by Arunabha Sengupta
Sydney 1932.
Harold Larwood and Bill Voce hurled spitfires that zoomed for the upper torso, seeking to part the hair of the batsmen, as a posse of leg side fielders stood close enough to pick their pockets. Batsman after batsman were pummelled before being dismissed.
His parents were there to watch the Test. When it was his turn to bat, the 22-year-old whispered to his father, “If I get hit, dad, stop mum from jumping the fence.”
So saying he went in and proceeded to meet fire with fire. The fast men bounced, he pivoted and played the hooks and pulls. A magnificently brave innings of exceptional skill, that amounted to 187.
Asked many years later about StanMcCabe’s strokes that day, Bill O’Reilly, sitting high up in the SCG Press Box, thrust a gnarled forefinger towards the gaudy advertisement boards that now concealed the white pickets square of the wicket. “There,” he gasped, “And there, and there, and there.”
McCabe himself, though, maintained the knock was often touched by good fortune, with balls frequently flying off the edge and landing in no man’s land.
He was that sort of a chap.
And then there was Trent Bridge 1938. When skipper Don Bradman came into the dressing room and urged his men, “Come and look at this. You will never see the like of this again.”
Another single-handed show, amounting to 232, where he added 170 while his last four partners scored 38. The arrival at the wicket of Chuck Fleetwood-Smith was unequivocally accepted as the start of rigor mortis of any innings. He survived 18 balls, while McCabe plundered 72 in 28 minutes.
In between there was the Joyride in Johannesburg.
McCabe stroked his way to 189 not out. Chasing a near impossible victory target of 399, Australia were 274 for 2 when South African captain Herbie Wade appealed for light. Yes, the fielding captain appealed for light, and it was upheld. The umpires thought that the fieldsmen were in real physical danger from the balls that emerged from the middle of McCabe’s willow and flashed past them under the cloudy skies
No batsman hit the ball harder with less effort, brilliance in a cloak of culture. “McCabe has inherited Trumper’s sword and cloak,” wrote Neville Cardus.
A writer far more rooted to reality, Ray Robinson, said that watching McCabe bat was like watching a bolting horse or a runaway train. The spectacle was exciting, nerve-tingling, but you wondered how long it could go on before the crash came.
The crash did come often enough … laws of nature ensured that. But in those three innings it did not. They remain immortal.
Great friend Lindsay Hassett doubted those three classics could ever be eclipsed. And he also doubted that a finer man would ever grace the cricket field.
He had his reasons. When back in Sydney after the War he wanted to start a sports store and lacked funds, McCabe and his friend Chappie Dwyer lent him the money without talk of security.
He was that sort of a chap.
Len Hutton found McCabe ‘a most modest helpful and charming man.’ The Yorkshireman rather uncharacteristically added that he was ‘very fond of Stan’.
Even the members of Jardine’s infamous side were. When the two teams had all but stopped talking to each other , McCabe would speak to them and they would speak to him. He was a man without malice or bitterness.
He was that sort of a chap.
He could bowl too, and often opened the bowling for Australia. His medium pace was at best ordinary, but he did get the odd wicket. Larwood fell to him at Brisbane, attempting a swing to leg and bowled off his pads.
Later in the pavilion, they met and the great fast bowler said, “You’re not a bad bowler, Stan.”
McCabe’s response? Typical. “I wish I could face my bowling, Harold.”
He was that sort of a chap.
McCabe was a delight to watch, and he was a gem of a person.
He was born on 16 July 1910.