged more than 56 in a long Ranji Trophy career
that stretched into the 1960s; his only taste of representative cricket was an unofficial Test against a Commonwealth XI in 1949-50, when he batted at No. 9 in both innings. “I don’t
know why the selectors sidelined me all the time,” he said. “What really hurt me was that some less talented players got a chance to represent the country.”

NORTON
, GERALD IVOR DESMOND, died on July 18, aged 93. Ivor Norton was a talented slow left-armer who captained Malvern College in 1938. He had a long club
career, and also played two first-class matches for MCC. In the first, in Dublin in 1958, he took four for 44, then five for 26, as Ireland – needing 97 to win a rain-affected match –
hung on for a draw at 82 for nine. Two years later, back in Dublin and now 41 years old, he took six for 57 and two for six, to finish his brief first-class career with 17 wickets at 7.82.
Norton’s captain in both matches was George Chesterton, another distinguished Malvernian who died in 2012.

PAGARA, THE PIR
(Syed Shah Mardan Shah II), who died on January 10, aged 83, was the spiritual leader of the Hurs, a Sufi Muslim community in Pakistan’s
Sind province. The Pir was also an early patron of Pakistan cricket, embracing the sport despite the fact that the colonial government had hanged his father during an insurrection in 1943. He
refounded the Sind Cricket Association, and entered their team in the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy: in his only first-class appearance he captained Sind against Bahawalpur in November 1953, scoring one and
15. Two seasons later, his own XI took on the touring MCC A-team at Hyderabad. He sponsored several promising cricketers; one of them, the Test fast bowler Mohammad Munaf, once hit him in the groin
in the nets, and was dismayed to see a crowd of angry Hurs approaching with raised sticks. The Pir staggered to his feet and restored calm by assuring his followers he was all right. In later years
he founded his own political party, the Pakistan Muslim League F (for “functional”).

PAGE
, GLENYS LYNNE, who died on November 7, aged 72, was a left-arm spinner who played twice for New Zealand in the inaugural women’s World Cup, in
England in 1973. In her first match, at St Albans, she took six for 20 as West Indies were skittled for 61. In December 1971, Page had taken eight for 54 for Auckland against Canterbury, and a few
days later added seven for 55 against Otago.

PARR
, FRANCIS DAVID, died on May 8, aged 83. There were some sound judges, Herbert Strudwick among them, who saw Frank Parr keep wicket for Lancashire in the
early 1950s and concluded that a rival might be emerging for Godfrey Evans’s England place. Instead, Parr’s career ended after 49 matches when he became victim of the martinet Cyril
Washbrook’s promotion to the Lancashire captaincy. Washbrook took vigorous exception to Parr’s immersion in jazz music, a world that could hardly have been more different from his
captain’s view of county cricket.

Parr employed the hands that were so dextrous in the wicketkeeper’s gloves to play the trombone and, if his cricket career did not reach the predicted heights, his life as a musician
proved more fulfilling. In the late ’50s, he was a member of the highly regarded Mick Mulligan Band, with George Melly as lead singer, and also played on stage with Louis Armstrong. Parr was
a scruffy bohemian with a relaxed approach to personal hygiene and a penchant for cigarettes and whisky. According to Brian Statham, he “looked what he was: a spare-time musician”;
Melly felt he “concealed a formidable, well-read intelligence behind a stylised oafishness”.

He was born in Wallasey, on the Wirral, and made his Lancashire debut at Fenner’s in 1951. The following summer, in only his second Championship appearance, he caught the attention of
Strudwick at The Oval. And while his keeping to the spinners was a work in progress, he was acrobatic by the standards of the time, especially for a tall man. He was selected for MCC against
Yorkshire at Lord’s in 1953, and asked whether he might be available to tour the West Indies that winter. But he was not selected, and by July 1954 his first-class career was over.

The reason was simple: the intransigent Washbrook had taken over as captain from the easy-going Nigel Howard. He was enraged when Parr arrived for a House of Commons reception wearing a blue
shirt and, when Parr produced an untidy performance at Bristol, it was just the excuse he’d been looking for. As the team prepared to head to Edgbaston, Washbrook told him: “Frank,
you’re going home.” Exiled to the Seconds, Parr began to play better than ever, leading to discussions about a move to Worcestershire. He might have thrived in the relaxed atmosphere of
New Road, but Washbrook put paid to those ambitions with a letter to Worcestershire calling him a “grave social risk”. Parr was devastated. “It’s probably when I took up
serious drinking,” he said.

He moved to London and joined the Mick Mulligan Band, whose chaotic years on the road are detailed in Melly’s book
Owning Up
, which devotes six pages to Parr. He continued to play
cricket with a wandering team of jazz musicians called The Ravers, keeping wicket immaculately beyond the age of 60. In his final years, he lived in a council flat not far from Lord’s, where
the writer Stephen Chalke was a visitor: “He was a good man, intelligent and sensitive, who lived in a state of complete and utter squalor, existing on coffee, whisky and the odd
sausage.” Parr was a regular at ex-players’ evenings at Old Trafford, where Jim Cumbes, the former Lancashire chief executive, recalled: “He used to walk in without fuss, very
unobtrusively, looking for the bar. He’d order a large scotch, however early it was. He was always good company.”

PATEL
, SANTILAL KARA, who died on November 11, aged 90, was a South African administrator, notably as treasurer of the (non-white) Natal Cricket Board for 14
years from 1977-78, after which they united with the “white” association as the integration process cranked into gear. He was involved with Durban’s Bharat club for more than 50
years.

PAWSON
, HENRY ANTHONY,
OBE
, died on October 11, aged 91. Tony Pawson was one of the last of the brilliant all-round sportsmen who
emerged from the public schools and bestrode English sport in the first half of the 20th century. He had a good war, became a successful cricketer and footballer, and world champion fly-fisherman;
he later combined a career in business with journalism for
The Observer
and 14 books. Small and self-effacing almost to vanishing point, he would hardly be noticed amid the bustle of a
press box. “Modesty” did not do his demeanour justice: Pawson exuded, if anyone cared to notice, a kind of serenity.

He was the son of Guy Pawson, who captained Oxford in 1910, then joined the Sudan Civil Service: the first fish Tony almost caught was a Nile perch so large it almost caught him. As a
15-year-old at Winchester, he made 237 in a colts match at Lord’s, and in 1940 he emerged, said
Wisden
, as school cricket’s “batsman of the year” – a cutter
and hooker “with a vigilance in defence beyond his years”. Thrust into the war, he was commissioned in the Rifle Brigade, attaining the rank of major, saw active service in Italy and
North Africa, and was mentioned in despatches. His exploits included taking part in the bloody battle of Fondouk Pass in 1943, a tank attack he compared to the Charge of the Light Brigade. Once, a
bullet passed through his forage cap. Having survived all that, he not surprisingly revelled in the joys of post-war cricket. However, his approach to sport, as well as his status, was amateur.
Called up by Kent straight after demob in 1946, he made 90 on debut against Hampshire, and was soon given his cap and told by his captain Bryan Valentine he was in for the season. “Sorry,
skipper, I’m off fishing,” came the reply.