by Arunabha Sengupta
Leyton, 26 May 1925.
Did it really take place?
The anecdote has passed down in words of mouth, not really reported by the newspapers. But the three participating cricketers who survived till the early 1980s, when Richard Streeton wrote his seminal book, insisted that it did indeed transpire as rumoured.
Percy Fender himself wrote about it on 16 June 1928, in Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News, without identifying the match. No one wrote any letter contradicting it.
So, we can probably consider it to be true.
When the match started, Essex captain Johnny Douglas asked his Surrey counterpart whether they could adhere to Leyton’s late lunch-time hours. Fender was not too willing. “We’d better stick to the MCC rules,” he replied.
Douglas was not amused. He was further annoyed when Jack Hobbs stroked his way to 129, Andy Sandham 90 and the first wicket did not fall till Surrey was 219. Eventually it amounted to 431 for 8.
On the second day, Essex, buoyed by a century by their opening batsman wicketkeeper John Freeman, laboured to 333 for 7.
Shortly before the start of the third day’s play on Tuesday, umpire Harry Butt, old Sussex wicket-keeper, came to the amateur dressing room to inform Fender that his professionals had not yet arrived.
Douglas looked up from lacing his boots and said, “Strict MCC rules Fender, the side refusing to play loses the match.”
Fender was unmoved. He asked Alf Jeacocke, the only other amateur in his team, to be ready at the scheduled start at 11.15.
Only a few spectators had turned up, and they were bewildered to see Fender and Jeacocke take the field at 11.15 sharp alongside the umpires.
After waiting for a while, Fender asked umpire Butt to pop down to the amateur dressing room and inform Douglas that he would lose the match if his batsmen did not turn up within two minutes. Soon Claude Treglown and Bob Sharpe, the two Army captains who were the overnight Essex batsmen emerged. Both amateurs, they had been witness to the unsavoury exchange between Douglas and Fender in the pavilion, .
Fender bowled and Jeacocke kept wickets. At the end of the over they changed roles. This went on for several minutes.
The batsmen did not try to score.
The professionals, whose charabanc had been delayed, now limbered into the field. Wicketkeeper Strudwick saw the ongoing farce and enquired, “Has there been any bye yet?”
Percy Fender repelled Zeppelins during the Great War, and then contracted cholera in India in 1916.
On his return, during recovery, he broke his leg in five places while playing football in 1918.
After walking most of the next two years on crutches, in 1920 he scored the fastest recorded hundred in First-Class cricket, in just 35 minutes.
He was adjudged the best captain of England based on his seasons at the helm of Surrey. He played 13 times for England, perhaps the best captain they missed using. Jack Hobbs considered him the best captain he ever played under.
He did the season’s double seven times, alternating between medium pacers and leg spin, and also hit a nagging Warwick Armstrong back handed to the off-side in what was perhaps a sort of reverse pull.
He was mistakenly critical about Bradman when he covered the first two series played by the great Australian. However, it was he who noticed Bradman’s problems against the Larwood deliveries which took off from a wet Oval pitch in 1930. He shared his insights with friend Douglas Jardine and kickstarted the idea of Bodyline.
The tour books he penned on The Ashes are bona-fide masterpieces. Defending The Ashes, The Tests of 1930 and Kissing the Rod are as good, as scientifically incisive and as thoughtful as cricket writing ever gets.
Of course, he was too forward thinking and full of radical ideas to be in the good books of the infamously archaic English cricketing establishment. He fell out with the authorities often enough and that was one of the reasons he never captained England.
In 1977 he became the oldest man to attend the centenary Test .
Percy Fender was born on 22 August 1892.