Perhaps the most important figure of all at Fenner’s was the groundsman-cum-coach-cum-general-bottle-washer who quite simply ran the place, the incomparable and ever-helpful Cyril Coote. He was a man of many parts, and to describe him as the groundsman, as many did, missed the point by miles. At first, the most noticeable thing about him was his pronounced limp, for he had been born with one leg significantly shorter than the other. No one could have made lighter of such a handicap as his limping stride took him all over the place, brimming with enthusiasm and encouragement. He turned himself into a considerable batsman, and opened the batting for Cambridgeshire for many years in the Minor County Championship, although my friends from the Norfolk side of that vintage remembered him more for his adhesiveness than his fluent strokeplay. No one I have ever met understood the mechanics of batting better than Cyril, and it was remarkable how clever he was at correcting faults in the nets. He was almost invariably right in his assessment of the characters of the players he coached, to whom he varied his approach accordingly. Half an hour in the nets with Cyril was worth a week with many others. He also had the reputation of being one of the best shots in Cambridgeshire, and any bird that had the luck to get past him once knew better than to try again. In addition to all this, he was a wonderful groundsman, and produced the superb batting pitches which in the fifties were the hallmark of Fenner’s. He was cheerful, extremely determined and uncompromisingly robust in all his opinions. There were no grey areas with Cyril.
I played a few matches for the university in my first year, without getting into the side. The delightful and charming Chris Howland filled the wicketkeeping spot. He was undoubtedly better than I was after that stupid accident, but I still have the feeling that if I had missed that wretched bus, it might have been the other way round. My reactions were a mess, and my keeping suffered more than my batting. It was only for one brief spell, on a tour of Barbados with Jim Swanton’s Arabs in 1967, that my wicketkeeping ever fully came back to me, but it was too late, for I had by then become a cricket watcher and writer, and had little time to play. I suppose all through my life I have suffered occasional pangs of what might have been, if only … But there was no future in that line of thought, and I was always anxious to get on with the present, even if that did sometimes mean flying by the seat of my pants.
My first-class career had an unusual start. May 1958 was an important month for me, what with exams, the cricket and keeping a watchful eye on the social scene in London, with deb dances and all that. My particular love at that time – and gosh, she was beautiful – had asked me as her partner to the tour de force of the London season, Queen Charlotte’s Birthday Ball. This was an invitation it was impossible to refuse, although as it happened I was well out of my depth by then, not that I knew it, and it wouldn’t have made the least difference whether I had gone or not. As luck would have it, two days before the party, the team for the university’s forthcoming game against Kent went up in the window of Ryder & Amies the outfitters on King’s Parade. The match began the day after Queen Charlotte’s, and of course sod’s law decreed that my name should have been down on the team sheet. Showing all the optimism – or maybe the insecurity and bloody stupidity – of youth, I attempted to fulfil both functions, which remains one of the craziest decisions that even I have ever made.
I caught the train up to London, and changed into a white tie and tails at my brother John’s mews cottage. But as soon as I turned up at the appropriate house and met the rest of the party, which was full of dashing cavalry officers and a fair sprinkling from the Brigade of Guards, I realised that any hopes I might have had in the direction of the beautiful deb had disappeared weeks ago. Anyway, off we all went to the Grosvenor House in Park Lane, where we danced a good deal of the night away. Eventually I bade farewell to all concerned and legged it to Liverpool Street station to catch the milk train back to Cambridge before taking on the might of Kent that same morning. As luck would have it, the first person I ran into on the platform was Ian McLachlan, who was being rested for the Kent game and who had also been to Queen Charlotte’s. As he was a good friend of Ted Dexter’s, the news of my nocturnal progress soon got about. Sod’s law again.
I took a taxi back to my lodgings, and after the briefest of lie-downs before a hurried bowl of Corn Flakes, I pedalled my way to Fenner’s in the hope of greater success than I had achieved at Grosvenor House. Dexter and Colin Cowdrey tossed, and we were batting, which was not quite the way I had planned things. Shortly before half past eleven, therefore, I was making my way, horribly nervously, to the crease as one of the openers. I don’t think I took the first ball, but very soon I was down at the business end preparing to face Alan Brown, a tall, blond fast bowler. I managed somehow to survive my first ball. The second was short, and lifted on me. I followed it up in front of my face, and it hit the splice of the bat and dollied up to give forward short leg the easiest catch in the history of cricket. I shuffled miserably off to the pavilion, and as I passed Cowdrey at first slip he said, ‘Bad luck,’ in the kindest of voices. It was no help. In the space of approximately fifteen hours I had played two and lost two. So much for youthful optimism. I would always have lost at Grosvenor House, but who knows, I might have made a better fist of things at Fenner’s. Some time later, I wondered if I might have hooked that ball if it had not been for my bang on the head. I made one in the second innings. What a start.
I opened again in the next game, against Lancashire, and somehow managed to put on 78 with Dexter for the second wicket. I spent my time at the non-striker’s end jumping out of the way of his thunderous straight drives, and at the other end playing and missing or edging the ball just short of the slips. Eventually, having made 41, I missed a low full toss from off-spinner Roy Tattersall which hit the outside of my leg-stump. Lancashire were captained by Cyril Washbrook, and their attack consisted of Brian Statham and Ken Higgs with the new ball, while the spin was provided by Tattersall and the left-armer Malcolm Hilton, who as a beginner in 1948 had famously dismissed Bradman. I faced a few overs from Statham, bowling almost off the wrong foot, and I don’t think he sent down a single ball I could leave alone. His accuracy was of course legendary, and at that time he and Fred Trueman formed one of England’s greatest pairs of opening bowlers.
A week or two later I was out first ball to the examiners, but as this was only a college exam and not part one of the tripos or anything particularly serious, King’s looked benevolently upon me, and I was not shown the door. After that I wiled away the summer working on the first floor of Simpson’s in Piccadilly. There was one moment of excitement, which proved to be a false dawn. The university were on tour, playing various counties before the University Match, and I received an SOS to go to Guildford and keep wicket against Surrey. I was mean-spirited enough to hope that Chris Howland had perhaps broken a finger, but when I clocked in at the Hog’s Back hotel I discovered that he was merely having a game off. So four days later I was asking Simpsons for my job back and it was Daks trousers and cashmere jackets all over again. I never quite got the hang of the measuring tape, but I was not too bad at the chat, which just about got me by.
I played a bit of cricket for Norfolk, without much success, before beginning my second year at Cambridge. Towards the end of the summer term I had arranged to move lodgings to a house at 3 St Clement’s Gardens, which was run by an elderly landlady called Agnes Smith, who must have been the best of her sort in the whole of Cambridge. Her cooked breakfasts were magnificent, her kindness, enthusiasm and humour simply remarkable, and she had a wonderful, chuckling laugh. One of my companions there was Christopher Mallaby, who went on to reach spectacular heights in the diplomatic profession: his last posting was as our man at the amazing embassy in Paris. Another benefit of St Clement’s Gardens, which didn’t altogether please my bank manager, was that it was just around the corner from the Pitt Club.
My second year was much more fun than my first, especially as far as the social whirl was concerned. As a result my overdraft increased inexorably, which irritated Tom, who found it difficult to understand how I could not live within the slender means he allowed me. We had a number of lively conversations on this subject. Academically, little had changed. My distaste for lectures grew worse, and alas, I did not work hard enough to get by. I did a bit better against the examiners, surviving almost a complete over and scoring what was known as ‘a Special’, which meant guilty unless there