by Arunabha Sengupta
It was during the 1924 Yorkshire county dinner when he reacted to ‘Bolshevik’ Cecil Parkin’s outrageous idea that the best batsman of the world, Jack Hobbs, should be made captain of England.
“Pray Heaven no professional may ever captain England,” he famously proclaimed.
To this day, the English cricket-writing fraternity insist that those words were blown out of proportion. It started with Plum Warner in the Cricketer magazine—a publication dragging its feet over the timescape till this day, unable to shake the dust of the days when Anglo-Australian cricket was all there was to the game. Pointing out his lordship’s enormous services to the pros, Warner suggested, “With no doubt Lord Hawke meant it will be a bad day for England when no amateur is fit to play for England.”
One wonders which sounds more pathetic, Hawke’s wishful thinking or Warner’s defence.
Did Hawke do much for the lot of the professionals? We tend to think he did, mainly by referring to his own autobiography, Recollections and Reminiscences, perhaps the least modest memoir ever.
“I believe I have done more than anyone else to raise the standard and self-respect of the splendid paid section of first-class cricketers,” he wrote, the soul of self-effacement.
He did treat them with a combination of strictness and patronising benevolence of a feudal lord, which he actually was. He installed a system of goading his professional men with promised sums of money for feats on the field, a century, a catch or a prize wicket.
He was proud of this system of doling out alms as well.
He played 30 years for Yorkshire, holding on to his place as captain even while averaging 20 with the bat. Once he called it a day, he continued to govern the fortunes of the county as President, ensuring there would continue to be amateur captains as bad or worse cricketers than he.
“I am no advocate of wholly professional sides. Yorkshire has always played amateurs and to my mind they are the moral backbone of a county team.”
He of course led England too, in all the five Tests he played. Besides he led unofficial England sides on seven non-Test tours before the Great War, to places as diverse as India, North America and Argentina.
He made 55 runs in the Tests at 7.85, but perhaps supplied the moral backbone of the side.
At least he claimed to carry out Imperial duties during the 1895-96 tour of South Africa, when the Jameson Raid had become a disaster and anti-British sentiments were plentiful in Transvaal.
Hawke went with his teammates to visit Frank Rhodes, the brother of Cecil Rhodes, and others in jail. The important British men had been imprisoned by the Kruger government. He cheered them up with a game of cards. Hawke apparently took £98 off them at poker.
While his visiting fellow Englishmen in the jail was perhaps laudatory if we subscribe to the curious Imperialist sentiments which governed English thought those days, the truth about the visit to Transvaal President Paul Kruger’s place throws some real light on the sort of dubious character Hawke was.
Later Hawke pompously claimed that he declined to call on Kruger, because he had no time for an enemy of the Empire. However, in his Life Worth Living, CB Fry clearly states: “Did we see Paul Kruger? We did. We called on him. Lord Hawke was persuaded to arrange him. So in small sections we were invited to call at his villa at seven o’clock in the morning …”
And it was not, as widely believed, some English cricketers who did the unwanted duty while Hawke declined to pay his respects. Fry continues, “A young Dutch barrister introduced and explained us. Lord Hawke on the first occasion, and Sammy Woods on the second, offered some polite phrases. Lord Hawke said that he hoped the President would find our visit of interest to the President’s capital, and that the people of the town would come to see the cricket match and enjoy it.”
Yes, Hawke could be a notorious liar in his own accounts.
Martin Bladen Hawke, 7th Baron Hawke, passed away on 10 October 1938. Perhaps the professional Wally Hammond converting to an amateur and leading England was a bit too much for him to withstand.
He was born on 16 August 1860.