by Arunabha Sengupta
A fine but inconsistent batsman and a deadly bowler on a helpful wicket, Ted Wainwright was a major cricketing professional for 14 summers and an asset for Yorkshire. The height of his achievements was perhaps scaled in 1897 when he peaked in both departments, scoring 1,612 runs and capturing 101 wickets. His benefit in 1898 realised £1800.
He even made it to the England side five times, playing once in 1893 and touring Australia with Stoddart’s men in 1897-98. However, his international ventures marked by less than great deeds.
Yet, he is somewhat more frequently recalled because of an essay penned by that charming charlatan of cricket writing.
Remember Ranji, Fry and Sussex, that famed piece by Neville Cardus? It has gone down as a landmark piece of cricket writing. And I have nothing against the ‘writing’ bit. It is a fascinating creation – as long it is accepted as just that. Creation.
The danger that the cricket world faces is that a lot of celebrated chroniclers have taken Cardus’s word. Alan Ross for instance quotes his essay extensively in his otherwise fantastic biography Ranji: Prince of Cricketers.
Generation after generation of cricket lovers and writers have been influenced by Cardusian flair. Many still swear by him. And this essay is one of the favourites of many. I can almost hear the voices objecting to my finding factual flaws in this ‘masterpiece’.
However, what Cardus does here is rather questionable in terms of ethics. He puts words into the mouth of the late Yorkshire and England all-rounder Ted Wainwright. The ‘late’ bit is important here, because part of the modus operandi of Cardus was to wait for the demise of cricketers before using them as posthumous voices to stretch facts out of shape.
“Ranji and Fry at Brighton on a plumb wicket. It were t’ same tale every year. Sussex 20 for one at half-past twelve. Vine out. Then Sussex 43 for two at one o’clock. Aye, we told oursel’s, every blessed year, we’re doin’ reight well. Yorkshire! But bless your soul, we knowed there were nowt in it. At the fall of the second wicket Ranji’d come to the middle, swishing that bat of his like a cane. At close of play the score read, more oft than not, 392 for two.”
Conveniently for Cardus, Wainwright passed away in 1919, just as his own career as a cricketing journalist was taking off. Those days few bothered with the scorebooks, and it was enough to know KS Ranjitsinhji and CB Fry were great batsmen, the poetic license perhaps being provided by the additional attribute of their being great friends.
Let us take a look at the invenient devices called scorebooks—which Cardus so pompously dismissed as ‘asses’.
Ted Wainwright played 12 matches at Hove during his career between 1888 and 1901. Of these, only the period between 1895 and 1901 coincided with the careers of Ranji and Fry. Ranji, Fry and Wainwright featured together in only five matches at Hove. These saw five partnerships between Ranji and Fry, amounting to 0, 76, 13, 28 and 135.
Yes, they added 252 in those five innings at a good average, with a fair share of failures in between a decent and a big stand. But, there was no monster partnership that took Sussex from 43 for two to 392 for two. Not anything remotely of that kind.
In fact, if we consider all the other matches that Ranji and Fry played against Yorkshire at Hove, even the ones that did not feature Wainwright, they enjoyed just one more stand – a rather modest one of 29.
If we go back to the matches played by Wainwright, we find that the colossal 392 for two, or something of those proportions, was amassed only once, in 1901. On that occasion the second Sussex wicket fell only at 415. The interesting fact is that Ranji and Fry did not even bat together in that innings. Fry was out for 219 at 415, and Ranji came in to hammer 86. Joseph Vine was out at 66, not 20. And Ernest Killick went on to score 200 himself, there was no 43 for two. And there was no Ranji-Fry collaboration that kept the Yorkshiremen at bay for hours.
The highest stand Ranji and Fry ever put together at Hove was 196, against Surrey in 1900. They put on decent enough partnerships, some very good ones, and collaborated on 11 century partnerships at Hove. However, they did not notch up those monster stands as Cardus would have us believe.
What about 20 for one, 43 for two and 392 for two? The match having that particular progression of scores was played in imagination. It might have been the tricks of the failing memory of an old Wainwright. But, somehow, it seems much more likely that the game was the creation of a much more fertile memory with a proven history of serial fabrication – that of Cardus himself. And of course, he was helped a great deal by the fact that dead men don’t talk.
Yet, due to Cardus’s casual disregard for history and his rather low regard for recorded numbers weighed against the freedom of his flourishing pen, generation after generation of cricket followers and readers have been hoodwinked into believing in the colossal stands put together by these two friends at the seaside ground.
According to Cardus, “While Ranji seemed to toss runs over the field like largesse in silk purses, Fry acquired them – no, not as a miser his hoard, but as the connoisseur his collection.”
Did he actually watch them bat together? I for one will not be surprised if it comes to light that he never did so.
Later Wainwright was employed as cricket coach at the Shrewsbury School, where his colleague was a young man called … er, Neville Cardus. The Yorkshireman was a replacement for William Attewell, about whom Cardus later penned another fictitious account complete with a case of unresearched mistaken identity.
Cardus does have some entertaining stories about Wainwright at Shrewsbury, but we can believe them at our own risk.
Wainwright was an excellent cricketer … and a popular man at Yorkshire, one of the major weapons wielded by Lord Hawke in making the county the cricketing force that it was.
He did not say all that about Ranji and Fry simply because those things did not happen. However, he is often remembered for those manufactured recollections.
Ted Wainwright was born on April 8, 1865