by Mayukh Ghosh
It is not uncommon to have children named after famous cricketers. Some of these children themselves become famous in due course.
Naming the child after a famous collector is less common. Pat (Patrick Joseph) Rodgers was named after Pat Mullins, the Queensland lawyer who had the most amazing private collection until he donated all of it to the MCG Library.
Mullins was a family friend and the best man in Pat Rodgers’ parents’ wedding.
His contribution didn’t end with lending his name to the child. When young Rodgers visited his library in 1976, it acted as a strong influence. The cricketing interest, though, was already instilled by his father and elder brother James who played for Sydney University grade Cricket Club for over 30 years.
James became the first published cricket writer in the family when he collaborated with Max Bonnell for the two books on Sydney University CC.
While growing up, Rodgers had cricket books at home. One in particular- Ray Robinson’s On Top Down Under – made a large impression on him for its style and the manner of research. He began reading on the game and has not stopped since. He has his favourites, for their style and treatment of subjects.
“David Frith, Gideon Haigh, Max Bonnell, Ric Sissons and Richard Cashman’s cricket biographies in particular piqued my interest in the stories of cricketers from the late 19th century and earlier 20th century such as Murdoch, Jackson, Cotter, Armstrong, Iverson etc.”
He had written a number of historical articles in Bernard Whimpress’ Baggy Green Journal and then Ronald Cardwell’s Between Wickets but never really thought of writing a book till Covid invaded our lives.
“In lockdown I have read a lot of quality biographies such as David Foot’s Tormented Genius and Robert Brooke’s book on Frank Foster (note the theme!)
Earlier this year when re reading Frith’s profiles of cricketers who suicided in By His Own Hand, I came across the story of Jack Cuffe. Here was one tale that I might be able to research and write.”
Evidently, it was not a planned project and if he had not read the Frith book at that point, he would not have thought about writing on Cuffe.
“I mentioned to Ronald (Cardwell) in passing that I had begun looking at Jack Cuffe’s story and had discovered that he had mysteriously disappeared from his wife and young daughter in Sydney in 1903. Ronald checked the Sydney District Cricket Club annual report of the 1902-03 to see what was said about his performances in that season. When his name failed to appear in the averages and the summary, our interest was piqued. Why was his record extinguished and by whom?”
But researching a cricketer who played more than hundred years ago posed its own challenges and Rodgers found help from likely and unlikely sources.
“The project was not planned but the more uncovered about Cuffe the more chance of it becoming an article, monograph, biography became evident.
Researching an individual whose main career was over 100 years ago presents difficulties.
He did not seem to be extensively profiled or interviewed. His only written record was an autograph. Not even a suicide note.
“Still, thanks to digitisation, there are significant sources available.
In Australia most newspapers since the start of the colonies have been digitised and appear on a site called Trove. Cricket was widely reported and cricketers were well known. The best early find in this was of Cuffe being reported missing by his young wife in 1903 in Sydney.
”Cricket Archive was obviously used for his statistics. Further digging in this revealed first class matches in which he umpired and all the first-class teams apart from Worcestershire that he played in.
Wisden was quite useful but their summaries of matches were very succinct. In the match where Cuffe took 9 for 38 against Yorkshire it simply stated that he had bowled unchanged!
”Cricket: A Weekly Record of the Game on the ACS website was useful but there were only snippets of Cuffe.
”I subscribed to the British Newspapers website and this had quite a lot of references especially surrounding his death.
”Most useful were contacts I made with Worcestershire and League Clubs that he had played for in Lancashire. The people there were extremely helpful with photos, statistics and many references.”
A project like this often leads to several discoveries which, usually though present in newspaper reports etc, were not to be found earlier. This was no exception.
“There were several key new discoveries about Cuffe which added to his story. One correction was discovered with a reference on a Worcestershire cricket Facebook page to Cuffe being wrongly attributed with an extensive football career. Only in the last two years has this been disproved (there was another contemporary named Jack Cuffe!) and it makes up the subject of an interesting chapter in the book “A Case of Mistaken Identity”.”
And several questions that remain unanswered!
“There were some answers to questions that couldn’t be found, which I initially found a bit frustrating but realised that you can speculate usefully using the information that you do have. An example of this is how Cuffe was recommended as a coach and selector to travel to India to help prepare the All-Indian team for their English tour in 1911. A link was found that may explain it but we may never be totally certain.”
Covid, even though acted as the catalyst at the beginning, proved to be a dampener once the book was ready. The book was due to be launched in July and then postponed to August but both could not happen due to the outbreak and restrictions in Sydney.
Now that it has been published, anything he’d have liked to be done differently?
“Not really anything major. I am happy with the quality of the production, the design and photos. The Cricket Press take great pride in paper quality, binding, image reproduction. The cover of the book is excellent I think because it is a great photo of Cuffe and the colours are those of Worcestershire where he played for a decade.”
The book is obviously not aimed at the average cricket fan but it will be of interest to a certain section who cherish the history of the game and its long-forgotten characters.
And they will not be disappointed.
Author signed copies can be obtained from Roger Page and Ken Piesse in Australia.