Date-stamped : 08 May95 - 10:29 Worcester was Our Symbol - John Arlott (Excerpt from "Arlott on Cricket: His Writings on the Game", ed. David Rayvern Allen) On 3 May 1946 a new chapter of cricket history began. Twenty-two cricketers of Worcestershire and India wrote its opening words with the match which started postwar first-class cricket. They did so in the traditional fashion of the touring side showing their initial paces in the manner established in the 1930s when Don Bradman habitually - and as he was to do again two years later - announced himself with a century. The return of peace had different meanings for different people. Of course the returning to families, homes and everyday life were the main ones. For many, though, lesser matters assumed considerable importance. Later generations must find it hard to appreciate quite the extent of the nostalgic attraction of cricket; as a symbol of returned normality for the war-weary. Nostalgic it was then, and nostalgic now in recollection of those shaded days of gratitude for the living, grief for the dead, the present and the absent of so many fields. The New Road ground at Worcester, remembered as a place of bowlers' sweat, and easy runs before the war, was bleak that Saturday morning. Dominated by the Cathedral and lying in the arm of the Severn, it is the most felicitous of grounds in the sunshine, but now dark under the cloud, it was swept by a bitter gale howling across from Diglis. Yet such was the attraction of cricket renewed that over 8000 people - as large a crowd as any local could remember - many of them huddled into 'demob' coats, filled the ground. Most of the Indian team had never seen England before. They had practised for a day only, in muddy nets at Lord's, and made a horribly uncomfortable journey from London in a coach which lost its way through the Midlands and deposited them at their hotel at three in the morning before the match. Few of them had ever played cricket in so low a temperature; and the bowlers, at least, must have contemplated with some pleasure the prospect of a day in the warmth of the dressing-room while their batsmen established a position, awaiting an improvement in the weather. When their captain, the Nawab of Pataudi - a prewar batsman for Worcestershire and England - won the toss, however, he asked Worcestershire to bat. So only the five left out of the side sat, overcoated, round the pavilion stove as a shivering, multi-sweatered team plodded out into the field closely followed by the opening batsmen. Together they produced a convincing overture to the game's revival. The heavily built Bengali, Shute Banerjee, lumbered up and bowled the first ball, which bounced sluggishly off the pitch. Singleton let it hit his bat and the first 'real' cricket match in England for six-and-a-half years had begun. Sandy Singleton and Dick Howarth were regarded as allrounders, bowlers who batted in the lower half of the order, in the days before 1940. Now, though, in the manner of men unaccustomed to enough time for long innings, they let the bat swing through healthily. According to the faded notes in an old book they put on 61 before a major Test cricketer of the future announced himself. A bustling light-heavyweight, limber, well-balanced, quick in reaction, Vinoo Mankad was an astute, natural, allround cricketer. As a slow left-arm bowler he was already accustomed, through the heavy labour of stock bowling on the plumb wickets of India - where batting was the aristocratic portion - to spinning until his index finger bled to derive the degree of break that might disturb a good batsman. Now he prised enough turn out of the heavy Worcester pitch, only lately relieved of the Severn floods, to beat Dick Howarth's stroke on the outside and hit his off stump. Lala Amarnath, a most immaculate medium-pace swinger; Sarwate, who bowled the leg-break and off-break but no googly; and Shinde, the long-armed leg-spinner, performed their duties with chilly responsibility. Singleton batted with confidence and some aggression; Eddie Cooper pawkily correctly; 'Doc' Gibbons with his invariable air of ease and Reg Perks lustily. Mankad, though, had the measure of them all. Four for 26 off twenty overs presaged performances to come. Gul Mahomed at cover-point was brilliantly explosive; and Worcestershire reached as many as 191 largely because hands unaccustomed to such cold could not hold all the catches offered. None of the watching faithful, though, was disposed to be critical, only grateful. When the Indian innings began, Perks, tall, wide-shouldered and strong, a picture of times gone, swept up on his long run and, slightly square-on by purist standards, but still menacingly, bowled faster than the pitch seemed to promise. Weather had denied him any net practice and he was burning to bowl again. He had reached his peak in 1939. In the final Test - against the West Indies - of that last prewar season he took five for 156 in their total of 352, and always swore nine catches were dropped off him. He was a cricketer of gusto; labelled fast-medium but at times capable of considerable pace and a fearsome bouncer. Dick Howarth's subtle flight and left-arm spin accounted for Mushtaq Ali and Amarnath before Perks bowled Vijay Merchant with a sharp inswinger which pitched middle and leg and straightened; a murderous ball lbw. Rusi Modi, a tall, slim Parsee, reluctantly took off his heavy overcoat and walked out, grey with cold. The ball hit his modestly handled but meticulously straight bat with monotonous certainty. Gul Mahomed played his left-handed pranks; the Nawab of Pataudi - senior, of course - batted with the assurance of old; Mankad was businesslike. India scored one more run than Worcestershire in an hour longer. The Monday crowd, smaller than that of Saturday but equally determined to enjoy themselves, despite the north-easter, had the finest entertainment of the match. Did Singleton and Howarth really start the second Worcestershire innings on a slow wicket with a stand of 146 in an hour-and-a-half against a front line touring attack? Upon the word of an eye-witness they did. Howarth, indeed, made 105 in only a few minutes more than two hours. Determinedly deliberate, he considered his cricket; and concealed the extent of his anxiety about it. A year later he took a wicket - of the South African Denis Dyer - with his first ball in a Test match. He scored a second century against the 1946 Indians at the end of their tour - a spectacular 114 for Leveson-Gower's XI at Scarborough. In the same match, he took four for 38 in their first innings and in the second, during a splendid spell of only ten overs, four for 12, and had the game in his grasp when his captain, Brian Sellers, in an inexplicably ham-handed decision, took him off. He brought him back too late before the rain came to save the match and robbed Howarth of the rare feat of a century and ten wickets in a match. Dick could catch too, and he read a game better than most. His relaxed air was deceptive; he bowled with quite remarkable stamina in the injury-shackled England side in West Indies in 1947-48. Cruelly crippled in recent years, he still followed Worcestershire cricket closely from his shop and house across the bridge from the ground. He died only a few days ago. Gibbons made another poised and accomplished innings; Roley Jenkins, eagerly acquisitive, came by 35 invaluable runs. Otherwise Mankad again sunk his teeth into the innings; Shinde gave his leg-breaks - and a googly which stunned Syd Buller - air and much twist. Those two dealt with the rest of the batting. So India needed 284 to win and, since Mushtaq Ali had strained a leg muscle, Mankad opened with Merchant. Peter Jackson, the off- spinner who doubled as new-ball bowler of slow-medium out-swing, bowled Mankad before the innings settled. Merchant, compact, imperturbable, infallible punisher of the loose ball, proceeded to make a fifty so efficient he might have batted all his life in poor light on damp English wickets, and India were winning when Howarth beat him through the air for an lbw. Amarnath hooked a short ba11 from Perks into his face, retired bleeding, returned and mis-timed a ball from Singleton who, with Perks and Jackson, worked down the batting until 177 for seven. Banerjee came in to partner Modi, who, looking even colder than on Saturday, was languidly but utterly sound; bat all middle. They put on 78 cheerfully authoritative runs before Singleton pushed an off-break through too briskly for Modi. Still Banerjee thrashed on with supreme confidence. He was the biggest member of the team; a cheerful extrovert; given to conversation and jokes in the field, prone to little impromptu dances. A few minutes before tea on the following Saturday, in the touring side's match with Surrey at The Oval, he and Chandu Sarwate came together at 205 for nine. Neither had scored. By 12.30 on Monday, when Parker bowled Bannerjee, they had put on 249 in the highest last-wicket stand ever made in England; and the only occasion in cricket history when numbers ten and eleven have both scored centuries. Moreover, while there may have been two or three, but no more, in streaky strokes, the partnership was chanceless. Both had opened the innings in India; but they did not, happily fo the peace of mind of English bowlers, often thus contradict the batting order. Back at Worcester, Sarwate was soon gone, but Bannerjee thrust on in a genuine attempt to win, which brought the casuals from the bar and ended only when Perks, in characteristic indignation at tail-end impertinence came back to bowl him with a convulsive yorker Worcestershire and, it should be said, the weather - had beaten the touring side by 16 runs. If some of the players were six years out of match practice, it was splendid overcoated entertainment. Any man is entitled to remember the first match he ever reported. This, though, was an historic occasion and, only partly through euphoria, there were many to applaud and few to complain. It was the beginning of a brief Indian summer - with 1947 as its climax- for English county cricket. In some ways it had never been quite so deeply relished before. In many ways an age has passed in the thirty-five years since that match. Eight - or is it nine? - of those who took part are now dead. They are immortal, though, in the memories of many of that rapt, gale-harried, crowd of 1946. For this cricket romantic, the players he watched as a young man do not even age. Indeed, they always bat or bowl as well as - or better than - they ever did, watched through the summer-tinted spectacles which are the eyes of youth. (Thanks : The Guardian, April 1981) Contributed by Syed.M.Ali (sma@dcs.ed.ac.uk)