by Mayukh Ghosh
Then wrote the Queen of England,
Whose hand is blessed by God,
'I must do something handsome
For my dear victorious Stod....…'
Well, the Queen couldn't do much for 'victorious Stod', but a certain David Frith did.
They had much in common:
Schooled a long way from their birthplaces, played sports all over the year, married Australian girls, one born 37 years before 1900 while and the other born 37 years after ( (both in March: 11th and 16th respectively), a proximity to Lord's,....,…
Stoddart even lived next door to the house occupied by the artist W.P. Frith!
The 32 year-old was so obsessed with the long- forgotten England captain that he had to visit a psychometrist.
He did extensive research to know more about his hero and, in an attempt to find Stoddy's birthplace, he almost died in an accident.
He was sceptical about the book being published.
Publishers, one major and one minor, rejected it after sitting on the typescript and pictures for months.
He had already 'wasted' three years on this project. He had to publish it.
He took a loan of a few hundred pounds from Tony Baer, the Melbourne- based cricket-loving stock investor. Then, he found a printer in Nottingham.
'My Dear Victorious Stod' came out in 1970. 400 copies. All signed. At £2.50 each.
Then one evening the phone in his house rang.
Jim Coldham from The Cricket Society broke the news in a nervous voice. It was some sort of a breach of confidentiality.
The self-published book had won the first ever 'Cricket Society Jubilee Literary Award'.
He told the author not to disclose the secret to anyone else.
Within a few minutes the phone rang again. Another member of the jury. He too said the same thing.
In May 1971, he received the award.
More than 30 books. Founder-editor of arguably the best cricket magazine. Owner of the greatest collection of all things related to the game.
He was the man who first thought and wrote about TV umpires.
It was he who thought and wrote that 'underarm' is quite possible if the opposition needs six off the last ball. Well, he wasn't quite aware of Greg Chappell's reading habits....…
Gideon Haigh once told me that there are two places in the world that I must visit.
One is cricket book seller Roger Page's house in Yallambie, a suburb of Melbourne.
The other is David Frith's house in Guildford in Surrey.
And, perhaps, Martin Chandler summed him up perfectly: " Frith has probably forgotten more about the game’s history than most of us will ever know."
'The David Frith Archive' is a 1100-odd page tome detailing a cricket slave's lifelong collection.
When Sky Sports filmed a short feature on the DF Archive a few years ago, the interviewer asked him at the end which were his favourite pieces were 'to take to his desert island'.
Frith replied: "This IS my desert island."
Slowly but surely, I have moved on from idolising the likes of a Tendulkar or a Lara to idolising the likes of a Frith.
He is turning 82 this March 16 and he keeps on saying ''the clock goes on ticking''....…’
There will never be another David Frith.