by Kalyanbrata Bhattacharyya
Pullar’s entry into test cricket was sensational. His feats in the early years suggested that at last England had unearthed a durable opener. The rest is part history part curiosity.
Indeed, it is hard to fathom how and why his career ended in a whimper in 1963, following a short and undeniably successful stint of three and a half years.
England’s dilemma with the opening pair started with the retirement of Sir Leonard Hutton after the Australian tour in 1954-55. Bill Edrich, his contemporary, was on his way out. Trevor Bailey, Jack Ikin, Reg Simpson, Arthur Milton, Peter Richardson, Willie Watson, Don Kenyon, Reverend David Sheppard, Ken Taylor, Mike Smith, and Colin Cowdrey, among others, were tried as openers since then. Barring a fairly decent Bailey and sporadic performances from Simpson, Richardson, Sheppard, and the reluctant, yet magnificent Cowdrey, there was not much to write home about.
Norman Preston wrote in The Wisden ‘...there was some legitimate concern about a durable opening pair in England since 1956.’ Pullar injected a whiff of fresh air and England had reasons to believe that finally they got someone who had come to stay.
Early days
Pullar was born in Swinton near Manchester and the family soon moved to Oldham in Lancashire. There he honed his skills and soon became a member of the Lancashire school team, as well as, a member of the Werneth Club in the Central League.
He made his debut as a middle-order batsman for Lancashire in 1954 against Surrey at Old Trafford at the age of 18. Although not an immediate success, some found in him a compatible mixture of the charm and artistry of Charlie Hallows and the dogged determination of Eddie Paynter, two of Lancashire’s cricketing heroes.
Though he scored more than 1000 runs in 1956 and 1957, Cyril Washbrook, his captain and mentor, the former England player and selector, dropped him after an unsuccessful performance against Surrey in 1958. His concentration at the crease and fielding abilities were subject to question. On recall, he scored two centuries and thus caught the eye of the selectors when in 1959 he scored more than 50 in each of his first seven innings. He ended the season with 2657 runs including eight centuries, at an average of 55.14, trailing behind only Mike Smith of Warwickshire and Ken Barrington of Surrey.
He started off essentially as a back foot player and only at the insistence of Washbrook he adopted a predominantly front foot style. In 1959, he was asked to open the innings for Lancashire with the hope that he would be able to solve the crisis of a dependable opening batsman for England. His fielding in the deep also improved to a large extent and he was selected as one of the five Cricketers of the Year in 1960 by Wisden. The Cricket Writers’ Club hailed him as the most promising young cricketer of the country.
That season he hit three hundreds against Yorkshire in the ‘Roses Matches’. He scored one more for the Rest against Surrey, the county champions, at the Oval where he showed excellent footwork against fast and the spin bowlers alike.
Test cricket
Pullar made his debut in Test cricket against India in the summer of 1959. The visitors were beaten hands down five matches to nil. The story goes that when Glamorgan had been playing against Lancashire, Wilf Wooller, the Glamorgan skipper and a Test selector confided to Cyril Washbrook that the English openers Arthur Milton and Ken Taylor were to be axed for the third Test match, though they were not yet certain about their replacement.
Washbrook, himself a former selector, had achieved the rare distinction of himself participating in the in 1956 series against Australia in the Laker series at Headingley, scoring 98. He asked, ‘Why not try Pullar?’ He felt that Pullar’s ease against pace and spin, along with the fluency with which he could play both of the front, as well as the back foot, would suit him as an ideal opener.
Wooller was hesitant since Pullar’s customary position was at number 3. However, his innings of 161 in this match dispelled doubts from his mind and he was summoned for the Headingley Test.
This was the first time that Pullar opened batting in any class of cricket and he scored 75 and with Gilbert Parkhouse, who was making a comeback, added 146 runs for the first wicket. However, he confided at a later date that he never enjoyed this position.
In the following Test at Old Trafford, Manchester, his 131 turned out to be the first ever Test century by a Lancastrian at his home ground. He was now a natural choice to tour West Indies in 1959-60 under the leadership of Peter May. His opening partner was Colin Cowdrey, a position he too, always disliked.
Though Pullar did not score a century, his highest score was 66 and the pair was successful almost everytime. In his foreword for Cowdrey’s autobiography MCC, May wrote that this was a very successful opening pair and it vindicated his decision as timely and right.
A few months later at The Oval, Pullar scored 175, his highest, against South Africa. However, when Australia toured England in 1961, he was not as assured and consistent and was repeatedly outwitted by the magnificent left arm swing bowler Alan Davidson.
The high point of Pullar’s career was surely during the tour to India and Pakistan in 1961-62. In the first three Test matches against India he scored 83 at Bombay, 119 at Kanpur and 89 at Delhi. He was indisposed for the next two Test matches at Calcutta and Madras and on the subsequent trip to Pakistan he scored 165 at Dhaka. He topped the averages for the tour of the subcontinent.
In the next tour of Pakistan to England in 1962 Pullar played in only two Test matches at Edgbaston and Trent Bridge and was selected to visit Australia in 1962-63. There he was all at sea when Alan Davidson and Graham McKenzie seemed to have the measure of him. Additionally, he fell ill with pleurisy, and a nagging pain in the knee joint forced him to return home.
He was never picked for England again despite a palpable deficiency in the opening slot. However, within a few years, Mickey Stewart, John Edrich, Brian Bolus, Bob Barber, Geoff Boycott and Colin Milburn cemented their place as openers and Pullar’s further entry was thus obstructed.
When tapped for selection against the fearsome West Indies in 1966, at a time when Eric Russell, Geoffrey Boycott and Bob Barber had been struggling, he declined the offer, citing ill health as the reason.
The style and the man
Pullar was tall and weighed about thirteen stones. His stance was upright and he used to drive elegantly of the front foot and hardly ever lifted the ball in the air. His footwork was nimble which enabled him to make use of his height and his defense of the back foot was a model of rectitude.
Endowed with a dour technique he used to glance, pull and cut with facility and was hardly ever seen flashing outside the off stump. Don Wilson, the Yorkshire spinner and his old adversary in the most competitive Roses Matches, once said “You never thought he was in but all of a sudden you would look up and he has got 35. Then, when you think you are bowling well at him he would be 70 or 80. And you think, I haven’t seen him make a shot yet!’ Then he would be raising his bat for 100.”
Following his successful opening partnership with Colin Cowdrey in the West Indies in 1959-60, David Green, his Lancashire team-mate was told by no less a batsman than Ted Dexter, the enigmatic former England captain, ‘There was no more reassuring sight when England were due to bat than Pullar sitting calmly at the back of the changing room in his scruffy jockstrap, drawing on a cigarette and you just knew he was going to get a fifty.’ And finally Colin Cowdrey wrote in his autobiography MCC, ‘Wesley Hall, Chester Watson and Charlie Griffith were hostile, the bouncers common diet. Nothing would deter Geoff or ruffle his benign composure. We never had the slightest disagreement over running between the wickets, or anything else. We would both offer to take the worst of the bowling, if one of us was in more difficulty than the other. That is how I remember him phlegmatic and generous even under that sort of pressure.’
He was also a more than useful leg-spinner. Besides, he was a talented table tennis player, won an England junior cap and even a place in international trials.
Pullar was affectionately known as ‘Noddy’ since he had the habit of curiously falling asleep in the dressing room once he was out.
Pullar left Lancashire in 1969 following some disagreementwith the authorities and joined Gloucestershire. He topped the county’s batting average in his first season as the captain. However, his knee had been troubling him for quite some time and he decided to call it a day following the next season. Tony Brown, his Gloucestershire team-mate once recalled, ‘He was always asleep in the dressing room and sometimes when fielding as well,’ He was known to be sensitive, affable and generous.
Pullar passed away on Boxing Day, 2014.
His tally in Test cricket was 1974 runs in 28 test matches, with 4 centuries, at an average of 43.86. He belongs to the rare brigade of batsmen whose Test average is higher than that in first-class cricket. He did amass 21,528 runs in 400 first-class matches, including 41 hundreds at an average of 35.34.
Though injury, ill health, and niggling knee pain were recurring features in his life and often forced him to sit out, his precipitous fall from height in such a short time remains one of those riddles that cannot be quite figured. England was deprived of the services of a truly talented opener with his inexplicable decline in the early 1960s.