The Don and The Cat’s Whisker
When I was a boy growing up in Box Hill, Victoria, in those years immediately after the war, the highlight of the year was listening to the Australian cricket team playing against England in the battle for The Ashes. When Australia was in England during our cold winter months, the broadcasts would come in live over the radio and my mother and myself would sit up into the early hours of the morning listening to the Australian team do battle.
On other nights, I would listen while I was in bed on my own special radio that did not need electricity or batteries. My grandfather had given me an old radio which was operated from a crystal. It had a cat’s whisker attached to a little knob which needed constantly to be manipulated to find the right spot to enable us to pick up the radio waves. It ran entirely without electricity, neither main nor battery supplied but just the wonderful force of the crystal and an earth wire to a water pipe and a good aerial from our chimney to my bedroom.
I would lie in bed at night with a pair of headphones on listening to the crackling broadcast of the test cricket all the way from England. Alan McGilvray was broadcasting on the ABC even in those days when real cricket was played. Lying in bed the voices would crackle across the distance. Occasionally, Alan McGilvray would describe a tremendous hit and you could hear the bat hit the ball for a four or a six. I didn’t know until years later that the end of Alan McGilvray’s pencil used to tap his wooden desk at the time the ball made contact with the bat in order to give those of us listening in far off Australia a more realistic presentation of the match.
Sometimes I used to listen to Radio Station 3DB which had a galaxy of stars staying up all night broadcasting the cricket. The team was headed by Dick Cranbourne and Geoff McComas with a number of Australian cricketers like Doug Ring giving us instant comments. They listened by short wave to Britain and then re interpreted the events as if we were listening to it live. By switching from station to station, I was able to hear the ABC direct broadcast and then 20 seconds or so later switch to 3DB and hear the same shot being played again. The commercial commentators were much more eloquent and made every ball quite exciting. Even an approaching draw could be made exciting, and every oval had its flocks of sea gulls.
Lou Toppano was a musician who filled in between overs and a number of guest artists kept the radio audience listening throughout the small hours of the morning. On a few occasions, we actually went into the studio and were part of the all night studio audience. On the wall was a funny cow with eyes that lit up whenever a wicket fell. She was called “Wickety Kate”.
Many nights I would listen to the cricket in bed with my headphones bringing the crackling of the overseas match. I usually fell asleep with the headphones still on which meant that in the morning I would not hear the alarm to get up for school. My mother would eventually waken me. I would be running late and for the rest of the morning not only were my eyes red from the late night, but my ears were red where the headphones had been on them all night.
All of us boys had cricketing heroes in those days. We kept and swapped cigarette cards with pictures of our cricketing team upon them. For every Australian there was no hero greater than Donald Bradman. When he led the Australian team in 1948 to play against the English team in the first series of test matches after the war interest in this country was at fever pitch. Bradman already had an impressive cricketing career built up through the 30’s and interrupted by the war years. He had already scored 8,926 runs in shield cricket at an average of 110 each innings and 6,996 in test cricket at an average of 99.9, and 117 centuries, the highest ever recorded by an Australian batsman. When he went to Britain he had rattled up a total in first class cricket of 26,000 runs at an average of 95 per innings.
His team in 1948 was composed of heroes, all of them larger than life. Lindsay Hassett was there; that great Victorian opener who could face the worst of the English fast bowlers without flinching. Keith Miller was there with his hair slicked back with Brylcream and his tremendous capacities with both bat and ball. Ray Lindwall was capable of producing terror in the hearts of the stoutest English batsmen and Syd Barnes could always be relied upon for an excellent innings. My own personal hero apart from “The Don” was Neil Harvey who was only the boy in the team but already had shown an magnificent eye and a flashing bat.
The English test team had some great players of many years standing. Len Hutton, Neil Compton, and Alec Bedser were enough to strike fear into the heart of any Australian boy listening to the cricket on the other side of the world.
There is something about radio in the early hours of the morning coming from overseas that makes the game much more vivid and real than the direct telecasts of these days. When the commentators would describe the crumbling of the wicket on a hot day the mind imagined radiating cracks opening up in the wicket, loose turf from where the sprigs of the bowlers’ boots had cut up the turf so that the English spinners could bowl onto broken patch extracting furious spin that came back into the batsman’s body making them play awkward shots. In my imagination I saw holes in the pitch, cracking open and rough patches that made it completely unfair for the Australian batsmen.
On other occasions the wickets became “sticky”. It would be a mud bath at Leeds or else it would be raining at Lords and pitch would turn to a quagmire. In my imagination I saw the gallant Australians up to their ankles in mud while the rain loving Poms plopped cricket balls into the wet turf which would grip them and make the sun loving Australians mis hit. How the English took advantage of their weather and their specially prepared pitches.
These days, of course, the television ends all of that! No imagination is required. The pitch looks very little different one day to the other and not even the enthusiasm of Tony Greig feeling the pitch and trying to place a ten cent coin down an imaginary crack can do what the cat’s whisker radio set was able to do in the early hours of the morning.
I guess the night “The Don” played his last Test match at The Oval in England stands out in my mind more than any other cricket match. At the age of 40 years when many others had retired, The Don came in to play his last innings in Britain. The cheering started as the entire crowd stood and saluted the famous Australian captain before he had even walked out of the stand. England’s captain, Norman Yardley, took of his cap, shook hands with The Don and led the crowd in three cheers for him. He only needed to hit four runs to bring his average throughout all of his test career to 100. Eventually the cheering subsided. The expectation was that he would hit another century in his last match in England. The bowler ran in to bowl the first ball. No run. Then the second ball and there was uproar. The crackling was intense. The commentators were silent. Then shouting. We could not believe it. The ball had clicked off The Don’s bat and dislodged the bail and he was out for a duck. All over Australia there was stunned silence. The Australian team went through that entire series undefeated but the bigger issue was not that we had won the series but that “The Don” had not finished with a century which he so richly deserved.
I don’t remember the bowler of that wicked ball, nor can I remember who the commentator was, but in a tremendous tribute I heard words which were going to stay in my mind over the years and influence me for good. “And when The Great Scorer comes to mark against your name, He’ll not mark ‘won’ or ‘lost’, but how you played the game.”
The Don always played the game.
A few years later I was to come under the influence of another famous Australian cricketer, the man who had been the captain of Australia when The Don was just a batsman in the team. W.M. (Bill) Woodfull, who had led Australia during the vicious “body line” series, had passed into the Australian record books for his outstanding leadership, courage and prowess as an opening batsman for Australia. Bill Woodfull was the headmaster of my High School. He was a marvellous man and his signature still graces a number of reports and certificates that I have.
On a number of occasions, after school hours, I would ask him questions about my hero “The Don” and discuss that last match heard by cat’s whisker across the ocean miles.
Thirty years later I would be addressing a dinner in Adelaide. I was ushered up to the head table to meet a group of people I did not know. I did not catch the name of the man sitting beside me, except that his Christian name was Don. Suddenly, half way through a bowl of soup, I recognised the face and an awesome feeling came upon me. I was sitting not next to another man called “Don” but this was “The Don”. Every memory of that last test match hear via the cat’s whisker came flooding into my mind through the rest of that meal. I cannot remember one thing I said at the dinner that day which was so well received by the hundreds of businessmen present. I can only remember the fact that I had sat next to “The Don”.
Psychiatrists talk about role models and I guess for all of us boys the leadership, sportsmanship and sense of fair play was clearly illustrated by “The Don”.
I often thought about him and of repeating his feats in our school cricket team, as I walked up Devon Street, opposite the cow paddock, to No.55 Birdwood Street, Box Hill, a great city which still a village where the adults were kind and the children grew up responsibly.
GORDON MOYES
