Extract from

THE GOALKEEPER’S TRIP TO OLD TRAFFORD

Lancashire v Northamptonshire

August 1953

with Dennis Brookes

Dennis Brookes played for Northamptonshire from 1934 to 1959, captaining the side from 1954 to 1957. A right-handed batsman, he scored over 30,000 runs, including 71 centuries, playing in one Test in 1947/8. He stayed with the county as Second XI Captain, Coach, Assistant Secretary and President. He remembers a match at Old Trafford when Northamptonshire struggled to put out a side.

Wednesday 12 August 1953. It is another day at British Timken for Peter Pickering. Five years ago his footballing career stood on the brink of greatness. Seven penalty saves in fifty games for York City, then a seven and a half thousand pound move to Chelsea. A new British record for the transfer of a goalie. ‘A magnificently built and spectacular goalkeeper,’ the reference books record, ‘but he lacked consistency’. By 1953 he is keeping goal for non-league Kettering Town, and working for British Timken, who manufacture roller bearings for the car industry. In summer he plays cricket, for the works side and sometimes for the county second eleven. He was hoping to be playing for the Seconds today, but he is needed in the office and another British Timken employee has taken his place.

Britain is basking in a heatwave, and today pork becomes yet another item removed from ration controls. What a summer of celebration it has been! Everest has been climbed. Queen Elizabeth has been crowned. On Saturday the final Test match will start and, if England can win, they will hold the Ashes for the first time for nineteen years. Freddie Brown, the Northamptonshire captain, is Chairman of Selectors. He has played himself in the exciting draw at Lord’s, but the plan for the Oval is to set the young Freddie Trueman at the Aussies. The nation is alive with anticipation, but for the next three days the chairman must captain his county here in Manchester.

Northamptonshire. What a change there has been in their fortunes! Just nine championship victories in eight summers before Freddie Brown’s arrival. The wooden spoon is theirs almost by right. The 1949 fixture card allocates them to Worthing, and the town clerk protests angrily at such unattractive opposition for their cricket week. “With regard to Northants,” Sussex writes back, “somebody must have them.” Then Freddie Brown, the pre-war Surrey amateur, arrives, and Northants win ten matches in one summer. They finish sixth in the table, and poor Sussex, down at thirteenth, are roundly beaten at Worthing. Billy Griffith is the Sussex secretary, and he bags a pair.

“We should have started to climb in 1948,” Dennis reflects, “but we needed a captain. Freddie Brown was a man of determination and character, and of course he brought a first-class all-rounder in himself. By the force of his personality he dragged the county with him.”

It is Wednesday morning, eight o’clock. The telephone rings in Dennis’s hotel room, and his captain’s voice comes down the line from another room. “I’m sorry, Dennis. I’m not going to play. My wrist has swollen up.” He will travel down to the Oval and leave the dependable Dennis in charge of the team.

The team. What team? It is three months since they started their season with a thrilling tie with Middlesex, and only three of that eleven are still fit for duty. Livingston and Barrick lie second and third in the national batting averages, but Jock has a broken bone in his hand and Desmond a pulled leg muscle. Oldfield and Nutter, the Lancashire rejects, always relish these visits to their old county, but Buddy has a damaged thigh muscle and Albert cartilage trouble. They have not even brought a twelfth man with them. “Who can you suggest?” Freddie Brown asks, and Dennis thinks of British Timken, the company owned by the club’s chief benefactor. At least they can get off work there. “There’s a chap called Peter Pickering,” he says. “He’s had one or two games in the seconds.” Freddie, the amateur captain, is also on the British Timken pay-roll. “I’ll get on the blower,” he says. “See if they can get him across here.”

It is a quarter past nine when a voice comes over the British Timken public address system. “Would Peter Pickering report to the Chairman’s office immediately.” His personal secretary is standing at the door as Peter arrives. “Get in quick,” she says. “It’s urgent.” “I couldn’t imagine what the problem was,” Peter remembers, “but I’ll never forget the Chairman’s words: ‘Freddie Brown has hurt his hand. You are required at Old Trafford. There is a car in the garage being made ready. Get up there as fast you can, and Freddie can drive the car back.’” It is already a hot morning as Peter hurries home, springs the surprise on his wife and whitens his boots. With the aid of a route map, he sets off down the winding roads from Northampton to Manchester.

The sun blazes down as Dennis tosses up with Lancashire’s Nigel Howard. ‘How did Manchester adapt itself to its brief sojourn in the tropics?’ the Manchester Guardian asks. ‘The answer is simple: it did not. It made no concessions. The habit of coat and waistcoat is ingrained. A generation ago there would probably have been more waistcoats under jackets than there were yesterday. But if a revolution is taking place it is still a slow one. A surprisingly large number of women in the mid-day sun were either wearing or carrying cardigans or jumpers. In Manchester, as in all other proper English towns, one does not really believe in summer. One expects the thunderstorm, and one prepares for it.’

“There was no wicket there at all,” Dennis recalls. “It was all scratched to bits. Lancashire were running for the championship, and they’d got a poor wicket. We tossed up, and I lost. I thought, ‘Well, goodbye’.” His team mate Brian Reynolds tells the same story. “They didn’t cut a wicket. They picked the worst part of the square. You could put your fingers down into the cracks.” “What’s your team?” Dennis asks Nigel Howard before the toss. “When I started,” Dennis recalls, “we had a captain, a nice fellow, he’d never ask who the side was.” Lancashire have four bowlers: one quick and three slow. All the newspapers tell of a well-watered wicket taking spin from the start.

The young Frank Tyson marks out his run. “The quickest bowler I have seen,” Freddie Trueman still says. This is only his ninth first-class game, and he has taken just ten wickets for 448 runs. Nought for 62 against Lancashire at Northampton. No cause for Geoffrey Howard, the Lancashire secretary, to regret that letter two years ago. ‘Dear Tyson, I am sorry to say that I am afraid I cannot be of any help to you this summer.’ One game in 1949 for Lancashire second eleven. Five overs, nought for 19. Now he runs in for Northants, and he bowls the Lancashire captain, Nigel Howard, for just three. 13 for one.

Tyson is one of six Lancastrians on the Northants staff, not to mention the two Australians from the Lancashire Leagues. With five Yorkshiremen and a New Zealander, a Shropshire lad and Freddie Brown born in Peru, they have rebuilt the county by recruiting far and wide. “We realised we’d got to do something,” Dennis recalls, “or we’d go out of cricket.” Why, even Peter Pickering, now in a car somewhere between Northampton and Manchester, is Yorkshire born.

At the other end from Tyson is Bob Clarke, and he at least has grown up in the county. A broad, barrel-chested man, he has been in the Navy in the war and he knows how to handle himself in a late-night brawl. “He bounced up to the wicket from about fifteen yards,” Frank Tyson tells, “and let the batsman have it.” Not for him the science of grip and body action. “Hold the ball and bowl like this,” Freddie Brown tries to explain one day, “and it will swing in.” Bob stares uncomprehendingly. “Oh, aar, do it?” Dennis remembers the conversation about an opposition bowler. “He bowls a lot of short ones, this fellow,” somebody says, and Bob joins in. “Oh, aar, but he bowls some long hops as well.” “That’s how much Bob knew about the game.” There is no question of his shining the ball at his end, but somehow it swings both ways in the air, and ‘Edrich turned an in-swinger from Clarke straight into Tribe’s hands at short leg.’ It is 30 for two.

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