Tom Graveney driving off the front foot. Hardly has anybody played the cover drive with such consummate ease
by Kalyanbrata Bhattacharyya
Accolades
Following Tom Graveney's 100th first-class century in 1964, Sir Neville Cardus wrote in Wisden, ‘If everything about batting was forgotten you could reconstruct its grammar from watching Graveney.’
Graveney was all grace and elegance. Freddie Trueman wrote in Arlott and Trueman on Cricket : ‘Timing was his real secret— timing and the balance which dictated the distribution of his weight into the right place at the right time. He never had to belt the ball. He stroked it. And he stroked it with such elegant timing that no obvious effort was called for...’
Even the volatile Roy Gilchrist from the West Indies, feared as much for his pace and bounce as for his odium for the batsmen, was lavishly generous in his praise in his autobiography, Hit Me For Six.
Graveney stood motionless, hardly ever moving a muscle or tapping the bat on the ground. He caressed the ball effortlessly to the boundary. There was no element of hurry, belligerence, or brutality about his batting. Many writers described his batting as a piece of rippling musical sonata set to a mellifluous rhythm.
First Steps
Graveney was born on the 16 June 1927, in Northumberland. After his father’s death, his mother moved to Lancashire and then to Bristol in 1938.
He attended the Bristol Grammar School where he honed his skills in cricket and other games. He made his debut in first-class cricket against Oxford University Cricket Club in 1948 and was appointed as the 12th man for his county when Sir Donald Bradman’s Invincibles played Gloucestershire at Bristol.
In 1949, he scored 1,784 runs, and that was the first glimpse of his class. The critics took note of him as a potential candidate for the future for English cricket. Contrary to the popular notion that naturally gifted cricketers do not take to the nets seriously, Graveney trained religiously and was one of the earliest to arrive at the cricket field.
Ron Headley, son of the legendary George Headley from the West Indies, his team-mate in Worcestershire, said, ‘He would not miss his morning practice for anything.’
After them Second World War many eagle-eyed observers found in Graveney a promising batsman, good enough to play alongside Len Hutton and Denis Compton.
It was Compton who sustained an injury, and Graveney was drafted into the national side for the Test match against South Africa at Old Trafford in 1951. He failed with the bat but John Arlott, the peerless radio commentator for BBC, described his innings as, ‘full of cultured promise.’
His tally of 2,291 during the season prompted the selectors to pick him for the team to India and Pakistan for the unofficial Test series under the leadership of Nigel Howard. He scored 175 in the second Test match at Bombay. The Times described him as ‘England’s outstanding young batman’ along with Peter May of Cambridge and Surrey.
He next played against India in 1952 under the captaincy of Len Hutton.
Flair versus fighting spirit
Hutton had his eyes focused on the coming Ashes series in 1953 and Graveney’s flowing stroke play did not find favour with him. As somebody once said, Hutton ‘... did not want flowery batsmen but fighters’, a common trait with most of the Yorkshire cricketers.
In the Lord’s Test match Graveney had been going great guns with Hutton and charming the spectators with his exquisite shots all around the ground. When the score was 143 for 1, Hutton came down the wicket and advised him to exercise restraint in place of delicate artistry. He said, ‘Right, that’s it for tonight.’ Graveney was in sight of a Test century but at the instruction of his captain retreated into his shell and the pair added only 34 runs in the final hour of the day. Ray Lindwall dismissed him for 78 early in the following morning.
The Ashes were regained after a long period of twenty years following the infamous bodyline series in 1932-33 and Graveney was named as one of Wisden’s Five Cricketers of the Year in 1953. The publication commented ‘Undoubtedly no brighter star has appeared in the Gloucestershire cricket firmament since the early days of Hammond himself.’
Subsequently, Graveney toured the West Indies in 1953-54 and Australia in 1954-55. Once again, Hutton cautioned him to curb his natural instinct but this time Graveney batted in his carefree fashion. An innings of 92 at Port of Spain was his only innings of substance in the entire series.
In Australia, he was out for a duck in the second innings of the second Test match at Sydney, facing only three balls, and that too at a time when the occupation of the crease was the need of the hour. Hutton remarked, ‘... not quite the chap for the big occasion’.
Alan Ross alluded to Hutton’s bitter sarcasm about Graveney and Reg Simpson, the opening batsman, ‘What magnificent net players these two are!’ He was dropped for the next two matches.
After Hutton won the toss in the final match at Sydney and made his way to the pavilion, he glanced at Graveney and said, ‘Put your pads on, Tom, and come in with me.’
Graveney was taken by surprise since he had never opened before and was not in the good books of his captain. The Short Wisden 2016 mentions that it was Sir Donald Bradman who suggested to Hutton that Graveney possessed the right kind of technique for opening the batting and this time. True to Bradman’s observation, he scored a scintillating 111, laced with exquisite strokes. This innings prompted Alec Bedser to pronounce that it was the best knock of the series. In 1954, he scored 84 and 65 in two Test matches against the visiting Pakistan team, a relatively new and thoroughly inexperienced entrant in the international arena.
When South Africa toured England in 1955, Peter May was appointed the captain after Hutton announced his retirement. Graveney had to stand behind the stumps when Godfrey Evans sustained an injury. He fractured his finger, and his batting was also lacking in glittering distinctions.
In other words, spasmodic brilliance and ecstatic batting on his part did not do justice to his prolific stroke-play and capabilities so far and experts started doubting his temperament against fierce opposition.
Dropped
Australia visited England in 1956, famed as the ‘Laker series’.
Graveney was dropped after playing in the first two Test matches. He failed to find his way into the team for the subsequent visit to South Africa. He said in a humorous way that possibly he caught the ire of Gubby Allen, the Chairman of the Selection Committee, since he beat him at a round of golf!
He was in outstanding form in county cricket in 1957 and was called to play against the visiting West Indies under John Goddard. Though he failed initially, he scored his career-best 258 in the third Test match at Trent Bridge.
In an interview with Independent Graveney said, ‘Yes, I'd missed the first Test at Edgbaston, but at the end of that match Doug Insole, the vice-captain, went to the selectors and said, 'Don't pick me if Ramadhin is playing. He couldn't make head or tail of him. So that let me in, but I got naught at Lord's. Trent Bridge was my last chance, and as you say, I got 258.’
He followed it up with 164 at the Oval, reckoned as one of his most majestic innings, and England won the series convincingly by three matches to nil. They now had reasons to gloat over their unquestionable supremacy in world cricket by defeating all the cricket playing nations in the last five years. It seemed that Graveney had finally cemented his place in the team.
An automatic choice for the twin tour to Australia and New Zealand in 1958-59, he failed and Peter May’s MCC team was subjected to an abject 4-0 defeat to Richie Benaud and his bunch of relatively new and inexperienced cricketers. Once again, the Australian wickets turned into his Achilles heel and it was widely speculated that his front-foot approach was the reason behind his undoing in the fast and bouncy tracks.
His highest score in 12 innings was 54 at Melbourne. His consistency in trying circumstances was now seriously suspect, and he was not considered for the series against the visiting India in 1959, or for the tour to the West Indies in 1959-60, and ignored successively against South Africa in 1960, Australia in the English summer in 1961, and the tour to India and Pakistan in 1961-62.
One of the reasons for his omission was his leaving Gloucestershire and joining Worcestershire and the restriction imposed thereupon of not being able to represent his country immediately. The story goes that Tom Pugh, a product of Eton, a world-class racquet player, and an amateur, was recommended by Percy Fender, one-time captain of Surrey in the 1920s, to join Gloucestershire. He was to be groomed for captaincy. Graveney, the captain, was reluctant to include him and was in favour of a young and promising professional cricketer.
However, Pugh got in and in 1960 Graveney was asked to relinquish his captaincy in favour of him in those days of the abysmally deplorable class distinction between the amateurs and professionals. This upset Graveney and amidst bitter acrimony, he chose to join Worcestershire. Sadly enough, he had to languish the next year, owing to a the-then existing regulation that after joining a new county one had to wait for a year before qualifying to play. He was ignored till 1962 and lived in obscurity which probably helped him to whet his appetite for runs.
Graveney was summoned unexpectedly against the visiting Pakistan team in 1962 for four Test matches. He responded with the string of scores of 97, 153, 37, 114, and 41, which were studded with brilliant strokes all around the wicket. He was again into the reckoning for the tour to Australia in 1962-63 when Ted Dexter was appointed to lead the side.
However, the specter of Australia seemed to haunt him forever and once again his performance was miserable. Jack Fingleton commented that he did not think that Graveney’s ‘smiling nature fits in with the seriousness of Test cricket.’ The English selectors were now beginning to doubt his consistency and potentials and he was virtually written off forever. Even his most avid supporters had the sneaking suspicion that Graveney had already played his last Test match for England.
The second coming
Destiny, however, had something else in store for him. After being consigned to the wilderness for 38 Test matches at a stretch, Graveney was suddenly summoned on his 39th birthday for the 2nd Test match at Lord’s in 1966 against the all-conquering West Indies.
This series turned out to be the golden autumn in his life.
He scored 96 in the first innings. Graveney said later that this call came ‘totally out of the blue’. A man known all along for modesty and a certain laid-back attitude, he said in a most uncharacteristic manner, ‘For three seasons or so, from 1962, I had a feeling at the back of my mind that I was the best batsman in England’. As he was walking out to bat, one West Indian supporter in the crowd shouted, ‘Heh, Graveney haven’t they got a pension scheme in this country?!’ It is worth recalling the brilliant account by James Lawton in the Daily Express about his innings in the book, The Best of Cricket..
“When Wes Hall and Charlie Griffith bowled in the English summer of 1966 the West Indian drums sounded not for carnival but for carnage... For English cricket the need was for a man of steel, a man to face the challenge squarely and without fear for the heat. Astonishingly, the call went out to the most gently persuasive of batsmen, Tom Graveney. No one was more surprised than the 39-year old himself.’
‘... He was, they said, beautiful to watch... His stroke-play was the smoothest, rippling poetry... But they also said that Tom Graveney was not the man for the crunch... ‘Do you know’? ‘He says’, ‘they cheered and clapped me all the way to the wicket.’... Seymour Nurse... strolled all the way to up to Wes Hall’s starting mark and whispered in his ear... He was pointing out that I always played forward to my first ball... Hall delivered one short but it didn’t get up too far. I knew then that I had a chance
“It seemed that he had been at the wicket for a moment such was the easy passage of time. The truth was that he had been at the wicket for four hours, 20 minutes when he stood at 90.’ “I felt fine, the ball was coming on to the bat nicely. I pulled Wes Hall for two, then I sent him for four, just beyond the third man. Gary Sobers moved the third man squarer, and I decided I would “thin” the next one between slips and gully. Hall got it to bounce, and I was out, caught behind.”’
While describing this innings, Brian Clarke and John Scovell wrote in the book, ‘Everything That is Cricket’,
‘... and the packed house rose to applaud Tom Graveney, England’s exiled stylist... under that long-peaked cap... There was a feeling of inevitability about him... Watch Graveney’s technique and compare it with other contemporary English batsmen. As the bowler’s arm comes up his right foot will jostle back an inch or two behind the crease. If the ball is short, he is on his way back to deal with it. If it is over-pitched that back foot stays still and his left foot moves gracefully to the line. Most English batsmen start moving their front foot forward before the ball has left the bowler’s hand, a sign of apprehension...’
Graveney’s vintage performance at Lord’s was only the portent of things to come for the rest of the series. He followed it up with 109 at Trent Bridge and 165 at The Oval. This final Test was the one in which Colin Cowdrey was deposed as captain and Brian Close was chosen to sit on the hot seat as the last desperate measure. The latter innings, arguably the best one in his life, was played in the final match in collaboration with John Murray, the wicket-keeper, coming out to bat at number 9. They entered into a record partnership of 217 runs. Murray scored 112, and later, Ken Higgs and John Snow, the number 10 and 11 batsmen scored 63 and 59, respectively. Thus the last three batsmen added 234 runs, a record at that time. England won the match, the only one in that series, by an innings and 34 runs. Stephen Brenkley of Independent described Graveney’s come-back as, ‘the stuff of legend.’
Graveney’s grand form continued unabated. When India visited England in the summer of 1967, he played a classic innings of 151 at Lord’s.
Six months later, England toured the West Indies. In the first Test match at Port of Spain, he scored an equally elegant 118 and Graveney considered it as his best ever innings.
Australia visited England in the summer of 1968. Apart from scoring 96 at Edgbaston in the third Test match, he entered the record books in a curious way at Headingley in the next Test match. Colin Cowdrey and Bill Lawry, the two captains, were indisposed and for the first time in the treasured history of the game, the mantle fell on the two vice-captains, Graveney and Barry Jarman. And since he led the England team, even if only once, he was invited at the time of the Centenary Test Match, played at Melbourne in March 1977, along with all the living captains of England who played in the Ashes series.
The visit of the English team to South Africa at the end of the 1968 series was marred owing to controversial and repellent political developments when Basil D’Oliveira, the Cape-coloured batsman from Worcestershire, held the center stage in the-then existing apartheid issue.
To compensate for the abominable chain of events which led to the cancellation of the tour, MCC conceived the idea of visiting India, Pakistan, and Ceylon. The Indian tour had to be called off for financial reasons and the tour to Pakistan turned into an utterly traumatic experience.
For a number of reasons, the political situation in Pakistan was at its worst at that time and there was a complete breakdown of law and order. Bangladesh, East Pakistan at that time, militated against the rulers in Pakistan and there were countless riots and skirmishes which were frightening for the England team.
They were reluctant to play at Dacca in East Pakistan for the second match but Les Ames, the Manager, was provided reassurance by the Pakistan authorities. However, the English players found that Dacca was not at all a safe place. They somehow finished the Test match amidst nerve-wracking experiences, and flew to Karachi for the final match.
Colin Cowdrey, the captain, left in order to attend the funeral of his father-in-law and Graveney, the vice-captain had to take up the mantle in demanding circumstances. However, by that time the chaos reached the breaking point. All hell broke loose, a rabble of rioting spectators invaded the cricket field, and some even pulled up the stumps with the intention of digging the playing area.
The Police arrived and attacked the troubleshooters to the extent that one student leader was carried away with blood dripping from his forehead. Aftab Gul, a promising opening batsman and a student leader had been arrested for protests against the Pakistan Government and was allowed to play on parole. He desperately tried to placate the incensed spectators but it was of no avail. Both Graveney and Saeed Ahmed, the Pakistan captain, agreed that the match be abandoned and the English team was left with no choice but to travel back to England the next morning. Graveney scored 105, his last century in Test cricket, earning plaudit for another customary classic performance amidst this unsettling atmosphere.
The curious departure
The West Indies team arrived in London in the summer of 1969 three years after their stupendous performance in 1966. Chinks were now beginning to appear in their invincibility. Kanhai did not join the team owing to injury, Hunte, Nurse, Hall, and Griffith hung their boots, Butcher, and Gibbs were past their prime. It was not an easy task to adequately fill in the void left by these giants and as many as seven newly recruited cricketers never played in a Test match before.
The first Test match was played at Old Trafford and Graveney scored a patient 75 before being bowled by Vanburn Holder. Nobody knew that this would be his last appearance for England.
On that rest day, Graveney in an exhibition match at Luton. The two teams were named Tom Graveney’s XI and Bobby Simpson’s XI. Tony Hunt, a business tycoon, offered him a sum of 1000 pounds, quite a handsome amount in those days. This decision on his part irked Alec Bedser, chairman of the selection committee. According to Bedser he forewarned Graveney not to participate on the rest day. Graveney however, argued that he informed Bedser before the beginning of the Test match that he was committed to play long ago.
Martin Williamson wrote that Graveney told Bedser over the telephone, ‘Look, Alec, I can't afford to. If you don't want me to play, then don't pick me for the Test. I have got to play unless you come up with some other arrangement.’ When the team was announced Graveney found his name in the list and in his naiveté, assumed that Bedser had acceded to his request. However, on the first day of the Test match, Bedser talked to him in private and said that he could not be allowed to play on the rest day. Graveney ignored Bedser and arrived at Luton, much to the chagrin of the selection committee, and after playing the match returned to the team hotel at around midnight. At breakfast, Bedser broke the news that Graveney had to face the disciplinary committee next Monday. It was announced in the public address system in the ground. It happened to be his birthday, and by a curious quirk of fate, he was recalled from hibernation in 1966 at Lord’s on the same day! He was banned for the next three Test matches, never recalled again.
Thus a glorious career of one of the most elegant players ever in the world ended in a most curious and heartredning manner. He lamented, ‘I was sad at this because it was not much of a way to go out after a long time in the game. It was a miserable way to finish.’
Summing up
In the article, Tom Graveney – Style and Substance, Bill Ricquier made an interesting observation that the quintet of pillars in the England batting line-up in the world-beating 1950s and to some extent, in the ’60s, namely, the classical Peter May, the charming Colin Cowdrey, the imperious Ted Dexter, the obdurate Ken Barrington, and of course, the elegant Tom Graveney, all of contrasting style and temperament, never played a single Test match together and it owed mostly to the random exclusion of Graveney by the selectors.
Perhaps the proudest moment in the life of Graveney came when he bowled an over to Sir Donald Bradman in the latter’s last public appearance, when MCC toured Australia under Ted Dexter’s leadership in 1962-63. Persuaded by Robert Menzies, the Australian Prime Minister, and an avowed cricket aficionado, he agreed to play against MCC for the Prime Minister’s XI at Canberra in early January 1963. Graveney happened to be the bowler. He bowled an innocuous leg-break wide of the off-stump with the intention of allowing Bradman to push it for a single. However, it was too wide and Bradman left it alone. Graveney now bowled a full toss and Bradman promptly despatched it for a boundary. He was finally out bowled by Statham for 4 in the next over.
Pat Murphy wrote, ‘... I can’t believe Graveney made an inelegant run in his career.’ His cultured and aristocratic stroke-play impressed Brian Johnston, the outstanding radio commentator for BBC and he wrote in his book, ‘It’s Been A Piece of Cake’, ‘I had been lucky enough to see Cyril Walters play. He was the most graceful batsman and I would gladly have settled for him until I saw the elegance and grace of Tom Graveney. Old cricketers have also written and spoken of the two Palairet Brothers, who played for Somerset in the 1890s. They were both famous for their graceful style, but anyone who saw Tom Graveney will have seen at least their equal.’ Perhaps the only cricketer in later years who came close to him in terms of immaculate timing and easy grace was David Gower of England and both of them had an element of unanticipated fallibility in their effortless batting. Geoffrey Boycott, the dour batsman who valued his wicket dearly, was at a loss while selecting the England team from those he played with and while choosing between these two artists, he finally settled for Gower. He felt that he was more suited for all sorts of conditions. Richie Benaud, Ian Johnson, and Frank Worrell felt that Graveney ought to have been a natural choice for any side. Worrell, while playing against England always used to ask, ‘Is Tom playing?’. Benaud was never tired of saying or writing that Graveney in form was the most elegant of all players he had played against. No one perhaps hooked the ball with such facile ease of the front-foot and not with ruthless pugnacity usually associated with the shot; he merely swatted it with a horizontal bat, as if dismissing a disturbing fly from his presence.
Gleaning through various accounts and watching him in action, it leaves little doubt that Graveney was in a class by himself, if not always in statistical terms, at least in the aesthetic sense. His unpredictability and inconsistency was described by Alan Ross as ‘yacht-like, beautiful in calm seas, yet at the mercy of every change of weather.’ Frank Keating wrote almost in the same vein, ‘the batsmanship of our Tom was of the orchard rather than the forest, blossom susceptible to frost but breathing in the sunshine.’ According to Ray Robinson, ‘It is a stamp of quality for anyone to bat with Graveney and not look inferior.’ The Times described him as ‘one of the finest English batsmen of the 1950s and 1960s, and arguably the most elegant of them all’. Geoffrey Boycott nursed the childhood ambition of playing with Graveney and once said in a BBC interview, ‘He was my boyhood hero and I ended up batting with him - first at Lord's in 1966. He got 96 and I got 60... He was an aesthetic player as well, he was lovely on the eye because he played gorgeous cover drives. He made 120-odd first-class hundreds, so that shows he could play, he could seriously play.’
A study in elegance and batting with rare panache, Graveney remarked ‘...he relied on his top hand, his bat swinging like a pendulum.’ He remarked ruefully, ‘We were honest about the game. That doesn’t happen anymore.’ Once he said, ‘I don't know if I gave anything back to the game but I played fair all my life and never forgot that it is just a game.’
Perhaps, the most telling accolade came from Jim Kilburn of Yorkshire Times: ‘An England team without Graveney was like a June garden without roses, a banquet without wine.’ Very Few cricketers have been discarded, recalled, and then performed with such distinction.
However, not everybody was mesmerized by Graveney’s impeccable grace and he too had his detractors. Len Hutton and Peter May for instance did not have much faith in him. They felt that he ought to have inserted a spine of steel into his mellow and velvety batting. However, true to his modesty, he once told Christopher-Martin Jenkins in a television interview that as a batsman Peter May was ahead of him.
A highly affable, helpful, and charming person, Graveney was a great friend of Basil D’Oliveira, his colleague at Worcestershire and England. They first toured for the Commonwealth side of Ron Roberts in 1962 and it was he who ensured that D’Oliveira was recruited by Worcestershire.
Ever ready to be by his side in his initial and difficult times, he raised his voice in no certain terms after he was dropped during the days of apartheid in South Africa in 1968. D’Oliveira recalled in his autobiography, ‘Time to Declare’, ‘...got into the dressing room just in time to hear the news summary. I kept waiting to hear my name on the list of players but it wasn't there. I was dumbstruck... I recall... Graveney swearing bitterly and saying: "I never thought they`d do that to you, Bas." Tom saw the state I was in and he took me into the physio`s room where I broke down and sobbed like a baby.’
Graveney was nicknamed ‘keeper’ for his uncanny habit of getting up at 7.30 am in the morning, no matter at what time the last night he retired to bed. Hardly ever he batted without his long-peaked cap and he used to tuck at it when the bowler was on his way back to the bowling mark.
Graveney played in 79 Test matches and scored 4882 runs at an average of 44.38 runs which contained 11 centuries. In First-class cricket spanning from 1948 to 1972, he participated in 732 matches, scored 47793 runs, averaging 44.91 runs, scored more than 1000 runs 21 times, and 2000 runs on 7 occasions respectively. He scored 122 centuries, the 15th batsman to achieve this coveted landmark.
He was appointed the captain of Gloucestershire in 1959, where his performance was not memorable but later, after moving to Worcestershire in 1960, he led them to victory in 1964 and 1965, the first time in their history. He is the first cricketer to have scored 100 First-class centuries purely as a post-war batsman which he achieved in 1964 and has the rare distinction of scoring more than 10,000 runs for two counties, 19,705 for Gloucestershire, and 13,160 for Worcestershire, a feat later accomplished only by Mark Ramprakash of Middlesex and Surrey in the 21st century. Order of the British Empire, a rare achievement for one while still playing the game, was conferred on him on 1968. With his occasional and innocuous leg-spin bowling he captured the solitary Test wicket of Colin McDonald, the opening batsman from Australia, in 1955 at Sydney.
Graveney played his final match in 1995, for the Lord’s Taverners against the MCC President’s XI. He served as the President of the Worcestershire Cricket Club from 1994 to 1998, became the first professional cricketer to be elected President of MCC, a rare honour, in 2004, and was inducted to the ICC Hall of Fame in 2009.
After retiring from the game he turned into a BBC television commentator and appointed as an international match referee. However, he was removed from the assignment after passing a controversial comment on Pakistan cricket ‘They have been cheating us for the 37 years’, following the Mike Gatting-Shakoor Rana incident.
After he retired, he ran a successful pub near the Cheltenham Racecourse.
Tom Graveney breathed his last on the 3 November in 2015. The glorious age of artistry in batting and a golden era came to an end with him.
Cricket historian Arunabha Sengupta alluded to what Christopher Martin-Jenkins had written in 1997, ‘All opinions are subjective, but in his long career..., I believe truly that there was no more elegant or charming batsman.