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Wilfred Rhodes – Part 1 – with Patrick Ferriday
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Records are made to be broken, but in all likelihood, those belonging to Wilfred Rhodes (1877–1973) will stand for eternity. His 4204 wickets across 1110 First-Class matches must be incomprehensible to modern cricketers, who split their time and effort across multiple formats. He played his first Test in 1899 alongside WG Grace and his last in 1930 at a time when Bradman was taking all before him. At 52 years & 165 days, he still holds the record for being the oldest person to play a Test Match. But his career was much more than just longevity and gigantic numbers.
ABOUT PATRICK FERRIDAY:
Born in London, he lived for many years in West Berlin but returned to England to work as a racing commentator in the early nineties. Since 2011 he’s written four books and published a number of others, via his own publishing group – Von Krumm Publishing. He now lives in Brighton where, in 2021, he wrote and published the long-awaited biography – Wilfred Rhodes: The Triumphal Arch.
CREDITS:
Presenter & Producer: Tom Ford
All music used in the podcast comes from the University of California Santa Barbara’s remarkable collection of wax cylinder’s from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which are free to download and use. You can donate to the upkeep of these recordings via their website.
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Transcript
Introduction to Wilfred Rhodes and His Legacy
00:00:07
Speaker
Hello and welcome to this episode of the Golden Age of Cricket, a program where we delve way back and explore one of the most fascinating periods in the entire history of cricket. My name is Tom Ford.
00:00:20
Speaker
Our subject today is Wilfred Rhodes, a cricketer who holds many records which, in all likelihood, will never be beaten. His 4,204 first-class wickets seems insurmountable, almost 500 more than his nearest rival Titch Freeman. In an age of ever-changing formats between red and white ball cricket, his first-class record of 1,110 matches also seems like it'll never be reached.
Unbeatable Records and Achievements
00:00:49
Speaker
He played his first test in 1899 alongside W.G. Grace and his last in 1930 at a time when Bradman was taking all before him. At 52 years and 165 days he still holds the record for being the oldest person to play a test match. But his career was much more than just longevity and gigantic numbers.
Patrick Faraday's Biography of Rhodes
00:01:13
Speaker
My guest today is Patrick Faraday. Born in London, he lived for many years in West Berlin, but came back to England to work as a racing commentator in the early 1990s. Since 2011, he's written four books and published a number of others via his own publishing group Von Krum Publishing.
00:01:33
Speaker
He now lives in Brighton, where in 2021 he wrote and published a long-awaited biography on the life and times of Wilfrid Rhodes. Patrick, welcome. Thank you, Tom. A pleasure.
00:01:46
Speaker
The title of your biography, Wilfred Rhodes, The Triumphal Arch, seems to me to have wonderful innuendo. On the one hand, it references Wilfred's ever reliable bowling action, where he could flight the ball like few others, and one which sent down a record 185,000 first class deliveries.
00:02:06
Speaker
On the other, it references his extraordinarily long career spanning from the late Victorian age to the Depression era. Am I correct in this assumption? Absolutely, absolutely. I would like to say it was my subtitle, The Triumphal Arch, but I nicked it from Alan Thompson, A.A. Thompson.
00:02:30
Speaker
And it does exactly as you've just said, it references certainly his style of bowling in the way that the ball arched down from his hand to the batsman's grouping bat. But also, yes, very much it's the
00:02:49
Speaker
He's the link between the age of Grace and Bradman. Quite simply, as you say, his first game was against or was with Grace and his last game was with Bradman. It's almost too neat to be true. 1898 to 1930.
00:03:09
Speaker
Um, and also a little bit earlier, you referenced, uh, some of, some of his, um, astonishing records. You said that they might never be broken. I think I'd take issue with that. They, they won't ever be broken. Uh, I don't, I don't see anybody taking, uh, what was it 4,204 wickets or even getting near his 40,000 runs. Don't, don't, you shouldn't forget. He was a half decent batsman. Um,
00:03:35
Speaker
and the amount of balls he rolled, the amount of games he played, so on and so forth, unless cricket as a game takes a turn that it will never take, in my opinion, those records are for eternity.
Challenges in Documenting Rhodes' Life
00:03:49
Speaker
Absolutely, and we're going to discuss his statistics in detail later in the podcast, but why do you think there's never been a significant, all-encompassing biography on Wilford Roads until now?
00:04:04
Speaker
A good question. A very good question. Let me see. Well, there were two there were two books published, as you know, in the early 50s. Sidney Rogerson wrote a biography of him. And same, I think the year before or the year after Alan Thompson wrote a book about Wilfred and George Hurst.
00:04:29
Speaker
Maybe people thought Rhodes had been done, possibly. Maybe some people might have thought this is a bit too big. His career is so enormous, hardly nowhere to start. Perhaps people looked at it and couldn't find enough personal information and thought, well, I'll end up just writing about his statistics and his career, and that's not a book I want to write.
00:05:01
Speaker
It's anybody's guess. I don't know how many people have looked at him and thought, oh, I'd like to write about him and haven't done it. But finally, somebody has. And I must say, the amount of people that wrote to me and said, it's about time was very, very, very encouraging.
00:05:19
Speaker
And I am one of them, absolutely. You've done a splendid job. You touched on it very briefly there, Patrick. What primary sources were of most value to you while researching his life and career? Well, I suppose those two biographies are an excellent starting point. Obviously, I reference them a lot. But if you're just relying on two other people's biographies, then there's something a bit wrong with your own biography.
00:05:49
Speaker
It's an enormous advantage now to have the internet. All his records, all his achievements, all the statistics are just there. You can find anything you want, pretty much. So that's all at your fingertips as well. You don't have to go off to libraries and research centers to find those.
00:06:11
Speaker
The same applies to access to contemporary newspapers. Just join the British Library and suddenly you've got, you know, X number of newspapers in your front room, so to speak. Also,
00:06:28
Speaker
I suppose I had the advantage over Rogerson and Thompson, obviously, that they wrote 20 years before Wilfred had died, so there's nothing of his later life in their books, for obvious reasons. A lot of bits and pieces about Wilfred have appeared since those two books, so I was able to take advantage of all of those.
00:06:55
Speaker
There's a lot, he, Wilfred appears, not surprisingly, in a lot of books. He had a very long career, so if you...
00:07:04
Speaker
I don't know, for example, I went through my library of books and just went along. Oh, there's a book by Patsy Hendrum. Well, he's sure to mention Wilfred, and he did. There's a book by Frank Woolley. He's sure to mention Wilfred, and he did. And I just went through all the books just to see the little, sometimes just little bits and pieces, little snippets, sometimes a little bit more.
00:07:27
Speaker
And then I had the wonderful, more detailed accounts by, particularly the one I like is Jim Kilburn, the Yorkshire historian, whose accounts of Wilfred are just marvellous. I think those are really the very, very best. Neville Cardes also,
00:07:51
Speaker
And then on top of that, I was fortunate enough to talk at some length to David Frith, who, as we'll no doubt get on to, met Wilfred and recorded a long interview with him. So I had access to David's memories and also a recording of the interview, which didn't, I suppose, bring up anything particularly new
00:08:17
Speaker
in the sense that most of what Wilfred said I already knew, but to hear it in his words, in his voice, is really something quite special. And then as far as his personal life was concerned, I had the very, very great pleasure and privilege to talk to Wilfred's granddaughter, Margaret Garten, who is now in her
00:08:39
Speaker
I'm sure she'll
Personal Stories and Verification
00:08:40
Speaker
listen to this. I'm guessing she's in her early 80s, maybe mid 80s. And she has wonderful memories of him. I think she must have been about 30 when he died. So she knew him very well. And she was a wonderful source of information about who he was, what it was like to be with him in his last last 20, 25 years of his life. And also she was
00:09:08
Speaker
wonderfully, she gave me a lot of confidence in the sense that she checked over some of the stuff I'd written and was happy with my conclusions and happy with some of the assumptions I'd made. And that made me feel very good about what I was doing and the idea that I'd actually got him and understood him. And I felt I had, but when Margaret told me, yes, you have, that's when I thought, no, I'm on safe ground now.
00:09:37
Speaker
Hmm. That's very sweet. And it's so nice that as we drift further from the golden age, that there are still people alive today who have that connection. I mean, she had a personal connection, but that there are still people who knew these cricketers from the golden age. It's a, you know, we're, we're in a few more years and a few more decades. We won't have that connection. It's very sad. So that was a, I think a very nice angle in your book.
00:10:06
Speaker
Yeah, I think I was aware of that. I think I've always been aware of these kind of things. To go slightly off-piste, there was a historian of the First World War,
00:10:23
Speaker
And I'm trying to remember her name, McDonald. She had the idea in the 1970s to talk to lots of veterans of the First World War, quite simply because she thought if she didn't talk to them in time, nobody ever would, and their stories would be lost. And she's written a whole series of First World War books about Lynn McDonald.
00:10:44
Speaker
and a similar thing would apply I think to the writer Stephen Chalk who has written a series of books or his first two books were really 90s and 50s and 60s cricketers that he felt
00:10:58
Speaker
Their stories hadn't been told, and he looked for people, interviewed them, talked to them, and brought their stories together. Yeah. As you say, as we get further away, the original protagionists die out, and then their relatives do. And so I feel very blessed to have had David and Margaret Garten, and also George Hurst's granddaughter.
00:11:26
Speaker
Lindsay, who was, again, wonderful. She replied to all the emails and she was very excited that I was writing about her grandfather and her grandson, which is, you know, further down the line still, was very interested to read about his great, great, great, great grandfather. Yeah, I do feel that I feel pleased to have made some very, very small contribution to continuing the story.
Rhodes' Unique Cricket Skills and Strategies
00:11:55
Speaker
Wilfred's longevity and inflated statistics have entered cricket folklore. You must have approached the biography already knowing quite a bit about him, but did anything surprise you in your research?
00:12:10
Speaker
Yeah, well, I can give you one statistic, which not only surprised me, but surprised a lot of other people. Wilfred played more first-class innings than any other player ever to play the game.
00:12:25
Speaker
Not only does he hold the record, obviously, most people know for the most first class wickets, but he battered more more times than anybody else. I thought that was that was rather remarkable thing. I can add a few others to the the oldest ever man's played test cricket. The amount of county championships he won and I'm I think I might
00:12:51
Speaker
I might stall at how many it was. It was a lot of county championships anyway. Most 1,000 run 100-wicket doubles. I think it was 16 in his career.
00:13:06
Speaker
I think the more I went on, the more I realized what it took to take 4,200 wickets. Season after season after season, you look at his records, there's seven wickets here, five wickets there, 11 wickets in the match there, and relentlessly on and on and on.
00:13:27
Speaker
people who are a bit bowled over by the amount of the wickets, it's worth bearing in mind that the First World War came in the middle of, not quite in the middle of his career, but that would have been
00:13:40
Speaker
I think you can safely say another 600 or 700 wickets probably if the First World War hadn't intervened. Plus, he almost gave up bowling for a couple of years just before the First War when he decided he'd be a batsman instead. So, goodness knows. I mean, he could have taken 5,000, but I think 4,204 was plenty.
00:14:01
Speaker
And having heard the interview with David Firth from the 1970s, what's remarkable is Wilfred's memory and his recall. I mean, for someone who achieved so much statistically, he seems to be able to even, I think he's in his 90s when he recorded that interview, is he still recalls such vivid detail from 70 years ago. It's quite remarkable.
00:14:28
Speaker
Astonishing. Absolutely astonishing. Luckily, he didn't have to correct David because David knew all those figures as well. But yes, a remarkable recall. I think he was a kind of player who probably
00:14:51
Speaker
would remember things because he thought so much about what he was doing. I think that we'll probably get onto this later, but thought was intrinsic to the way he played the game. There's one quote I came across which almost seemed to encapsulate his approach to, not just to cricket actually, to life. He always figured and he was confident that he could puzzle it out.
00:15:19
Speaker
If he put his mind to it, and there was a problem facing him, he could puzzle it out. Puzzle it out he did. In all walks of life, he puzzled out how to live comfortably even in his later years when he was totally blind.
00:15:36
Speaker
He puzzled out how to get out the best batsman. He puzzled out how to change his approach to bowling when the wickets weren't what he wanted. He puzzled out. I would say in some ways he puzzled out how to bat. He wasn't a natural batsman. He was a natural bowler, but he wasn't a natural batsman. He puzzled that out.
00:15:56
Speaker
He was, he was just a great thinker and a great believer in his own mental ability to solve problems. And I think he saw cricket as an exercise in some ways in problem solving, not just his own game for other people as well. Hence, he was a very, very good advisor and coach to people who want to listen to him.
00:16:23
Speaker
and I've rambled on now and I've forgotten what the actual initial question was. Well I'm talking about his memory but his, I think the quote you may have been referencing and now my memory is doing me a disservice so I'll paraphrase and I'm not sure who said it but essentially
00:16:43
Speaker
It was along the lines of when George Hurst got you out in the first innings, he got your picket. But when Rhodes got you out in the first innings, he actually got you out twice because he knew exactly what to do in the second innings. Exactly. Good quote. Like that. It was Roy Kilner who said that. So my memory is all right. Yes. And I think that's
00:17:11
Speaker
That's good old Roy Kilner. It's a great quote and it's not apocryphal and also it has more than a ring of truth about it. He did have an astonishing memory for weaknesses and strengths of opposing cricketers and players on his own side.
00:17:36
Speaker
He just stored this stuff away. One of his teammates, Emmett Robinson, did actually have a little book where he would make notes, but Wilfred didn't. He just stored it in his head and I think
00:17:51
Speaker
probably you'd be safe to say that they couldn't be a cricketer and a more profound understanding of the game he played. Yeah, he got to build that understanding over 32 years, but there was something very scientific
00:18:09
Speaker
in his nature. He was a great admirer of scientists and inventors because they puzzled stuff out and that was his way of approaching life.
Influences and Early Life
00:18:37
Speaker
Let's return right to the beginning. Wilfrid Rhodes was born on the 29th of October 1877, just three days before Victor Trumper, as it turned out, in Kirkheton, Yorkshire. What can you tell us about Kirkheton at that time and the cricket environment in which Wilfrid was raised? Well, Kirkheton's
00:19:02
Speaker
not a village, it's a large village, small town just outside Huddersfield in South Yorkshire.
00:19:10
Speaker
a bit more, not quite south Yorkshire, but to the south of the middle of Yorkshire. He was one of two children, the oldest of two. His father was a very keen amateur cricketer. Kirk Heaton, like all towns and villages of that size at that time, had its own cricket club.
00:19:34
Speaker
Um, he grew up playing sports, very keen on sports. I'm sure his father was a great encourager, um, football and cricket, but particularly cricket. Um, and he graduated into the Kirk Heaton second 11 when he was about 13, 14, something like that. Kirk Heaton was a, uh,
00:19:56
Speaker
was not a salubrious place at the time. His father was a miner and well, like most people in the village, they worked with their hands and life was pretty tough. Wilfred did a lot of walking to cricket matches and he went to see, when he was young, he went to see W.G. Grace play in Bradford. It was just a 12 mile walk.
00:20:27
Speaker
But he saw WG play and I think that I seem to remember WG got a duck, which rather annoyed him. But yeah, a pretty...
00:20:40
Speaker
would I call it a tough upbringing? No, he had loving parents, but no luxuries. I do think that his upbringing certainly affected the rest of his life in the sense that
00:20:58
Speaker
There was no safety net really. This was the days before governments coming to your aid. If you fell on hard times, you would rely on families more than any kind of state support.
00:21:15
Speaker
And I think throughout his life, he always worried to a degree about money. And that would be a hangover from his childhood, I think. As far as the cricket was concerned, yeah, he got into the second team when he was 13, 14. And there was a chat playing for the first team called George Hurst, who was, I think George was
00:21:42
Speaker
five years older than him maybe round about that and was already playing for Yorkshire and was the clearly the hero of the village and and he battered left battered right-handed and bold left arm as did Wilfred which must have been nice for Wilfred and he had he had a man to look up to and something to aspire to
00:22:05
Speaker
And what's extraordinary about the era and the area in which Wilfred emerged is that two other cricketers would also come through the ranks and play for England.
The Huddersfield Triumvirate
00:22:16
Speaker
George Hurst, as you just mentioned, and Scofield Haig. Collectively, they were known as the Huddersfield Triumvirate. What can you tell us about these two other cricketers and their relationship with Wilfred Rhodes?
00:22:30
Speaker
Well, that's a, yes, the Triumvirate is a very commonly used, well, I say commonly used, it is to me because having spent years and years researching, I could point, I think probably it's fair to point you to a book by Harry Pearson, which was published just after mine, which is about the three of them.
00:22:52
Speaker
And that goes into, I mean, I'd recommend it to anybody who enjoyed reading about Wilfred in my book, read the Harry Pearson one as well. It's a different kind of approach. Harry Pearson is a different writer to me and wasn't trying to ape what I was doing by any means.
00:23:11
Speaker
George, as I alluded to, was five years older, he was already in the Yorkshire team when Wilfrid was making his way in the Kirk Eaton seconds, then the Kirk Eaton firsts.
00:23:25
Speaker
Just early career was a little bit slower to get started. I mean he got into the Yorkshire team, but it took him a while to be really successful and to be considered for England selection.
00:23:42
Speaker
Scofield Hay, now, he's, I'm guessing at this, I think he was a bit younger than George and a bit older than Wilfred, a couple of years older than Wilfred, I think. I should look in my own book to check that. He came from a village about 10 miles away from Kirk Eden.
00:24:05
Speaker
and he was a right arm off brake bowler. It's actually a decent batsman as well. The three of them together are
00:24:16
Speaker
fascinating in the sense that they are three very different characters. Now you'll know that there is I have written a chapter in the book about the three of them together. Not so much just about what they achieved, although they did achieve a lot having those three in the team at the same time was you get a fair old chance of winning the county championship specialist, you had Stanley Jackson as well in the same team, you know, you you're gonna
00:24:45
Speaker
You were going to bowl out most other teams pretty easily. But they were very, very different characters. I certainly think the three of them, Hay and Hurst, were much more with the obvious soulmates. Very jolly. Scofield Hay was life and soul of the party in the same way that George Hurst was. He was a great practical joker.
00:25:13
Speaker
They enjoyed themselves enormously. George Hurst was a great singer. George had been brought up in a pub and liked nothing more than the kind of barroom atmosphere of singing and jollity and playing the game for fun. George would just throw himself at everything like a little rubber ball.
00:25:40
Speaker
Well, I suspect no, I think I know he didn't think overly about it. He just relied on his own intuitive skill and brute strength and fortitude to knock people over. And it worked.
00:25:55
Speaker
Wilfred kind of scowled a bit about the approach of those two that there's a quote I use where Wilfred just said, well, George was the the greatest cricketer I ever saw, but he wouldn't have taken nearly as many wickets if I hadn't set the fields for him. Because George didn't care where the field has stood. He just figured he could knock everybody over on his own. And Wilfred had
00:26:18
Speaker
kind of reign him in sometimes and say, look, you need a fielder there, you need a fielder there, that'll help. And George, yeah, whatever.
00:26:28
Speaker
It seems like a very accurate summation that you gave us. I mean, this is a, what I'm about to say is a very artificial way of analyzing someone, but looking at the photographs from the era, George Hurst, he often seems to have a smirk on his face. He looks, you know, he's holding a pipe and he looks like he's having fun. Whereas Wilfred always had a much more of a,
00:26:54
Speaker
steely determination upon his face. That's my sort of look at it anyway. I think you look absolutely right. I think I've only got in the whole book maybe a couple of pictures where Wilfred is actually smiling or laughing even. There's a great one with him and Lord Hawke where he's really smiling. But yes, I think your assumption is absolutely right.
00:27:23
Speaker
to put it in a sentence or two, George played it for fun and Wilfred played it for business. You'd be hard pressed to say one was better than the other. I think
00:27:37
Speaker
that as a natural player, George Hurst was certainly roasted superior, probably in most ways. But having said that, probably if George hadn't played for fun, he wouldn't have been nearly as good. He had to follow his instincts and had to play the way he knew. And that probably countered against him
00:28:03
Speaker
being a record breaker in the same way that Wilfred was. Also, simple things like George was not a great, he couldn't conserve his energy, he would just throw himself at stuff. So when things went right, he was capable of scoring 2000 runs and taking 200 wickets in one season. Wilfred probably wouldn't have done that because he'd have thought about next season or the tour in the following winter and
00:28:33
Speaker
just held a little bit back maybe. That could be why he was, why he became a spin bowler in the first place. It could also be why he decided in about 1905, 1906, that he wanted to concentrate more on his batting than his bowling because he could see more longevity in that. He was
00:28:58
Speaker
I've come back to it and I'll probably come back to it again. He was very much a professional cricketer and I don't mean the sense that he was just paid to play as opposed to an amateur in the sense that he wanted his career to go on for a long time and he wanted it to ensure that he and his family were
00:29:22
Speaker
going to be financially secure for all their lives. I think there was a deep seated, and this is something I talked to Margaret, his daughter, his granddaughter about, I think there was a deep seated fear in him of what could go wrong. And that's why I started the book as you might remember with a scene in a graveyard where the burial of a Yorkshire cricketer for whom it had all gone wrong.
00:29:51
Speaker
And I think, I didn't write that chapter for effect. I do think that that funeral in, I can't remember what was it, 1898, 1899, the funeral of Billy Bates. I think that did affect him and did worry him and did make him realize, I think I wrote, what lay below.
00:30:20
Speaker
if things went wrong. And Wilfred thought, how can I best array the chances against things going wrong? What's the best way for me to pursue my career rather than being a very good cricketer? How can I organize it best? And he did a pretty good job of it.
00:30:42
Speaker
And not to mention the outbreak of the First World War, of course, which must have, amongst a whole raft of emotions, must have really cast doubt in his mind as to whether his career could go on, not knowing when the war was going to end, of course. Do you think that possibly drove him post-war to keep playing because he had to make up for any lost cricket?
00:31:10
Speaker
I think, well, I think that would be that would be one consideration. I think there were a number of number of considerations. He was he was fit. And he was perfectly capable of playing after the first war. For example, I mean, you could draw a parallel with Colin Blythe, who
00:31:32
Speaker
as you know, didn't survive the First World War. But Colin Blythe said, pretty much at the outbreak of the First World War, that's it for me. I won't play first class cricket again. He thought he was coming to the end of his career anyway. Colin Blythe would have been about the same age as Wilfred, maybe a tad younger, but he felt that his career was finished anyway, or was in its decline. I don't think Wilfred
00:32:01
Speaker
thought that in 1913 or 1914 at all but when he came back or when sorry when the first war finished and they came back in 1919 of course there were huge gaps in all the county ranks not not so much casualties although of course there were some um some very famous ones Percy Jeeves for example being being one um and Kotwin Blythe um but
00:32:28
Speaker
Players hadn't played first-class cricket, so there was a great weakness in a lot of counties. And Wilfred rejoined the Yorkshire team and found out he was still the best spin bowler in the country. And his batting, I mean, initially he was the opening batsman for Yorkshire when they restarted after the First War, as he had been just before the First War.
00:32:55
Speaker
but york's batting was okay then and the bowling wasn't so okay so
00:33:02
Speaker
Basically, they said, look Wilfred, we need your bowling more than your batting. And then Herbert Sutcliffe came along, which rather imperiled his position as an opening bat. And he was very happy to drop down the order. He had Herbert Sutcliffe and Percy Holmes as two opening batsmen. And Wilfred went back to number six, number seven in the order and became their
00:33:25
Speaker
premier bowler again and as you'll know he topped the averages I think four years in a row 21 to 25 something like that um economical action um natural fitness um and uh brilliant skill and the ability to puzzle it out
00:34:09
Speaker
Now returning to the early days Wilfred's arrival on the first class cricket scene back in 1898 coincided with a very successful period for Yorkshire cricket.
00:34:22
Speaker
as they won the county championship six times in the first 11 seasons of his career. Was he an immediate success as
Rise in Yorkshire Cricket
00:34:31
Speaker
a cricketer? And if so, how much did he contribute to Yorkshire's triumphs around the turn of the century?
00:34:38
Speaker
Well, was he an immediate success? Yes. Unequivocal yes, yes, and yes. He only really kept, I mean, I have to go into it, the fascinating story, how he got into the team. Yorkshire had a very, very good left arm bowler, Bobby Peel, but Bobby Peel got sacked from the Yorkshire team in 1897. There were various indiscretions with drink and Bobby Peel was chucked out.
00:35:07
Speaker
Yorkshire needed another left arm bowler, they trialled two of them, Wilfrid and Albert Cordingley, and they decided before the 1898 season, their first four or five games were in the south of England, so their squad took off.
00:35:25
Speaker
and they took cording Lee and Rhodes. They didn't know before the first game, which was against the MCC at Lords, whether Rhodes or cording Lee would play. Lord Hawk apparently favoured cording Lee, but he said to Stanley Jackson, can you have a net with both of these bowlers and then tell me who you think should play? Jackson went out, did a net with both of them, came back and said, you want this guy Rhodes, he's the better.
00:35:51
Speaker
So, Wilfred played in the first game against the MCC at Lourdes. He'd never been to London before and there he was at Lourdes and wouldn't you know it, he was bowling to WG Grace. So, decent start to your career.
00:36:07
Speaker
He did pretty well. He got, I think, five or six wickets in the first game. Nothing remarkable, but he'd been bowling to Billy Murdoch, WG Grace, and various luminaries. So they kept him in the team for the second game.
00:36:25
Speaker
which was their first championship game of the season. They went down to Somerset and it was a wet wicket and Wilfred got 14 wickets and Mr Cording Lee packed his bags and was never seen by Yorkshire Cricket again and that was that.
00:36:42
Speaker
Rose went on to take, I think it was 170, 180 wickets in that season. He was the very, very rare recipient of one of the five cricketers of the year in his first season.
00:36:57
Speaker
I have tried to find out how many other people have managed that. There's really not very many. I've only found two or three, and even they didn't have full season. Herbert Sutcliffe was, but that was partly because it was 1919 after the First War. Wilfred was, he was second in the averages, but I think he got more wickets than anyone else, and that was in his first season.
00:37:22
Speaker
So in answer to your initial question yes he was an enormous success in his in his first season and an absolutely astounding overwhelming success for somebody who'd only ever played club cricket before and was a self-taught spin bowler.
00:37:39
Speaker
Now, Patrick, one figure looms large over Yorkshire cricket during this period, and you mentioned him in your previous answer, and that is Lord Hawk, who captained the county for a staggering 28 years.
Lord Hawke's Influence on Rhodes' Career
00:37:52
Speaker
His influence was so great that he had the power to prevent Wilfred from touring Australia in 1901-02. What sort of relationship did Wilfred have with Lord Hawk? Yeah, that's a very interesting one.
00:38:09
Speaker
how well firstly I think when I was dealing with this I was kind of thinking what relationship do I have with Lord Hawke and and do I try and avoid imprinting my own views of Lord Hawke onto Wilfred. You know there's a danger in doing that I mean I think Lord Hawke was
00:38:31
Speaker
He did some remarkable things. I mean, he cleared out the team of basically a lot of people doing a lot of drinking, underachieving. He transformed the team. He did a lot of good things about winter payments.
00:38:48
Speaker
But boy did he tell everybody how great he was. If you have the misfortune to read Lord Horne's book, it's almost unreadable except as a sort of comedy of self-aggrandizement. I think I have a natural antipathy towards amateurs
00:39:11
Speaker
against professionals in that time. That's my sort of political standpoint, maybe. So I tried not to bring all that in, and I've probably failed, but I think in answer to your question, I think Wilfred had a lot of respect for him, a lot of respect for what he'd done for Yorkshire cricket. He was, Lord Ortt was actually, wasn't a bad player.
00:39:40
Speaker
He was a damn sight better than the captains that followed him as a player and as a captain, actually, he wasn't a bad captain. I think Wilfred had, certainly when he was younger, it kind of dissipated as he became older, a natural respect for authority and Lord Hawke really was authority.
00:40:04
Speaker
But there are little bits and pieces that fall into place. There was one sort of unguarded quote that I came across where they were talking about financial arrangements for widows after a player died and this affected Scofield Hay's widow after he died that Yorkshire wouldn't
00:40:27
Speaker
give him or wouldn't give her his benefit money. I think they lent him they lent her some of Hayes benefit money so she could buy a house, but they charged it charged interest on him. And Wilfred just said, Well, I expect that was one of Lord Hawke's daft ideas. Right. I think that
00:40:50
Speaker
That gives you an idea that there was a certain amount of disgruntlement in there, but he was a professional cricketer and he knew not to muddy the waters. He knew not to cross Lord Hawk because he'd watch Bobby Peele get kicked out. I mean, admittedly, Bobby Peele was a big drinker and a bit of a troublemaker in many senses. Wilfred was never that.
00:41:18
Speaker
but Wilfred wasn't going to take any risks and I think he knew to he knew when to keep his mouth shut let's say and but having said that I do think overall he had a lot of respect for Hawke and the way Hawke ran the team and the way the team performed under Hawke they were hugely successful and Wilfred didn't mind being on a winning team.
00:41:44
Speaker
I think one of my favorite moments in your entire book comes at the end of your chapter talking about Wilfred's relationship with Lord Hawke and it's quite comical and I might miss some of the details you can correct me but you're talking about the moment I think it's about 1926 when Lord Hawke is presenting Wilfred with a portrait of himself of Wilfred's and
00:42:09
Speaker
Hawk at the unveiling at the presentation calls this the high point of Rhodes' career and you simply say it definitely wasn't and that's the end of the chapter and it just sort of sums up the dichotomy I suppose of their place in cricket as well. Yeah I think so I mean as I said Lord Hawk had a pretty high opinion of himself and
00:42:38
Speaker
I mean, as did quite a few of the Golden Age cricketers. We started on this talking about the 1901-02 tour where Lord Hawke wouldn't let Wilfred or George Hurst go on the tour. He basically said, no, they're Yorkshire players and they're not going.
00:43:00
Speaker
and both of them acquiesced, but they didn't really have much choice. That was a lot to do with the fact that Archie McLaren was leading the tour, and Lord Hawk and Archie McLaren did not like each other, and Lord Hawk wasn't going to make anything easy for Archie McLaren.
00:43:18
Speaker
Dear me, I mean, you know, there was so many handbags they were throwing at each other. They really did need to sometimes you just get a grip, but they were obsessed with themselves. McLaren, every bit as much as Lord Hawke worrying about his legacy and how we would be seen to future generations. You do sometimes just shake your head and think, oh my giddy arm, this is really a bit too much.
00:43:47
Speaker
Having said that, what they did for cricket in their own ways was quite remarkable and cricket wouldn't have been the same without these people.
00:43:58
Speaker
But yes, I don't think the presentation of that portrait was a great high point of Wilfred's career. I think it was something that, it was a commissioned portrait and a lot of work went into it. And it's, I can't remember, I think it hangs at Lord's now. I think Wilfred would have just shaken his head and sort of,
00:44:23
Speaker
We wouldn't have even muttered under his breath. He wouldn't have needed to. And he'd have gone through what he needed to go through and then he had collected his paycheck. Well, let's talk about Wilfred's bowling action because it was through his bowling, of course, that he immediately found success.
Rhodes' Bowling Techniques
00:44:41
Speaker
You go into great detail in your book about the mechanics of his action. Can you describe it for our listeners, please?
00:44:50
Speaker
This is a this is a great one really because there's so little footage that you have to kind of put together various people's accounts of it and I'm not I'm not a bowler myself so I have to kind of try and learn what other people say about it.
00:45:10
Speaker
Yeah, he was a slow left arm bowler, came off a pretty short run, three or four pace run. He almost exclusively bowled around the wicket. I think I found one reference to him bowling over the wicket, but the rest of the time it was all around the wicket. And very, very, very easy, easy action as you'd expect as any good left arm spinner should have. The easiest action, I suppose, someone like Bishop Beatty, well, yeah.
00:45:39
Speaker
think Bish and Vady, except it wasn't Bish and Vady, but that kind of ease of delivery. I think the most important thing obviously is what happens when the ball comes out of the hand.
00:45:53
Speaker
He had, I mean, Wilfred did have remarkable control, as you would imagine, over what he was doing. Firstly, he knew what he wanted to do, I think, in the sense of, I'm going to say it again, puzzling things out. He knew where he wanted the ball to go. Probably he knew when he bowled the first ball, where he wanted the fourth ball of the over to go, and where he wanted the other three to go to prepare for the fourth.
00:46:18
Speaker
And he had enough control and accuracy to actually do that. Now, I think we could all think of plenty of other spinners who have that kind of ability that you're not trying to take a wicket with every ball, you're trying to build up to the one that is going to take the wicket.
00:46:39
Speaker
So I think through all the studying and all the reading about him, I think for Wilfred I would say spin wasn't the great weapon in the sense that he knew there wouldn't always be spin there. He wasn't a massive spinner of the ball, he could certainly could spin it a lot, but he wasn't a huge spinner of the ball.
00:47:05
Speaker
He was very accurate. But I think with and of course, changes of pace changes of flight, of course, they're in there. But length was, I think for him, absolutely crucial. And length combined with flight so that you're kidding people on length. People think you're bowling to a certain length, and you're not.
00:47:30
Speaker
So, if I give you a wonderful example which came from Wilfred's mouth, he talked about bowling to certain batsmen, particularly ones who were perhaps not test class. Maybe he wouldn't have done this to Victor Trumper. So, a batsman comes in, who's pats a little bit in awe of Wilfred, and Wilfred bowls him basically a half-volley just outside the off-stump. And the batsman
00:48:00
Speaker
thinks, oh, that's not that bad. But because it's Wilfred doesn't think, oh, I'll just drive that through the covers for four is just happy to have not got out first ball. And then they've got a few seconds to think about it and think, actually, I should have driven that through the covers for the first, first ball, I could have hit Wilfred for four first ball.
00:48:19
Speaker
And then Wilfred sends down the next ball, and it looks exactly the same as the one before. And the batsman, who's had a little bit of time to think about this, thinks, oh, this time I will knock it through the covers for four. But that ball that looks exactly the same isn't exactly the same. It's just about two inches shorter. It's coming with the same directory, same flight.
00:48:43
Speaker
But it's two inches shorter, which means when the ball hits the ground, it's got time to spin. The batsman goes for the cover drive and bingo. There's first slip, second slip taking the catch.
00:48:58
Speaker
That's a little bit of Wilfred Kydology. And he said, I wouldn't use this on Walter Hammond or Victor Trump, because they would hit the first ball through the covers before. But he was very, very prepared to get knocked around if he thought that would get him a wicket against a batsman that he needed to buy the wicket.
00:49:22
Speaker
but I do think length is absolutely crucial. He thought that any no spin bowler should ever be cut or pulled. Right. Because you can't cut a ball that's pitched up. A square cut is off a short pitch ball and no spin bowler should ever pitch the ball short. Maybe over pitch every now and then.
00:49:49
Speaker
The mechanics of cricket are such that if the ball is pitch short, you've got time to see what it does off the pitch. If it's over pitch, you don't. And of course, if it's on a good length, you've got even less options.
00:50:06
Speaker
Early on in his career, it seems that opposition and critics acknowledged his brilliance on a sticky wicket, but suggested he wouldn't be as damaging on harder that his Australian wickets. Is this how it played out? Well, you know the answer to that, no.
00:50:27
Speaker
Yeah, after his first season, when he'd been so successful and been one of the five cricketers of the year, various people came in and said, ah, yeah, well, it was a wet summer and it's all very well and so on. Let's see how he gets on in a dry summer. And the summer of 1899 was dry. He took 50 more wickets of a slightly lower average than he had in the wet summer. So that put them to bed.
00:50:55
Speaker
He showed that he could get wickets on flat surfaces and of course they were uncovered pictures so there were still stickies around. That was a
00:51:08
Speaker
Certainly when he went to Australia, as you know, or as we alluded to, he didn't go in 1901-02 because Lord Hawke wouldn't let him. Colin Blythe did go, and Colin Blythe was a left-arm spinner. He had trouble turning the ball in Australia. I think he did okay.
00:51:28
Speaker
it wasn't a greatly happy time for him. Rhodes finally was selected for the 03-04 tour and there were various people who said, well, one of whom was Ranjit Singhji, who said he won't get a wicket out there.
00:51:46
Speaker
And I think you will probably know better than me. I think they were one or two Australians were very dubious about that all they knew was he was a left arm spinner who seemed particularly prolific on wet wickets.
00:52:02
Speaker
Let's see how he does on a billiard table against Victor Trump. And he might find that life is very, very difficult, very, very different and difficult. Different air as well, not just just not just the flatness of the wickets. All number of things.
00:52:20
Speaker
And I would be quite certain that Wilfred was very, very well aware of the dangers of what might happen and that he might or probably would need to modify his approach to bowling.
00:52:37
Speaker
I think actually, Victor Trumper was one who suggested after the 1902 Australian tour of England, which when Trumper stamped his authority as the superstar batsman, and it was a very wet season, that he suggested
00:52:55
Speaker
Yes, Wilfred's a lovely bowler, but he's not going to have any success on the harder Australian pitches. Yeah, I think you're right. Yeah, I knew you'd though. Of course, Wilfred was a professional cricketer as opposed to an amateur.
00:53:14
Speaker
For our listeners who might not be across the dynamic between professional amateur cricket at the turn of the century, could you please explain it and what being a professional cricketer actually meant for Wilfred?
00:53:29
Speaker
Um, I can explain it a bit, but before I do, um, if anybody, um, is interested in this subject, then read Rick system's book. Um, which, uh, and I can't remember the title. Is it called the players? It is. It is. Yeah. I mean, it's one of, one of the great cricket books. It's a, it's a ma I, I, I
00:53:50
Speaker
I've read it three or four times. I've researched it. I've used it. It's a wonderful book. Yeah. I'll put it into a few sets. It's a professionals play for money. Amateurs played for fun. Amateurs were
00:54:07
Speaker
theoretically were wealthy people who didn't need um paying to play cricket um professionals did um it's not quite that simple because wg grace for example wasn't a wealthy man and he got paid more than any uh any professional um ever did um he was what was called a shamater um he collected um he wasn't paid but he had uh
00:54:36
Speaker
Very lucrative expenses, let's say. For example, on the tour of Australia, his expenses would double the pay of any professional.
00:54:50
Speaker
Yeah, and the professionals didn't earn a lot. Lord Hawk was pretty good with his Yorkshire lot. He always claimed he was the first to offer winter pay to the professionals. In fact, he wasn't. Sorry, I'd already done that. Yeah, the professionals
00:55:12
Speaker
stuck together, the amateurs used different dressing rooms to the professionals, and the captain of the team would always be an amateur, which that comes into Wilfred's story in the 20s.
00:55:26
Speaker
and the amateurs were referred to as Mr and would happily refer to his players by their surnames. I think there were certainly more enlightened amateurs, some of the old school certainly would use set surnames and
00:55:44
Speaker
Yeah, there was a lot of bad feeling, I think, amongst professionals at certain times. But there was also the feeling, I think, amongst most professionals, that the captain should be an amateur, that there's a natural distance between him and the rest of the team, which is probably good for the team. And of course, this caused
00:56:12
Speaker
raised eyebrows I think amongst the Australians of the Australian players of the time who were much more egalitarian and were astonished by this
00:56:24
Speaker
what they perceived as a ludicrous divide in English cricket between the amateurs and of course amateur captains of the England team mentioned McLaren, Pelham Warner, Foster, C.B. Frye, all the pre-first World War captains and going of course right up to the early 50s when Len Hutton became the first professional captain of an England team.
00:56:50
Speaker
was just the way things were. That was perceived to be the way cricket was and that was the way it was organized. I think I get fairly crotchety sometimes in the book, probably
00:57:10
Speaker
as a point where people reading it might be saying, oh God, he's going to go on about this again. The great magazine of the, or the magazine of the period was called Cricket, a Weekly Record of the Game, which was
00:57:26
Speaker
edited later by Pelham Warner became the cricketer. Reading the reports in there, quite often you wouldn't know that, obviously I was concentrating on Yorkshire and England because of Wilfred, you wouldn't even know that Wilfred had been playing. And then you'd actually look down at the scorecard and think, oh, he's taken the 11 wickets and got to half centuries. I didn't realise he was playing.
00:57:53
Speaker
And then because they're banging on about Lord Hawke getting a quick 40 at the end of the innings when it didn't matter. That kind of stuff drove me mad, the unfairness of it. But, you know, I need to put a lid on it and think, well, that's what was going on at the time.
00:58:18
Speaker
Yeah, most people just got on with it. I'm sure in professional dressing rooms up and down the country, there was a lot of muttering and a lot of bad feeling, but, you know, if you weren't going to accept it, you weren't going to play first-class cricket. Simple as that.
00:58:35
Speaker
That concludes part one of today's podcast on Wilford Road featuring his biographer Patrick Faraday. Keep an eye out for part two on the Golden Age of Cricket podcast. I'm Tom Ford, bye for now.