by Arunabha Sengupta
In his Autobiography Neville Cardus relates a rather charming tale about his day of marriage. According to him, he had as usual gone to Old Trafford, accompanied by Edith, his fiancée, and had stayed for a while to see Makepeace and Hallows come forth to bat. “As usual they opened with care. Then I had to leave, had to take a taxi to Manchester, there to be joined in wedlock at a registry office. Then I — that is we — returned to Old Trafford. While I had been away from the match … Lancashire had increased their total by exactly 17 — Makepeace 5, Hallows 11, and one leg-bye.”
Lovely, lovely story to mark the occasion. And as with so many of Cardus tales, it never happened.
Makepeace and Hallows opened the batting only once in June 1921, in a completely different match, in which Makepeace had made four and 24 (retired hurt) and Hallows 109 not out and 0. Thereafter, Makepeace was out of the side for a month, and they did not bat together again till August.
In other words, that match of slow rhythm and leisure that characterise the summer game had been played in the imagination of the great Cardus.
Charlie Hallows did not make those 11 slow, imaginary runs mentioned by Cardus. But, on that very day, after the Leicestershire innings had drawn to a close, he had opened the innings with Walker Ellis and carried his bat, scoring 110 not out of a total of 183.
He was an excellent attacking, left-handed batsman who scored nearly 21,000 runs in First-Class cricket, 20,142 of them for Lancashire.
He started his career for Lancashire just before The Great War, and continued to score heavily for the county through the 1920s. The seasons that saw Lancashire winning the Championship, 1927 and 1928, witnessed Hallows in supreme form. In 1927 he got 2,343 runs at 75.58 and the following year 2,645 at 64.51; as many as 18 of his 55 First-Class hundreds were scored in those two years.
He was called upon to play for England twice.
In 1921, when Warwick Armstrong’s side had already won the series by routing England in the first 3 Tests, he was drafted into the team for the fourth Test at his home ground of Old Trafford. Unfortunately, the batting was opened by Jack Russell Sr and wicketkeeper George Brown, and England piled up 362 for 4 before captain Hon. Lionel Tennyson declared. Hallows did not get a chance to bat. In the second innings he opened and played out the few remaining overs to score an unbeaten 16.
The second occasion was in 1928, during his purple patch for Lancashire. He opened against West Indies at Lord’s and put on 51 with Herbert Sutcliffe before being dismissed by Learie Constantine for 26. With Vallance Jupp and Tich Freeman bowling England to an innings victory Hallows did not bat again. That was the end of his Test career and he averaged 42 in 2 outings
With Jack Hobbs and Sutcliffe at the top of the order, with Andy Sandham available as backup, it was not surprising that Hallows did not get any more opportunities.
However, he had a far more important role to play after his playing days. As a scout for Worcestershire, he came down to Middleton in the 1964 summer and watched their professional in action. It was the coloured South African cricketer, Basil D’Oliveira. Hallows was quick to spot the talent that the Lancashire authorities did not, and the subsequent negotiations were brief and successful.
D’Oliveira started playing club cricket for Kidderminster in the Birmingham and District Leagues. The qualification rules prevented him from playing in the Championship in 1964. Hence, he played the Second XI matches. He took a while to get going. It was not until his 13th innings for the Second XI that he registered a half-century.
Here too, the hand of Hallows played a leading role in directing the course of the game and its history. He administered what D’Oliveira later called ‘a deserved rap’. Drawing the enormously gifted man aside, Hallows told him: “You can’t spend this year thinking only about the next year. You haven’t a divine right to a place in a county side.”
D’Oliveira took it seriously. After all those years lost under the apartheid regime, he was not getting any younger.
The first hundred came soon after that.
Two years later, he was playing for England.
Charlie Hallows lived eight more years. He did manage to see his protégé enjoy a 44-Test career. He did not score those 11 imaginary runs manufactured by Cardus. But he did a lot more.
This splendid servant of the game was born on April 4, 1895.