The Shorter Wisden 2013 (44 page)

Pawson appeared intermittently, but often successfully, for Kent until 1953. His batting never lost its youthful vigour, and his nifty singles were much appreciated by the spectators (though not
by some of the old pros). But his remark to Valentine set the tone: he had too much else to do. At first, this was university: he made 135 in the 1947 Varsity Match, and the following year emulated
his father by captaining Oxford to victory at Lord’s. Pawson was also a fine footballer – a Blue, an England amateur international, and an Olympian in 1948, before making two
appearances for Charlton in the First Division in 1951-52. Asked if he might turn out occasionally, he agreed – assuming that meant the reserves – in return for tickets to the Christmas
Day match against Spurs. At the game, the manager, Jimmy Seed, asked him if he fancied turning out on the wing in the return fixture next day. Advised merely to have a pre-match whisky to steady
his nerves, he scored the winner. But his main football fame was as the speedy right-winger of the sensational Pegasus team of Oxbridge types that won the Amateur Cup in 1953.

On weekdays, Pawson rose to personnel director of Reed International. In 1968, however, he became cricket and football correspondent of
The Observer
. Although very part-time, he was
game enough to head off from a Test and cover a First Division match immediately afterwards. His writing was elegant rather than glittering, but his work could reveal the competitive steel that
underlay his bland persona and apparent dilettantism. For the Cricket Writers’ Club collection of essays,
Cricket Heroes
, he chose Douglas Jardine. He explained: “Whatever your
attitude to a game, if you play at any level, you should play to win, with every fibre of your being devoted to doing well.” And Pawson lived up to his motto in 1984, becoming – at the
age of 62 – the first Briton to win the world fly-fishing championship, catching 23 trout in three four-hour sessions on the River Tormes in Spain, the ultimate triumph for his understated
skill and determination.

PEART
, ERROL, was shot dead in Miami on December 2. He was 59, and had been trying to prevent a robbery at the car wash he owned. Peart, a Jamaican-born
opener, was the leading run-scorer for the United States in the 1990 ICC Trophy in the Netherlands with 209, including a century against East and Central Africa.

PERERA
, JAYALATHGE BERNARD NIHAL, died on November 9, aged 56. Bernard Perera was one of the Sri Lankan players who took part in an unauthorised tour of
apartheid South Africa in 1982, which in effect ended his chances of an international career (the players were originally banned for 25 years, although this was lifted after eight). He went on to
coach the national women’s team. A hard-hitting batsman and fine fielder, Perera was Sri Lanka’s twelfth man in their first official Test, against England in Colombo early in 1982, and
toured Pakistan shortly afterwards. But he could not break into the side – despite making 56 not out for the Board President’s XI in England’s warm-up game – and signed up
for the rebel tour later the same year. His only century came on that trip, in his final first-class match: 102 against a strong South African XI, who won by an innings at Cape Town thanks in part
to Graeme Pollock, who fell to Perera’s off-spin for 197.

PERERA
, SOMACHANDRA SARANAPALA, died on October 3, aged around 86. Chandra Perera was a Sri Lankan cricket historian and statistician, dubbed the
“Walking Wisden” by friends. He used to collect scraps of information and keep them in cardboard boxes, which came in useful in 1999 for a 600-page collection of trivia and statistics
called the
Janashakthi Book of Cricket
, which covered 165 years of the game in Sri Lanka. Perera also produced several books on Sri Lankan schools’ cricket, and numerous souvenir
programmes for touring teams.

PILLING
, HARRY, who died on September 22, aged 69, was 5ft 3in and thought at the time to be the smallest player in county cricket. But his height proved no
impediment during the late 1960s and early ’70s, when Lancashire were the best one-day side in the country. Pilling’s frequent partnerships with Clive Lloyd – more than a foot
taller – provided an engaging study in contrasts. Once, the story goes, the two were standing together between overs. “Pilling,” said the TV commentator, “is the one in the
cap.”

Pilling began his cricketing life with Staley in the Saddleworth League and, after leaving school, joined Lancashire in 1959 aged 16. Not that the game brought great security: for much of his
career he had to find work when the season finished. He made coffins, was an apprentice butcher, put the handles on umbrellas, and worked in a cotton mill. He even shovelled coal. “I was No.
1 shoveller,” he boasted. “Three shovelfuls to a bag – not bad for somebody of my size.” When he joined the staff, he was a leg-spinner standing only 4ft 7in and weighing
little more than five stone. Jam and bread, he said, had been among his most regular meals. And the Old Trafford he walked into could be unpleasant: the atmosphere was shaped by autocrats such as
Cyril Washbrook (“an arrogant professional who wished he was an amateur,” reckoned Harry), and it would be nearly another decade until Lancashire’s modernisation was led by Jack
Bond. “They called them the good old days,” said Pilling, “but they weren’t always.”

For three years he played for the Second Eleven and, when the call came for a first-class match, it was unexpected. “Stand up and give Pierre a round of applause,” ordered coach Stan
Worthington. Pilling – who had a haircut his team-mates thought made him look like a Frenchman – said: “It were embarrassing. I had to climb off bus past ’em all
clapping.” Pilling played under three captains before Lancashire settled for Bond in 1968. He created a side, partly by accident, which was ideal for the newish game of one-day cricket. Lloyd
and Farokh Engineer arrived, Bond was interested in fielding as an attacking strategy, and young locals such as David Hughes and Jack Simmons were, in Pilling’s words, the “kamikaze
pilots” who thrashed lower-order runs. The result was Sunday League titles in 1969 and 1970, and a hat-trick of Gillette Cups from 1970. Pilling – now a top-order batsman – was
Man of the Match in the first final, despite fearing the format would kill his career. “I was a nicker and a nudger,” he said. “I wasn’t a big strokeplayer. I thought the
one-day stuff was just crash-bang-wallop.” As it turned out, his skills of deflection and placement, and his square cut, were perfect attributes: he was the first player to reach 1,000 runs
in the Sunday League. “We all adored him in the dressing-room,” said the fast bowler Peter Lever. “He was the essence of Lancastrian cricket. It was almost as if he would die for
his team-mates.”

Pilling scored more than 15,000 first-class runs, but never played for England. He came close twice, in 1970 and 1976, when a pair of hundreds in July looked likely to win him a place against
West Indies. He remembered driving with the radio on, listening to the squad being called. “They went past ‘P’ and I thought: ‘That’s that, then.’ I’d have
loved to have played. Just to get one cap and be given the chance. But I wasn’t everyone’s favourite person.” The dressing-room whisper, perhaps apocryphal, was that Washbrook
– who had been an England selector – had warned: “Forget it. He’s a drunkard.” Pilling gladly admitted to liking a few pints, and grinned that he would add a couple of
miles to his petrol claims on away trips to pay for them. In truth, he liked too many, and it was after his career ended in 1982 that his drinking became particularly damaging. He described his
local pub as “all effin’ and blindin’ and gum boots”. His best mate at Lancashire had been John Sullivan, a former amateur boxing champion, and the pair caused mischief for
years. Their dressing-room nicknames of H. Dirt and J. Filth summed up their relationship and pursuits. “We were in a club one night,” said Harry, “and some bloke tried to touch
John up in t’toilet, so Sully smacked him once and he were flat out on t’stones.”

There were many more such tales, some of which Pilling would retell at his bungalow outside Bolton. Speaking with quiet generosity of those he had played with and against, he sipped from a pint
mug of tea and drew on a roll-up. His little dog never left his side, knowing there were boiled sweets in the pocket of his tracksuit trousers. “No matter where Harry goes now,” said
Jack Simmons at his funeral, “he will be loved, because he’ll be as popular as he ever was.”

RAIT KERR
, DIANA MARY, who died on December 18, aged 94, was the first curator of the MCC Collection, principally responsible for the vast array of cricket
memorabilia accrued at Lord’s over the years. Appointed in 1945, she oversaw the establishment of the MCC museum in 1953; previously, the most interesting items were dotted around the
Pavilion. Her father, Colonel R. S. Rait Kerr, was the club’s secretary from 1936 to 1952, and “Miss RK” was one of the first women to attend an MCC dinner (in 1964, when the
president Dick Twining began the evening with a well-received “Lady and gentlemen”). She was also – 31 years after her retirement – one of the first group of lady members
elected in 1999. Rait Kerr co-wrote (with Ian Peebles)
Lord’s 1946–70
, a substantial sequel to Sir Pelham Warner’s earlier history of MCC and Lord’s. Although she
had no formal library training, she became an expert on cricket’s literary and artistic history, and especially the evolution of players’ dress. She was a stickler for convention, and
her sucessor Stephen Green for years remained worried that she might make an impromptu visit – or “inspection” – of the museum. “She did present an air of
formidability,” agreed Trefor Jones, another Lord’s colleague. “But actually she was a typical English colonel’s daughter of that era, with more good-natured warmth about
her than was apparent on first acquaintance.”

RANA
, NARENDRASINH PRATAPSINH, who died of liver failure on May 17, aged 41, was a tall fast bowler who took the new ball for Saurashtra for several seasons in
the Ranji Trophy, occasionally with his younger brother Mahendrasinh. Opening the bowling for a weakish team on batsman-friendly pitches at Rajkot meant his overall figures were uninspiring –
46 wickets at 55, with a best of four for 66 against Maharashtra in November 1998 – but team-mates recalled a naturally talented cricketer, from a prominent local family, who was also a handy
batsman.

RANDALL
, DAVID AARON, who died of bowel cancer on July 6, aged 27, was a fine schoolboy batsman who had been in the running for a place in the England Under-15
team, alongside his friend and club-mate Alastair Cook – they played together for Essex’s youth teams, and also for Maldon. Cook attended Randall’s funeral, and a few days later
scored his 20th Test century against South Africa at The Oval. “It’s been an emotional time,” he said. “We’re lucky enough to play cricket, aren’t we?
Unfortunately he can’t any more.”

RAZAULLAH KHAN
, who died on November 5, aged 75, played 24 matches for various first-class teams in a long career in Pakistan that stretched from 1957-58 to
1972-73, usually keeping wicket. He made 76, his highest score, opening for Khairpur against Karachi Blues – containing the future Test all-rounder Asif Iqbal, whom he stumped – in
Lahore in 1961-62. Later he became president of the Hyderabad Cricket Association and a Pakistan board council member, and managed the national Under-19 side.

REES-MOGG
, LORD (William), who died on December 29, aged 84, was editor of
The Times
between 1967 and 1981, and a prominent Establishment figure for
many years after that, yet he was best remembered for an editorial written in July 1967 that flew defiantly in the face of Britain’s ruling classes. Headlined “Who breaks a butterfly on
a wheel?” it criticised the prison sentences handed out to Rolling Stones Mick Jagger and Keith Richards for minor drug offences, sparking an outcry that led to their release.

Rees-Mogg was descended from a line of Somerset squires, and his roots remained planted in the county’s soil, even when he held high-profile metropolitan positions. He was an enthusiastic
supporter of Somerset cricket, wrote frequently about the game, and had seen hundreds by Hammond and Bradman. When he picked his Somerset dream team for
The Times
in 2007, it drew on
decades of first-hand experience. He was also waiting by the phone on the afternoon of September 16, 2010, when Somerset were on the brink of winning the County Championship for the first time.
Rees-Mogg was only too willing to write an exultant piece for next day’s paper, but Nottinghamshire snatched the title.

At Charterhouse he was a contemporary of Peter May and was taught by Robert Arrowsmith, the obituaries editor of
Wisden
. Rees-Mogg was also the first-team scorer – John Woodcock
called him “the keeper of the scorebook and, later, of
The Times
” – and he sometimes introduced cricket into opinion pieces about the great political issues of the day.
Writing in
The Sunday Times
in 1964, he called for Alec Douglas-Home’s resignation in a piece headlined “A Captain’s Innings”. In 1994, he wrote a remarkably deft
critique of another prime minister’s leadership: it did not mention John Major by name, but discussed at length the worthy, unspectacular attributes of the Somerset all-rounder Bertie
Buse.

ROBINSON
, ALEXANDER WILLIAM, died on June 18, aged 87. His first-class career for Western Australia was confined to two matches in 1952-53, but Alex Robinson
had a lasting influence in Perth as a club and school coach, and was one of the first to recognise the potential of the teenage Dennis Lillee. He later gained a master’s degree in recreation
management from Loughborough University, and moved from teaching to sports administration, eventually being appointed deputy director of WA’s Department of Sport and Recreation. Robinson
abhorred the sponsorship of sport by tobacco and alcohol companies, both on health and moral grounds, and ultimately resigned from his State coaching positions. His father (also Alex) represented
WA against the 1907-08 MCC tourists and was an outstanding Australian Rules footballer, while his older brother, George, played an important role as a batsman when the state won the Sheffield
Shield at their first attempt, in 1947-48.