Sixty years ago this week, Walter Hammond’s Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) side in South Africa disembarked from the Durban night train at Cape Town and made haste to the waiting ship, Athlone Castle, for the voyage home.
The day before, March 14, the Timeless Test, unparalleled in cricket history, had been abandoned as a draw at Kingsmead, Durban, after 10 days’ play. It had begun on March 3. South Africa made 530 in their first innings; England replied with 316. So South Africa’s second innings 481 left England 696 to win, a target beyond comprehension – only once in history till then had a Test side made more than 400 in a fourth innings. Yet at Durban on the 10th day, March 14, by teatime rain England had reached 654 for five; with only 42 more needed they would surely have won the next morning.
But there was no delaying the Athlone Castle in faraway Cape Town – stumps were drawn and a dash made for the 8.05pm night train.
England: Hutton, Gibb, Paynter, Hammond, Ames, Edrich, Valentine, Verity, Wright, Farnes, Perks.
Fortunate to be included ahead of two rival batting Turks, Hugh Bartlett and Norman Yardley, was 22-year-old Bill Edrich. Captain Hammond had persisted in playing the diminutive farmer’s son from Norfolk in spite of a dreadful run rate.
In 11 previous Test innings, Edrich had made only 88 runs. Against Australia in four 1938 Tests, he averaged 11; in another four (five innings) on this tour, Edrich averaged a ghastly 4,02, scraping only 21 runs. He could scarcely lay bat on ball. It was Hammond’s first tour as captain. The batting champion was a sombre-sided introvert away from the crease. He drank, usually alone, and was a womaniser. Before this final match in Durban, knowing team whispers suggested any hopes Dulwich public school strokemaker Bartlett had of playing a Test had been zilch ever since the Free State match at Bloemfontein in November when the languid youngster had not only scored a century but “stolen” an attractive local society girlfriend Hammond had presumed “his”. (Bartlett was never to get a single England cap.)
By Durban, in March, the captain had more particular liaisons to distract him further. Pre-Christmas in Durban, across Lord Nuffield’s dinner table, Hammond had fallen in love with the blonde Natal beauty queen who was to become his second wife, Sybil Ness-Harvey – complicated because the present Mrs Hammond, plain and put-upon Yorkshire heiress Dorothy, had just arrived to join the tour. When the Timeless Test started in Sybil’s home town, the skipper’s complications were manifold.
Opposites often attract, and Hammond remained undiverted in his regard for the runless young Edrich’s carefree joie de vivre.
It was public: returning from his one previous MCC tour, to India the winter before, Edrich had been warned by Lord’s “to in future be more restraining in your reported bohemian jollities”.
Now, heedless in South Africa, the effervescent Edrich’s pugnacious 150 in the Natal match prior to the Test ensured Hammond’s casting vote.
South Africa 530. England 170 for four in reply when Edrich, at number six, came in on the fourth afternoon. At once he was caught at short-leg for one. England 171 for five. Edrich’s second innings would be a last one for his life.
On the evening of the sixth day, England knew their ludicrous target of 696. At the King’s Hotel, Edrich was cheered to receive a cable – “Go for it, chum”, or words to that effect – from his Middlesex soulmate, Denis Compton, at home playing for Arsenal. Edrich had uncharacteristically, but understandably, planned an early night.
Lifted by Compton’s message, however, he jauntily took a rickshaw along the front to the opulent champagne braaivleis thrown by another erstwhile Middlesex adventurer, Dr Tuppy Owen-Smith.
Tuppy primed his waiters. Bill obliged them. Edrich’s devoted and diligent biographer, Alan Hill, admits: “He drank freely. It lasted until the early hours; it was a champagne tonic for Edrich’s flagging spirits. They had to put Bill to bed that morning, but he was smiling when they shook him awake to play the innings to save his career.”
Openers Len Hutton and Paul Gibb put on 78. At which Hammond, signalling Eddie Paynter to stay where he was, turned to Edrich, nervously exuding the champagne, and ordered: “Bill, go in! Go and save your skin – and ours.”
Wisden, 1940: “Hammond revealed a masterly stroke of leadership in suddenly promoting Edrich. The young Middlesex batsman lost no time in seizing this opportunity to silence his critics and, hitting cleanly, he claimed eight fours in his first 50.” He had 12 fours when he went to his century – “a remarkable scene not because the crowd gave him an ovation, but because from high up on the balcony shouts of triumph came from his England comrades”.
At close of play, England 253 for one (Edrich 107, Gibb 78). On the eighth day it rained. After lunch on the ninth, now 358 for two, Gibb was out for 120; they had put on 280. Then Edrich and the broody, lovelorn Gloucestershire leader who had faith in him joyously carried the score to 447. A tired shot had Edrich caught close to the wicket; he had scored 219, with 25 boundaries, 20 minutes short of eight hours.
On the 10th day, Hammond (140: “one of his finest” – Wisden) and Paynter (75) put on 164 to reach 611 for five, Bryan Valentine and Les Ames were in control and only 42 short when the rains came – and the first steam-up hooter of the 8.05pm night train to Cape Town was heard from the railway sidings.
Not long before his mourned and sudden death, at 70, in April 1986, I asked true- great cricketer and still true-great roisterer Edrich if, just perhaps, champagne had been served through the journey on that railway over-nighter to Cape Town on March 14, 1939. “There are two short answers to that, old boy,” said the ever-twinkler: “Undoubtedly – and I can’t possibly remember!”