by Mayukh Ghosh

"I am going to play as an amateur today. I want to catch the early train back to Worcester."
These two sentences were enough to cost him his place in the England team.
But Roly Jenkins never bothered what he said. He just said what he thought.

He served in the war and played in the cricket matches which were organised to uplift the tired souls.
In one of those matches, an officer, while batting with him, rebuked," Now listen, Jenkins, you don't say 'come one', you say 'come one, sir'."
Jenkins was not one to obey it without a response.
"And if I'm wearing a cap, sir, should I salute when we cross?"

He once wrote a piece on spin bowling and Walter Robbins praised him by saying "That was a very good article. Who wrote it for you?"
"I wrote it myself, sir. Who read it for you?"

He always dreamt of spinning the ball many a feet and getting the batsman bamboozled.
The quest for perfection didn't help him all the time. A more realistic approach might have made him one of a kind: a great English leg-spinner.

There were many who did better than him.
But not many who enjoyed cricket the way he did.
When George Emmett, on his way to a century at Cheltenham in 1951, hit him for three successive fours, Jenkins put his hand on his hips and said, "If you don't like me, that's fair enough. But for God's sake, don't keep taking it out on the ball."

Roly Jenkins was born on November 24, 1918.