by Arunabha Sengupta
“In July 1908 I made an inauspicious entry into a smoky world. The town of Elland … was too busy making smoke to pay much attention to my arrival. In those halcyon days Elland not only made a lot of smoke but imported it from Halifax and Bradford to the north, Batley and Dewsbury to the east, Huddersfield to the south, and from the dark satanic mills of Lancashire to the west.”
The beginning of Express Deliveries, the autobiography of Bill Bowes, tells us that he had more than a gift for the turn of the phrase.
He did have a gift for bowling as well. Robertson-Glasgow called him the most difficult fast-medium bowler in England. And he worked hard at his craft, harder than anyone else.
When he went down to Lord’s, to join the MCC groundstaff, a man wearing a red Lancashire blazer was lecturing about bowling. This man looked straight at him and asked whether he was a bowler. Bowes replied, “I hope to be.”
“Well, if you hope to be you will be if Walter Brearley can do anything about it. I’ll look after you.”
He did.
Later, as he played for Yorkshire, there were a host of great names to learn from—not always in the conventional manner.
Wilfred Rhodes told him exactly where to field. “Go back a bit … too far, come in a bit…now a bit to your right…no too far, come back a but …now a yard…nay, nay,nay..” He finally walked across and scratched a big cross with his spikes. “See lad, stand theer” Three balls later the catch came to him and he did not have to move. “You see lad, always go where th’art put.”
And there were George Macaulay and Emmott Robinson, who kept encouraging him in that game where Warwickshire put up 536 for 7. “Well done lad, you’ll get him yet.” In the end Bowes bowled 45 overs to capture 2 for 129 on a shirtfront wicket. Through all their constant encouragement, the two devilish professionals had conned the skipper into bowling Bowes more and more. They had gotten away not bowling much on that heartbreaking track.
Bowes himself used this trick later.
And then there was Robinson standing next to him in slip. Bowes said, “Get me moved from here if you can, Emmott.” He was terrified of dropping catches at that unfamiliar position. “Why?”Emmott replied. “You’ve been brought here for a rest. And doan’t get crouching down like that. Stand up and give thi back a rest. Tha’ll noan get a catch theer.”
Or Maurice Leyland, who told him not to bowl too wide. “The nearer they are to you, the harder to hit.”
His great mate was Hedley Verity. Once the left-armer had taken 7 for 26, and was pleased as punch. Robinson and Rhodes were waiting for him as he returned. “Now then Hedley, what did you do today?” “Seven for 26, Emmott.” “Aye, seven for 26. An’it owt to ’a’ bin seven for 22! Ah nivver saw such bowlin’… Whativver wa’ t’doin’ to give AK Judd that four?”
Life lessons.
And Douglas Jardine too.
On his Test debut, against India in 1932, Jardine called him and Bill Voce. “Holmes, Hammond and Ames got out to full tosses. It’s very difficult to see the ball against the blackness of the pavilion … I want you to bowl at least one full toss to the over.”
They did not think much of the advice. Bowes got 4 for 49 and 2 for 30, Voce 3 for 23 and 2 for 28. Neither of them bowled a single full toss.
“If you play under me you’ll do what I say, not what you think,” said Jardine.
Bowes famously bowled Bradman for a first-ball duck at Melbourne. What remains submerged in all the hullaballoo surrounding that dismissal is that it was his only Test and only wicket in the Bodyline series.
Later he bowled Bradman again, at Leeds, 1934. This time The Don had 304 against his name. And then he had him caught at the wicket at The Oval for 244 and bowled for 77.
But, Bowes was a swell bowler and not everyone was Bradman. His 68 Test wickets came at 22.33 apiece, 1639 first-class scalps at 16.76.
He lost his friend Verity in the War and then lost four and a half stones in the Prisoner of War camp. And he lost six years of cricket.
But, he came back to play his final Test in 1946.
And all through there were plenty of questions among fans about how he played cricket with his glasses, with his gangling six-foot four-inch frame and clumsy movements, looking all the while like a university professor.
Bowes later coached the young Fred Trueman. But, as we have seen, he had a gift for the written word. From the 1946-47 tour to Australia, he became a part of the press contingent.
Express Deliveries is another of those many delightful autobiographies that get buried amidst self-important tomes of bad cricket writing.
Bill Bowes was born on 25 July 1908.