by Mayukh Ghosh
"With Parker and Goddard doing their stuff I didn't think I had much chance of a bowl. Then I spotted a ladybird on my shirt and told the skipper I thought it might be my lucky day. I asked for just a few overs before lunch."
August 1935.
Cheltenham.
Gloucestershire v South Africa.
A team struggling in the County Championship vs A very promising team from South Africa.
The Gloucestershire opening batsman scores a century in their first innings.
Then takes three wickets in South Africa's first innings.
Then, with the visitors needing 289 for victory and finding themselves comfortably placed at 150 for 3, he urges the captain to let him bowl.
5/31 in 15.3 overs.
South Africa all out 201.
Reg Sinfield's father was a builder. He himself wanted to become one.
"There was more money in building, but I loved cricket."
But before he could make that decision, there came a brief career in the Navy.
He wanted to go to TS Mercury. He thought it would allow him to go to the sea and there would be some cricket as well.
He had keenly followed how C.B. Fry led England during the 1912 Triangular Tournament.
Life was not easy.
There were punishments.
Like marching bare-foot carrying a rifle.
The other one was bowling at CB Fry for an hour.
Fry only allowed him to stop when he was able to put the ball anywhere he wanted.
In the third year of the Great War, he was posted to HMS King George V.
"I learnt to climb a ,mast covered in ice. If you slipped you fell to the deck or down the funnel."
Frank Woolley was on the ship but left ashore when they went to the sea.
"We're expecting trouble. You are staying at home. We need cricketers like you after the war to beat the Australians!"
He, it is said, once scored a century for Hertfordshire but was dropped from the squad for the next match because of selfish batting.
"That was it! I was finished with Hertfordshire."
Middlesex rejected him but Patsy Hendren told him that Gloucestershire were looking for a batsman.
He played for them till the end of his career, which was marked by the beginning of World War II.
He was the first Gloucestershire professional to score 1000 runs and take 100 wickets in a season.
The invitation to play for England eluded him for years.
In 1936 Wally Hammond told him that he was a certainty for the Ashes in Australia.
He was not selected.
When MCC got back, they said they'd have won the Ashes if they had Sinfield in the team.
He played one Test match. At Trent Bridge in 1938. Stan McCabe's extraordinary innings made it a part of cricketing folklore. But it marked the end of Reg Sinfield's one Test career.
He later became a coach at Clifton College.
Once he was 65 he had to retire from that post.
The headmaster of Colston's School in Bristol snapped him up.
In the 1980s, Gerald Howat went to meet him on a Saturday.
As he left, Sinfield said, "Back to school on Monday!"
He was 81 at that time.
No one at the school wanted him to retire. But he had to, in 1988. He died in March that year.
"I've saved them hundreds of pounds. I repair all the kit. When I go back each January there are 16 bags of pads, bats and gloves to be got ready for the summer. I stitch up all the rugger balls too. I do the jobs no cobbler would look at.....
Reg Sinfield was born on December 24, 1900.