by Mayukh Ghosh
When Maurice Leyland bowled to Bradman, he wrote, " No one expected him to get a wicket, he was neither good enough nor bad enough for that."
But those were serious match reports. Jim Kilburn was serious and dedicated.
As a young boy, he was tutored by the great George Hirst in the Scarborough nets. His off-breaks were good enough to make him an important player in the Bradford League.
During the off-season, he taught at Harrogate Prep School. He then got a chance to spend a year in Finland from where he used to send travel articles to the Yorkshire Post.
They were pretty good. On his return, the editor, Arthur Mann wanted to meet him. Kilburn managed to impress him.
Mann was startled by his interest in the game of cricket.
AW Pullin had retired three years ago and The Post had no cricket correspondent at that time.
Kilburn was put on probation for three months at a weekly wage of £3.
His first assignment was a Roses Match at Sheffield. He did a good job. Neville Cardus wrote to the newspaper and said of Kilburn: " To my mind yours is the best cricket reporting today."
That was good enough for him to secure a permanent position.
Kilburn was one of those few who got a regular by-line and no one who was allowed to touch his writing. No editor ever made any changes to his words.
He had his own methods which worked well for him. Here's what David Frith recollects about the man: " During the classic Oval Test match of 1968 it was my duty to deliver his story to the office of the Yorkshire Post in Fleet Street as soon as he had completed it. Today's cricket writers would laugh at the ponderous process. JMK was probably the last journalist to write his copy with a fountain pen, creating the same sort of broad sweeps of script as his Victorian predecessors. The sheets of paper were then carefully folded and placed in an envelope, which young Frith received with barely a glance from the writer. It was now challenge for the bus or tube journey followed by a spring down Fleet Street, culminating in a breathless hurtling up the stairs into the newspaper office."
Kilburn watched every ball in a day's play except for the first half hour in the post-lunch session. That was allotted for his afternoon nap. His great friend Bill Bowes covered for him.
Frith adds: " As I look around me now in the so-called 'media centres', with the predominantly history-allergic writers and their mass of electronic gadgetry, I do sometimes picture the reassuring picture of JMK with his solemn, shrewd gaze, his imposing nose...., and , of course, that thick-nibbled pen which he used to put to such charming use."
It was said that Cardus was the Wordsworth and Kilburn the Coleridge of immediate post-war cricket writing.
Kilburn wrote fewer lies and, perhaps, as a result, attracted lesser amount of public attention.
Once in Adelaide, he finished his account with " At the kerbside five or six strikingly attractive young ladies were standing beneath a sign that read: Queue for Kilburn. An envious companion assured me that the girls were merely waiting for a local bus...."
Kilburn was born on July 8, 1909.