SPECTATOR SPORT
Essex men
Frank Keating
IN THIS insecure world of new brooms and neuroses, could it be that the derided quality of continuity is a crucial reason for the resplendent pre-eminence over the past dozen or so years of the Essex County Cricket Club? Quite astonishingly, Essex have fielded only six captains in the last half century. No 'other county side can remotely match that.
The unfailingly cheerful and affably absent-minded Tom Pearce set the tone. (He is 87 in November and still, I'm told, full of the joys and living in Worthing). He had to pick up the pieces after the war — from which three of the side's previous stal- warts, the RAF fliers, Fames, Eastman, and Ashton, never returned to tread again the turf of the English shires.
Batting and leading with bonny authority (says everyone), old Tom handed over a Spruce, happy, and broke crew of enthusi- asts to Doug Insole, whose approach — genial, combative, chivalrous, and busi- nesslike — is still a boon to the club as chairman. Pearce remains club president, by the way. For most of the 1960s, it was Trevor Bai- ley's reign of consolidation with shoestring budgets, bonhomie and the famous rickety caravan trundling from ground to ground. Bailey introduced, from the village greens, the homegrown likes of Fletcher and Lever — and one day on a beach in Barbados he also happened to spot an athletic young tearaway with a melon-smile, by name of Boyce.
The good old 'Barnacle' handed over to Brian Taylor, a beaky, padded, yeoman stumper, and a born leader of the Sarn't- Major variety. Even on their worst days with the bowling going for plenty all over the shop (and there were many of those), Taylor would insist his young charges kept their peckers up by fielding like furies at least. The whole county knew him as `Tonker'. His wit could have his lads rolling around the splintery pavilion floors. Once, after a day's play at Headingley, the team went to the Leeds Palace of Varieties. A dismal, groanworthy comedian was on the bill. He finished his string of limp gags with a crooning rendition of I May Never Pass This Way Again. In the stalls, Tonker stood up and shouted, 'Can we have that in writ- ing?'
Then came 'the Gnome'. Keith Fletcher won the name with which he is universally known the game over on the very first day he arrived for a trial in the nets in the early 1960s. He was 15, and as shy and sad-faced as a young Buster Keaton. For the special occasion, Keith's dad had kitted him out with a new pair of shoes from Freeman, Hardy & Willis in Colchester — those ridiculous, but then fashionable, pointed 'winkle-pickers'. They were far too long for the little lad's feet, and had already begun to curl up like a mandarin's slippers. 'Frig- gin' ell,' remarked the sage old opener, Mickey Bear, as the boy entered the dress- ing-room, 'it's a ruddy garden gnome.'
But the Gnome, of course, went on to captain England — and to teach Graham Gooch all he knew, which was every wrin- kle of the arts and sciences of cricket cap- taincy, and a fair bit more besides.
Now, another Essex championship surely secure, Fletcher and Gooch, as manager and captain, prepare for an England tour together. Old Tom Pearce could not have been as absent-minded as Retch. I toured India with him ten years ago when he was captain. In the Delhi test, he introduced Mrs Gandhi to his team. Jack Richards, of Surrey, was the wicket-keeper. The Prime Minister moved along the line to Jack. 'This is ... er', announced the Gnome, looking blank. Then to Jack, sotto voce, 'Er, sorry, but what's your name, cock?'
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