Читать книгу CB Fry: King Of Sport - England's Greatest All Rounder; Captain of Cricket, Star Footballer and World Record Holder - Iain Wilton - Страница 18

Although international cricket was still in its infancy, Lord Hawke’s team was the third English side to tour South Africa. The first visit had been organised by a Major Warton in 1888–89 and was clearly enjoyed by many members of the touring party. On the cricketing front, for example, Johnny Briggs took 15-28 in the Second Test match and recorded some even more remarkable statistics in a game at King William’s Town. As the England XI was playing against a Cape Mounted Rifles XXII, he achieved the unusual feat of taking well over 20 wickets in the match – finishing with figures of 49.3-36-23-27. Such achievements enabled him to end the tour with 290 wickets (and a bowling average of 5.62). The team captain, Aubrey Smith, had a similarly productive tour. Despite his unusual run-up, which earned him the nickname ‘Round-the-Corner’ Smith, he took 134 wickets and liked South Africa so much that he declined to return to England.

After another tour (led by Walter Read) in 1891–92, England were invited to send out a further team at the suggestion of Douglas Logan, an emigrant who had begun his career as a railway porter and made a fortune by establishing cafés and restaurants at railway stations all over South Africa. He had become actively interested in cricket after hearing that George Lohmann, the Surrey bowler, had been sent to South Africa for health reasons and promptly invited him to his home.

While Logan underwrote the latest tour, and Lohmann helped to arrange it, the main organiser (and team captain) was the prominent Yorkshire cricketer Lord Hawke – a descendant of the admiral who had been involved in the Royal Navy’s famous victory at Quiberon Bay. Hawke was already an experienced cricket captain and tourist, who had first taken a team overseas, to India, in 1889. As a gentleman, cricket-lover and ardent imperialist, he regarded such tours as both a pleasure and, in many respects, a duty: by increasing cricket’s popularity across the Empire, they strengthened the links between Britain and her dominions.

These considerations affected the type of people that Hawke was willing to choose for his 1895–96 South African tour. Not only did the 14-strong touring party include 10 amateur ‘gentlemen’ and only four professional ‘players’ but, with just one exception, the ‘gentlemen’ were all Oxford or Cambridge Blues. This fact – which has been ignored by Fry’s previous biographers – helps to explain why, despite his limited experience of first-class cricket, C.B. was considered suitable to represent England overseas. But by his own admission, Fry’s selection could also be attributed, in part, to the recommendation of Ranjitsinhji. In view of his Indian background, Ranji would have been unwelcome in South Africa: he took the opportunity to urge Lord Hawke to select his friend and Sussex team-mate instead.

The preponderance of Blues meant that Fry felt at home amongst his fellow tourists and had few difficulties in adjusting to his new status as a prospective England cricketer. C.B. had played against Arthur Hill and Hugh Bromley-Davenport in Varsity cricket matches and against Christopher Heseltine when Oxford had played Cambridge at football. Moreover, although many other team members had secured their Blues some years before Fry, he had played with or against them in a variety of fixtures. He had faced Sammy Woods when Oxford played Somerset in 1892; during an appearance for the M.C.C., in 1893, his team-mates had included Charles Wright; and, when playing for Oxford against the M.C.C., in 1894, he had dismissed Wright and another tourist, Sir Timothy O’Brien, with consecutive balls. Furthermore, C.B. was well acquainted with at least two of the four professionals on the tour: in Oxford’s match against Somerset in 1892, Edwin Tyler had dismissed him in each innings, while Hawke’s wicket-keeper, Harry Butt, was another of Fry’s colleagues at Sussex.

In view of the tour’s length, five months, it was fortunate that the party included several larger-than-life characters. Apart from Hawke – and Fry himself – they included O’Brien and Woods.

It was entirely appropriate that O’Brien should have been born on the fifth of November – Bonfire Night – as he was widely regarded as having an explosive temper. He attracted notoriety as one of the first cricketing ‘sledgers’ and, in 1891, members of the Surrey committee were so alarmed by his prodigious thirst that they tried to bar him from The Oval pavilion. They found themselves outwitted, however, when he was let in by a club member – who happened to be his butler. On another occasion, O’Brien got into an argument with W.G. Grace and challenged him to a fight. Although the two men did not, in fact, exchange blows, O’Brien must have been delighted when he once dismissed ‘the Grand Old Man’ of English cricket at Cheltenham. The feat was particularly remarkable as it was one of only three wickets that he secured in his whole first-class career.

Sammy Woods was an equally extraordinary but very different character, with, in contrast to Sir Timothy, an exceptionally easy-going temperament. Brought up in Australia, with four brothers and nine sisters, Woods’ cricketing talent became apparent from an early age and, at Royston College in Sydney, he achieved a feat which the young Lionel Palairet later emulated – taking seven wickets in seven balls. In another match, he took an even bigger haul. As he recalled in 1925, long before the advent of political correctness: ‘At Christmas time, we generally went to the Islands in a schooner. On one occasion, we went to Levuka (Fiji), and were asked to play cricket for the whites against the natives. The natives won the toss, and when I left after the first day’s play, the score, as far as I can remember, was 175 for 72. I know I accounted for 25 of them. I think some had come in twice, but they were so alike one couldn’t tell t’other from which.’

Woods maintained his cricketing progress after moving to Britain, aged 17, and excelled at Cambridge – taking 36 wickets in four Varsity match appearances. As a batsman, too, he was a highly capable performer and, in his final match against Oxford, arrived at the crease when Cambridge, chasing 90 to win, were struggling on 89-8. With characteristic flair, he steered his side to victory by despatching his first ball to the boundary. Furthermore, in 1888 he achieved the ultimate accolade of appearing in Test cricket – representing his native Australia in three Tests against England sides that included Briggs, Lohmann and O’Brien.

Woods’ talents were not confined to cricket. He played football for Sussex and the Corinthians, represented Somerset at everything from hockey to billiards, and, most impressively, earned 13 rugby caps – for England – at a time when there were only three internationals a season. Such sporting versatility was not the only thing that C.B. and Sammy had in common: like Fry, Woods had both an extraordinary physique and a highly developed sense of showmanship.

As there were so many similarities between Woods and Fry, it was likely that they would either love or loathe each other’s company on the journey to South Africa. Fortunately, it proved to be the former – and C.B. subsequently wrote that his education ‘was much advanced’ during the time he spent with his garrulous cabin-mate as the Guelph transported them (and most of their team-mates) from Southampton, at the end of November, to Cape Town, which they reached shortly before Christmas. In a sign of things to come, however, the travellers on the Guelph soon learnt that the tour had hit a snag. Lord Hawke, Sir Timothy O’Brien and Herbert Hewett – who had left England a week later, on the faster SS Moor – were being delayed, as one of their ship’s cylinders had exploded. Not only would they miss the first match of the tour, but they faced the prospect of having their Christmas dinner at sea – in the company of the vessel’s captain, for whom Hewett had developed an intense dislike.

The majority of the tourists, on the other hand, were free to practise on the beautiful Newlands cricket ground, overlooked by Table Mountain. Indeed, on Christmas Day itself, C.B. and some of his colleagues started to climb the mountain, but soon changed their minds when they encountered temperatures that went from one extreme to another.

On Boxing Day, Lord Hawke’s XI – which, despite its name, was still without Hawke – played its first match against a Western Province XV in front of 6,000 spectators at Newlands. In each innings, Lohmann and Fry picked up seven and five wickets respectively, and C.B. finished with match figures of 10-82. It was not enough to save his side from an unexpected and comprehensive defeat. After less than a week in the country, the English batsmen had yet to acclimatise to the conditions: in their two innings, they mustered only 79 and 92 (with Fry contributing 5 and 3) and lost by 74 runs.

Still short of practice, the Englishmen welcomed the opportunity of playing an extra one-day match against the same opponents. Although their team was boosted by the inclusion of both Hewett and O’Brien, and despite facing 11 – not 15 – Western Province players, England suffered a second successive reverse, losing by one wicket with, according to Cricket, their opponents’ winning shot coming off ‘a loose ball from Fry’.

There were, however, some lighter moments for the tourists and Fry later recalled how he had joined Sammy Woods and Howard Francis – ‘a midget, who had played for Gloucestershire but did not belong in our team’ – as they travelled to a zoo on the far side of Table Mountain, where they saw ‘a truculent solitary wildebeeste’. Francis sat on the gate that led into the animal’s enclosure and started drumming his heels in a successful but misguided attempt to tease it. The wildebeeste promptly charged the gate and unseated the Gloucestershire player, who would have fallen on to the enraged animal, had not C.B. not brought off one of his most important catches by grabbing his coat-tails.

During their stay in Cape Town the tourists were also scheduled to have lunch with Cecil Rhodes and Fry looked forward to renewing their acquaintanceship. Although C.B. remembered that the lunch was ‘wonderful’ and, many years later, Hawke could still recall ‘the magnificent Cliquot’, Rhodes was nowhere to be seen. The reason soon became apparent: Fry, Woods and Francis came across newspaper-boys selling ‘ticky-slips’ of the latest news and found out about the launch of the Jameson Raid.

Although Jameson’s attempted uprising soon failed, its consequences were far-reaching. All over South Africa the atmosphere suddenly became volatile and the fear of violence prompted many people to leave. Basil Rathbone, the future Reptonian, whose parents had settled in South Africa, recalled that: ‘There was a considerable exodus from Johannesburg as many British subjects were alarmed by the failure of the raid and fearful of its consequences.’ His family was particularly keen to escape as his father was a friend of both Rhodes and Jameson, and the Boers, believing him to be a spy, had put a price on his head.

The Raid had important implications for cricketers, too: not only did Jameson’s men include Cyril Foley, the Middlesex player (subsequently nicknamed ‘The Raider’)1 but it affected the itinerary of Lord Hawke’s tour and the atmosphere in which it was conducted.

In the short term, however, the tourists had to fulfil their third and final fixture in Cape Town against a Cape Colony XIII. They finally ran into some form. According to Cricket, C.B. was particularly effective: ‘… he played very fine cricket, driving very hard at times, and making numerous neat leg strokes, but not apparently being possessed of a great variety of strokes.’ His partnership with his former cabin-mate was especially impressive. An authoritative eye-witness subsequently recalled that ‘the spectators were treated to a remarkably fine partnership and exhibition of hard hitting by C.B. Fry and S.M.J. Woods’2 and, when Western Province marked the centenary of cricket at Newlands, its commemorative publication noted the two men had ‘indulged in big hitting which is still remembered by some of our members’. As the centenary occurred in 1965, those members would have been particularly elderly – so the batting must have been very memorable indeed. Woods finished with 89, while C.B. went on to score the first century of the tour, with a magnificent 148. He even took two wickets in Cape Colony’s first innings, helping Lord Hawke’s XI to victory by an innings and 125 runs.

In the course of the match, C.B. put his finances in further jeopardy when he took part in a bet he could ill afford to lose. After one of the tourists, Audley Miller, the Wiltshire captain, challenged Lord Hawke to a race over 100 yards, Fry confidently staked five pounds on Miller being successful. Before play began on the final day, C.B. had the honour of firing the starting-pistol but was shocked to see Hawke, a successful runner at Eton, storming into an early and, as it proved, decisive lead. Charles Wright, of Nottinghamshire, won Fry’s fiver and, as future events showed, seems to have needed the money every bit as badly as C.B. himself.

After their victory over the Cape Colony side, the English tourists had 10 frustrating days, ‘kicking our heels’,3 as the deteriorating political situation threw their plans into chaos. Eventually, it was decided that, far from avoiding the most volatile areas, the cricketers should play there to provide a distraction from the post-Raid turmoil. Finally, therefore, the party left Cape Town on a long and eventful train journey to Johannesburg, where the unease was most acute.

As they travelled, one of the problems encountered by the tourists was that no food was available in the carriages and the breakfasts served at the railway stations – in Logan’s refreshment rooms – consisted of ‘porridge so hot that one could not master it before the train was due out.’4 Moreover, when their train neared the Orange Free State, a huge swarm of locusts landed on the railway line: the rails became so lubricated by their squashed bodies that the wheels couldn’t grip until spadefuls of earth were sprinkled over the track. Next, C.B. found himself in some danger when the team’s journey was interrupted, once again, a few miles from the Transvaal border. Around twenty Free State commandos approached the train and demanded to know the identities and intentions of the Englishmen. The tourists explained why they were in South Africa and, as the train seemed unlikely to move for several hours, tried to improve the atmosphere by challenging the troops to a game of cricket. According to Fry, their officer was unimpressed: ‘He was not taking our chaff at all. “No,” he said, taking off his hat and showing his close-cropped curly yellow hair, “we don’t play cricket, but we shoot”. I can hear the cool sarcasm in his voice now. He was quite serious that ten of us should step out and shoot off a match at five hundred yards.’ C.B. became even more concerned when one of his colleagues – probably O’Brien – accepted the challenge and tried raising the stakes by pointing to a ridge about half a mile away, saying that one of the tourists would run between two prominent rocks and offering to pay the Free Staters £20 if they hit him – as long as the commandos paid £100 if they missed. As the best sprinter in the team, Fry was the obvious target-man – and he breathed a huge sigh of relief when the engine sounded its whistle and the journey to Johannesburg recommenced.

It was not the cricketers’ last encounter with armed militia. When they reached a frontier station, the tourists were confined to the train and subjected to a brusque customs inspection. Characteristically, O’Brien was keen to ignore an order to ‘Keep your places’ and, in Fry’s words, ‘they hustled him back with promptitude and no light hand.’ Furthermore, Hill and Heseltine, who were hoping to go on a hunting trip, had their sporting rifles confiscated and C.B.’s funds were – temporarily – depleted even further. As he later recalled, the team’s cricket bags were searched and, on being asked the value of his bats, replied that they had cost a guinea each; when the money-conscious Wright faced the same question, he replied that his bats had been priced at only half a crown – although they were identical to Fry’s. As a result, C.B. was charged two shillings apiece, while Wright paid only a few pence. Fortunately, Lord Hawke managed to get the tax remitted.

Finally, on 13 January, the team played its first game of cricket for well over two weeks, as a Transvaal XV took on Lord Hawke’s XII. The two-day match finished in a draw, Fry scoring 6 and 49. But on-field events were still being overshadowed by the political and military tension that had gripped South Africa since the start of the year. Its cause was brought home to the Englishmen when, after playing against Transvaal, they visited Doornkop, where Jameson’s men had been cornered. The scars of the battle were all too apparent: bullet marks could be seen on the rocks, the bones of horses and mules had been picked clean by vultures and piles of stones marked the graves of the dead raiders. In these incongruous surroundings the tourists had a picnic and some picked up bullets and shells as grim souvenirs of the Raid.

On the way back from the battlefield, aiming to catch a train to Natal, the cricketers found that – yet again – the tour was refusing to run smoothly. Passing through a place called Florida, they were stopped, taken to the offices of the local Mining Commissioner and subsequently found their horsemen refusing to take them any further. Running short of time, the players had no option but to walk the remaining three miles to the station – irritated by their treatment, but enjoying the cheers of a large crowd which had assembled to see them off.

After arriving safely in Natal, the tourists prepared for a match against a XV of Pietermaritzburg. In the first innings, Lord Hawke’s XII reached the respectable total of 229, with Fry making 25, but were powerless to prevent Pietermaritzburg securing a substantial lead, thanks to 112 from another Englishman – Major Robert Poore.

Poore, serving in South Africa with the 7th Hussars, was a comparative newcomer to cricket and had hardly played the game before going to India, as a Lieutenant, in the early 1890s. After studying cricket textbooks while playing in Army matches, he started to display a natural aptitude for the sport. His batting first began to flourish when he became A.D.C. to Lord Harris, then the Governor of Bombay, and he averaged 80 for the Government House side. By the time he arrived in Africa, in 1895, his cricketing ability was obvious and he had developed a highly effective, but individualistic, style of play: for example, in C.B.’s memorable words, he had ‘a peculiar slicing manner of cutting, treating the ball as if it were a lemon or a Turk’s head’. But batting was only one of the many sporting skills that Poore had mastered. He was also an outstanding tennis and polo player, a brilliant swordsman and an excellent shot.

Although Hawke wrote that Poore had played ‘uncommonly well’, two of his own team-mates were even more prolific in the second innings. O’Brien scored 118, sharing in a massive stand of 225 with Fry: according to a local newspaper, ‘the Natal bowling was simply pulverised’ from the beginning to the end of their partnership.5 Although C.B. was almost run out on 99, he also hit a century and by ‘playing excellent cricket and hitting hard’, in the words of Cricket, he eventually passed 150. It was another sporting landmark for Fry, being the highest score ever recorded by an England batsman in South Africa. (England’s total, 433-9, was also a record.) When one considers Pietermaritzburg had 15 fielders, C.B.’s final score – 153 – is even more remarkable.

As well as entering his name into the record books, Fry received, after a considerable delay, a more tangible reward for his performance. According to Life Worth Living:

… the cricket match was enhanced by the Mayor, who offered a medal for the highest score. Charles Wright was the top scorer in the first innings, and stood champagne to everybody that night. Subsequently, Sir Timothy O’Brien made a century, and also stood champagne. In the end I myself made 153 and won the medal, but I did not receive it for over a year, when the conscientious Mayor had the kindness to send me a gilt trophy of crossed bats and pendent shield.

As C.B. added, he did not have sufficient time or money to buy a further round of champagne and, had he done so, ‘it would have been on tick – like the medal.’

In addition to providing Fry with many happy cricketing memories, Pietermaritzburg imprinted itself on his mind by hosting one of the most bizarre sporting encounters in which he ever took part. The contest was a mixture of hockey and polo, played between the ‘Mounted’ (represented by four Hussars officers on horseback) and the ‘Dismounted’ (consisting of six members of Lord Hawke’s party – Bromley-Davenport, Heseltine, Hill, Miller, and, inevitably, Woods and Fry). Predictably, the match left them exhausted and C.B. confessed that he had never been so hot in his life. More surprisingly, the cricketers emerged triumphant by two goals to one.

On another occasion, the tourists’ decision to socialise with the soldiers caused a good deal of ill feeling amongst the local population. Although the people of Pietermaritzburg had organised a smoking concert on behalf of the visiting cricketers, and 150 South Africans had gathered to honour them, the English team was conspicuous by its absence, having gone to dine with the 7th Hussars instead. Despite Fry’s claim that they eventually arrived at the concert, and that Woods ‘obliterated all misunderstanding by his enormous success on the platform’, the Natal Mercury reported local people had been disgusted by the Englishmen’s behaviour. It was the first of several incidents which resulted in the tourists losing the goodwill that had originally accompanied them from game to game.

Indeed, in their next match, against XV of Natal in Durban, the local newspaper acknowledged that it was ‘unpleasant to refer to the visitors in other than complimentary terms’,6 but felt obliged to do so. For example, when the hosts couldn’t find the balls needed for the game, Charles Wright produced some of his own and tried to sell them to the club. As Jeremy Lonsdale noted, in Wisden Cricket Monthly, ‘This created some disquiet, as did his attempt to charge very high prices for a number of ghosted biographies of the players.’7 In short, in the words of the Natal Mercury, Wright ‘generally caused a little stir clamouring for his money.’ On the cricketing front, an unnamed amateur was also condemned for making a number of criticisms before the start of the game and, once it had begun, others were accused of complaining loudly about the state of the pitch, trying to con the umpires and ‘sledging’ the Natal batsmen. Moreover, Hawke’s use of a substitute fielder to allow his players to take regular rests was considered unsportsmanlike: it was a tactic that he would never have attempted in England and so, it was felt, he should not have used it in South Africa.

Furthermore, after England were condemned to defeat by another century from Poore, Hawke attracted considerable criticism by inviting the Major to join his party for the rest of the tour. As Hewett had returned to Britain on personal business, the squad was a batsman short but, understandably, South African newspapers were unsympathetic to the Englishmen’s plight. According to the Natal Mercury, local cricketers regarded Hawke’s approach to Poore as an attempt ‘to weaken the South African elevens which will oppose the visiting cricketers at Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg and Capetown [sic]’ in the Test matches and, significantly, the paper commented that the move would ‘add still further to the unpopularity of Lord Hawke’s team.’ The issue soon became a major incident, involving the cricket authorities, the Army and a fair amount of hypocrisy on the part of the newspapers concerned. Jeremy Lonsdale has explained how the storm grew after the match in Durban then gradually blew itself out:

The South African Cricket Association met in Johannesburg and discussed the situation before issuing a protest statement, which they sent to Poore, the Natal Cricket Union and Lord Hawke. The situation was defused when Robert Poore, under pressure from his superior officer, Colonel Paget, declined the English offer, stating that he felt very honoured to be selected, as by now he had been, to represent Natal in the South Africa team. The affair had an ironic touch to it, though, since the same papers that criticized the player for appearing for England were actually sceptical about his right to play for South Africa at all, since his qualification was based on a stay in the country of just nine months. Even so, the matter was settled by negotiation, and sadly not, as the rather romantic story goes, by the victory of a South African team in a tug of war competition on the morning of the first Test.8

In view of these controversies, and their hefty defeat at the hands of Natal, the tourists were happy to leave Durban. In particular, Tom Hayward, the Surrey batsman, was delighted to escape from an area in which he had been so irresistible to mosquitoes that, in Fry’s words, he became ‘indistinguishable from a beefsteak for at least a fortnight.’ The team’s journey to its next match, at King William’s Town, was less restful than they would have hoped. At the outset they had great difficulty in boarding their steamer and spent three hours on a tug, sailing round and round in choppy seas – an experience which made several players ill. When the journey actually began, the weather changed and, finding their cabins unbearably hot, many of the players chose to sleep on deck instead. Finally, on reaching East London, they faced the prospect of a particularly daunting landing. According to Life Worth Living:

We were lowered from the ship in a big basket into a tub, and the tub made for an opening in the coast which seemed to be obscured by a recurrent wave of prodigious size. This was the bar. We crossed the bar by an accurate piece of timing on the part of our skipper, who lay off until the right moment and then shot his cockleshell of a tub through a corner of the wave just as it subsided, and we found ourselves inland of a wall of water which quite obscured the ship from view.

When I say ‘we’, I should say all of us except George Lohmann. George had been there before. Hours before we reached East London, George casually let it drop that he would be unable to land there, but would travel in the ship on to Cape Town and join us later. Nothing would induce him to renew his acquaintance with the bar where, on some previous occasion, I suppose, the skipper had mistimed his spurt.

When we were safely inside we were more sympathetic with George than when we left him on the ship.

Cricket confirmed that Lohmann was an absentee when Lord Hawke’s XI played XXII of King William’s Town towards the end of January and his presence was missed. Although the Englishmen did well to dismiss 21 batsmen for only 200 runs – with Tyler taking eight wickets and Fry accounting for both openers – there is little doubt that Lohmann, the side’s most successful bowler, would have skittled them out for even less. Had he done so, England’s first innings total of 109, in which C.B. was dismissed without scoring, would have looked less inadequate. Following on, Lord Hawke’s team fared rather better in their second innings and Fry atoned for his earlier failure by top-scoring with 50 – an innings that enabled the tourists to escape with a fortuitous draw.

In the next match, against XXII of Albany at Grahamstown, C.B., unlike his team-mates, continued to bat well: in the words of Cricket, ‘The English batting was only relieved from mediocrity by the performance of Fry.’ His contribution – an undefeated 51 – was almost four times as large as the next highest score and accounted for almost half his side’s first innings total. It showed that in South Africa, as in England, he had the technique to cope with wickets and attacks which left his team-mates floundering. Indeed, Fry’s performance was the only substantial innings in the entire match as the Albany batsmen also struggled against their opponents’ bowling. In the first innings, for example, Bromley-Davenport picked up 7-4 and, in the second, Lohmann took 11-54.

In some respects, however, the lengthy trip to Grahamstown had been more memorable than the match itself. Hawke remembered that when the tourists broke their two-day journey at a farmhouse, he had the misfortune to be woken by pigs, which had wandered into the bedrooms. Fry, too, had an interesting experience with one of the farm animals. After breakfast, he went for a walk with Sammy Woods to look at the ostriches in their vast wire-fenced compounds. Realising, like F.E. Smith, that C.B. was incapable of resisting a challenge, Woods dared Fry to climb into the compound, approach an apparently statuesque black cock ostrich and pull out one of its luxuriant tail-feathers. Predictably, C.B. did just so and, as usual, soon regretted rising to the bait. Far from having to chase the bird, he found the roles reversed. With no time to climb back over the fence, he ‘took a header clean through a square in the wire’ – and was left with ‘a very sore pair of hands and a jolted shoulder.’9 In the circumstances, therefore, his innings against Grahamstown was even more impressive than it had initially appeared.

After a disappointing game against the XXII of Midlands at Cradock, which ended in another draw, the tourists arrived in the first week of February, at Port Elizabeth – a town that owed part of its prosperity to the ostrich feathers that C.B. had recently seen at such close quarters. More importantly, it was to be the venue for one of the most significant matches of his career. After playing, and beating, an 18-strong Port Elizabeth team, Lord Hawke’s party prepared for another, more important fixture: a match against South Africa. Although neither country would be fielding its best 11 players, it was treated as a fully representative fixture. In other words, C.B. would be making his Test début – adding an international cricket cap to the one he had already won for football. At the age of 23, the triple Blue would achieve the even rarer distinction of becoming a double international.

On 13 February 1896, Fry duly began a Test match career that lasted 16 years – and nearly spanned 25. For his country, and for himself, his début was impressive. He hit 43 (the top-score) in the first innings and a respectable 15 in the second – yet England’s match-winner proved to be, unusually, an opening batsman who was dismissed for a ‘pair’. But as the man concerned was Lohmann, he was able to make ample amends with the ball. After taking 7-38 when South Africa batted for the first time, he improved on his figures in the final innings of the game when he was, according to one account, ‘unplayable’.10 His match analysis, 15-45, remains one of the best in Test history and the South Africans’ second innings total, 30, is still the second lowest of any Test.11 England won by the crushing margin of 288 runs – and Fry’s England début had been an unqualified success.

The following game, against XVI of Orange Free State at Bloemfontein, was, like so many others, less memorable for its cricket than for news which would, once again, disrupt Hawke’s plans. On the final day of their match against the Free Staters, the tourists’ next destination, Johannesburg, was shaken by such an enormous explosion that people claimed to have heard it in Bloemfontein itself. When the touring party reached Johannesburg, they could see the scale of the blast and the extent of the damage it had caused. According to Fry: ‘As soon as we arrived in the station, we found that three trucks of dynamite had blown up in a siding, and made a hole big enough to contain an ocean liner. The casualties were terrible. One native was killed by the head of a donkey which was blown two hundred yards.’ Although his account is open to question – the story about the donkey, while impossible to disprove, sounds contrived – there is no doubt that a large part of the city had been devastated and the Wanderers ground, where the cricketers were due to play, had to be turned into a temporary hospital.

In view of the situation in Johannesburg, it was judged impractical to play cricket there. The authorities hoped that the Pretoria Cricket Association would come to the rescue by bringing forward its match against the tourists. The P.C.A. agreed to the request, but did so without consulting a local cycling club, which also used the cricket ground for its races. As a result, England arrived at Pretoria to find that their planned three-day game would be reduced to two – with a cycling competition taking place between the match’s first and final days. Despite having their arrangements disrupted and losing a day’s play, Lord Hawke’s XI were too strong for XV of Pretoria and won by five wickets, helped by Fry’s useful contributions with both bat and ball.

For C.B., however, in common with other members of the touring party, the most memorable part of the visit to Pretoria was a meeting with the Boer leader, Paul Kruger, which Lord Hawke had been persuaded to arrange. Although Kruger said little, his presence made a lasting impression on Fry. He provided a powerful description of Kruger, and his wife, in Life Worth Living, together with an equally vivid anecdote that, despite C.B.’s protestations of its authenticity, rings less true:

in small sections we were invited to call at his villa at seven o’clock in the morning. Wanting to have a good look at the notorious old man, I attached myself to two sections. He was not disappointing. He was exactly as one had seen him portrayed in newspapers and periodicals, with his broadcloth frock-coat, big head sunk in his shoulders on a short neck, long biblical face, quick cunning eyes, in a frame of a patriarchal beard. He did not stand up. He sat in a chair with Tante Kruger standing beside him, a watchful buxom old lady, with her hands crossed under her bosom like a reproachful landlady. All the stories about him were true. The best of them, perhaps, relates to when he was invited to open a synagogue on condition that he should not have to make a speech. But he did. He said, ‘I declare this synagogue open in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.’

After their convincing victory in the First Test (and their stop-over in Pretoria), Hawke’s men returned to Johannesburg to find themselves firm favourites to win the next match (and, therefore, the series) against South Africa. But although the Englishmen were now happy enough to stay in the city, some of South Africa’s best cricketers were not and several late replacements had to be found – further reducing the home side’s prospects of success. The first day of the match proved decisive. Although Lohmann was dismissed for 2, Hayward played ‘a very fine innings’12 of 122, ably supported by Hill and Fry, who batted well for his 64. But it was the tail which turned a good score into a match-winning total, taking England to 482 – a new record for matches between the two countries. In their reply, the South Africans found Lohmann keen to atone for his poor batting performance. He took 9-28 as the home side slumped to 151 all out and, when they followed on, grabbed three more wickets, helping Heseltine, who took 5-38, to dismiss South Africa for a paltry 134. Accordingly, England won the match by an innings and 197 runs – and took an unbeatable two-nil lead in the three-match series.

After the Second Test, the tourists moved on to Kimberley for a game against XV of Griqualand West. In Fry’s words, the cricket ground, ‘was grey grit, flanked on two sides by hedges of cactus’ and, in these unfamiliar surroundings, Hawke’s team struggled – and found the Griqualand players giving them a much closer match than South Africa’s national side had done in Johannesburg. Although C.B. failed with the bat, his bowling proved invaluable: he took 6-47 (off 30 overs) to save his side from embarrassment, steering them to victory by the uncomfortably narrow margin of 13 runs.

From the tourists’ perspective, Kimberley was more impressive than the cricket. As well as staying at the hotel owned by the sister of Barney Barnato, the diamond magnate, they saw the mining industry at close hand and were given some garnets. One of these small gems, set in a gold stud, would occasionally adorn C.B.’s shirt front at least 40 years later.

Kimberley also presented the tourists with an opportunity to indulge in a variety of sports. One day, for example, an assistant manager from De Beers arranged for four of the party – Heseltine and Hill plus, inevitably, Woods and Fry – to go buck-shooting with him. The outing was not a success: C.B. got separated from his colleagues and found himself at risk of being hit by their stray shooting. He felt safer after finding protection in the unlikely form of a massive ant-hill and, within ten minutes, saw hordes of springbok converging nearby. Although Fry had the satisfaction of shooting a buck, as he had originally intended, it did nothing to improve his predicament; he was still separated from the other hunters and had only succeeded in alerting vultures to his whereabouts. Fortunately, ‘after about an hour, as much from nowhere as the first vulture, A.J.L. Hill appeared’,13 and a relieved C.B. was reunited with his team-mates.

Two days later, the tourists were treated to an early morning meeting arranged, for their benefit, by the Kimberley Hounds. As Fry was a late riser, he was left with no option but to ride ‘a tall, scraggy, flea-bitten grey pony’.14 But appearances were deceptive and C.B. discovered, to his delight, that his mount was a better runner than all but one of its rivals – the ‘thoroughbred brown ridden by our friend from De Beers, which could canter faster than the rest could gallop.’15 Many of the Englishmen seem to have been experienced huntsmen, as they eagerly compared hunting in South Africa with the conditions they had encountered at home as members of prestigious hunts like the Quorn, Bramham Moor and Vale of the White Horse (V.W.H.). It is probable, therefore, that some of C.B.’s team-mates had heard of the scandalous affair which had engulfed and then divided the V.W.H. barely a decade before. Like Fry, they could not have realised that those responsible for the scandal would soon shape the remainder of his life. One became C.B.’s benefactor, the other his wife.

Further sport followed when the team moved to Matjesfontein, where they were Douglas Logan’s guests. It appeared that Logan (like Hawke) was experiencing some logistical difficulties and he announced there would be a delay before he could bring together a local team to play them. In view of the postponement, Heseltine and Hill were keen, as usual, to spend the day shooting and, as a spare horse was available, Fry volunteered to accompany them. In the event, their hunting proved completely unsuccessful and on their return their frustration was compounded when a mounted policeman arrested them for shooting without licences. They were duly taken to the local magistrate and fined £10 each. The magistrate was Logan – and the entire episode turned out to have been an elaborate, and successful, practical joke.

A day later the tourists were joined by another enthusiastic shooter – Lord Hawke’s 18-stone brother, a captain in the Lincolnshire Regiment. Only one horse – previously used by Fry – was capable of coping with his weight, so C.B. borrowed another animal, which he was told, ‘had a very light mouth’. In practice, that was the least of Fry’s difficulties – and he soon had every reason to regret the captain’s arrival. As he rode back to the main house to collect a gun, the horse went berserk beneath him:

When we were passing the stable yard, my animal swerved like lightning and tried to dash through the gate, which was swinging open. Crash went the gate. Round and round the yard we pelted half a dozen times. By good luck the stable door was shut. Out of the gate again with another crash, straight for the station wall. It looked for a moment as if we should charge it head-on at break-neck speed. A swerve to the left down the square, straight at the wire fence. Another swerve to the left within a yard or two of the fence, and out between the concrete pillars. When we had gone a mile or so at the rate of knots, I saw ahead an arch under the railway and remembered with the instantaneous perception one has at such times that a very deep spruit ran under the railway at right angles. I saw ahead a precipitous plunge in the chasm, which was much too wide to jump. So, disengaging my feet from the stirrups, I hunched forward and, picking a clear piece of ground, executed a jump forward out of the saddle and landed on my left foot and right hand.

It was, he wrote in 1939, ‘the nearest shave I ever had for my life’, but he did not escape scot-free. Although he had landed on his left foot, when he tried to walk he found it was his right ankle that had been injured, presumably when horse and rider crashed through the gate to the stable yard. C.B.’s injury was subsequently diagnosed as a broken fibula: his ankle was put in plaster and he missed the remaining matches of the tour – two draws and another Lohmann-inspired victory in the final Test.16

For Fry, it was a disappointing end to his first, and last, England tour. Nonetheless, he had been one of the most successful members of the touring party. Although C.B. was overshadowed by George Lohmann – like everyone else17 – his bowling (which yielded 37 wickets at 12.75 runs apiece) had been a useful asset to the team and strengthened his status as an all-rounder. But it was as a batsman that C.B. had excelled. He hit the first and largest centuries of the tour, finished top of the averages and, until injuring his ankle, seemed certain to finish the tour with the highest aggregate as well. Moreover, playing on a cricket tour, adjusting to unfamiliar conditions and batting on different types of wickets seemed to complete his cricketing education. Lord Hawke maintained that ‘the experience he gained on matting wickets made C.B. Fry the great bat he subsequently proved to be.’ Similarly, in Life Worth Living Fry wrote that: ‘What promoted me was the education of this tour in South Africa, in a strong team with complete liberty to devote myself to the game.’ Whatever the precise reasons for his improvement, C.B. had clearly justified Ranjitsinhji’s recommendation and made the most of the opportunity that Hawke had given him.

Furthermore, the tour seems to have been as enjoyable as it was educative. Hawke was full of praise for its patron, Douglas Logan; Fry, in turn, was impressed by the personality and management of Hawke;18 and Woods wrote that the trip had been beneficial for everyone concerned – improving South African cricket and leaving the visitors ‘thoroughly happy and delighted.’ The visit even made a small profit, which was given to Lohmann who, despite his on-field successes, continued to suffer from poor health (and died, a few years later, at Matjesfontein).

Such a record was, in the circumstances, a remarkable success. As the magazine Cricket noted: ‘…never since it became fashionable to go on cricket tours abroad during the winter had a team to contend with more difficulties than Lord Hawke’s.’ Nevertheless, it had established that Fry might be able to graduate from being a good batsman into, potentially, a great one.