“PATSY”

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22356, 1 September 1934, Page 12

“PATSY”

HENDREN THE ADMIRED A DIFFIDENT BATSMAN SOME GREAT FEATS He was baptised Elias and the crowds would have none of it; they were right, too, for he is Patsy not only by name but by nature (writes Neville Cardus in the Manchester Guardian). His smile says Patsy: sometimes it is so enormous that it hides the. little man; one fine day he will be given out smile before wicket. He represents democracy at Lord’s in the same way that Lord Aberdare and his forward drive reoresented the aristocracy of the pavilion and the Long Room. He is the idol of the Tavern—that rich part of Lord’s where East End is West End and West End is East. Sir James Barrie watches cricket near the Tavern. “ It’s surprising,” he told me once, “how many people you meet near the Tavern who know you. Only the other day a man in a cap came up to me and slapped me on the shoulder and said. ‘ ’Elio. George.’” I have seen men leave their drinks at the bar of the Tavern when Patsy has just come into bat. I don't know where ho played his cricket as a boy, but I like to think it was on a rough common amongst dirty-faced, hapby urchins, the wickct-kocpcr using a coat, one bat for the lot of them. To this day Patsy runs his first run always hugging his bat in his two arms as though afraid to let it go from his possession. To give your bat up was out when I was very young. And Patsy has never grown up, and never will. The skill of the specialist often keeps us at a distance. We bow before the majesty of Hobbs’s flawless machine, but we do not feel we can ever understand it or become part of it. So with the cricket of a C. B. Fry or an Arthur Shrewsbury; we feel the presence of the straight bat of the much too virtuous life. It is the cross bat that is the sign of the cricketer beloved by the multitude: one touch of original error makes us kin. Besides, no cricketer is able to make great strokes with a straignt hat, which is the supporting crutch of mediocrity. The cut and the hook cannot be performed save by a cross bat, and no batsman is great if he is not master of these two strokes, Hendren’s bat is as straight as Macartney’s was. or Johnny Tyldesley’s. or David Denton s •—and no straighter. NOT ARTIFICIAL.

His batting is far more than grammatical. You can achieve good grammar and yet remain inarticulate. Hendren’s strokes are idiomatic; they have about them the smack of the place which he was born and bred. An innings by Hendren is alive, because the energy that goes into it is Patsy s energy. He has in all his career made not one artificial stroke. Sometimes he plays forward dubiously at spin bowling (on other days he jumps out on quick feet and flogs it far and wide), but the timidity he exhibits then is a throw-back to the self-taught little hero who years ago was the father of the man. He has never been able quite to believe in the greatness and the glory he has achieved; perhaps, he seems to say to us sometimes, it is all a dream and I am poor little Patsy yet, intended by Providence to go bird nesting all my life, not to play for England under the terribly austere eyes of the pavilion at Lord’s, but to scamper about Turnham Green on summer evenings, Hendren has known what it is to score 3000 runs in a season and stand on the top of English averages with the wonderful figures of 77. But conquests and mastery do not etale his hearty do not imprison him in a ring of routine. He simply cannot take achievement for granted. All boys who play cricket are anxious to break their “ ducks ” every time they go out to bat, and they all fear that they won’t. Patsy is like that to this day—this is his secret that makes us adore him. He has never become blase through success. Nobody runs a first run with Patsy’s open delight and trankfulness; how his feet twinkle across the wicket! He is even afraid they’ll run him out. HOBBS HIS HERO. You never will see Hendren opening his score by means of a casual, but thoroughly assured, push to mid-off and a leisurely Jaunt along the pitch; that is Hobbs’s supreme way of announcing that he has begun ; Hendren, I am prepared to swear, looks upon Hobbs with the awed adoration of a lad of 14. Some day Patsy will lie seen outside the Oval waiting diffidently for the cricketers to come out, autograph book in his hands. I am perhaps making too much of his lovable humours. He is really one of the most pugnacious batsmen of all time, a terror to bowlers. Adversity toughened him, for Patsy has been through the mill. In 1921 circumstances nearly broke his heart. He starved in the midst of plenty. Day after day runs burgeoned from his bat’s end, save on the very days he most dearly needed them—the days of the test matches. He went to Nottingham, county honours thick upon him. And one of the most ferocious breakbacks ever bowled knocked his leg stump flying—“ Hendren, b Gregory 0.” A fortnight later, at Lord’s, Patsy went to the wicket with his bat still red hot from a dazzljng centnrv the day before. And another breakback fired'him out—“ Hendren, b M'Donald 4.” Hendren played no more for England that year, but he waxed fat on runs in county cricket. He visited Australia with'Douglas’s eleven and with Gilligan’s eleven, and he many times was fortune's fool, in luck one day when his side was doing well, but bankrupt for a mere 20 when England were wanting only 50 in a second innings for victory. Poor Patsy, how he suffered —and how he made the rest of ns j suffer! I remember the second test . match in the 1925 Australian season — at Melbourne. England lost by 81 j runs; they were winning towards the j close of play of the sixth afternoon. 1 Patsy come in to bat at 5 o’clock or thereabouts. It was in his power to win that match, and perhaps the rubber. He got ns far as 18—then Gregory bowled him. How we chastised him by word of mouth on that cold winter morning when we heard the news! “Let his name be anathema! ” HIS NATURE.

Often in this our life do we begin by cursing men and end by loving them. | A sense of the common fallibility of all flesh makes ns kin. No man is lovable who is invincible. Patsy has crowded his days with glorious deeds, yet tomorrow, as he goes forth to bat against Australia, every one of us will know that he is setting out on another adventure and that our wishes and affection must be with him for a while, until he has crashed a four past mid-on. We really ought not to feel diffident about him, and he ought really not to > feel diffident about himself. His ' technique is magnificent; his strokes are many and powerful. But his nature is not grim and hard; that is why we call him Patsy and not Elias. See him fielding near the wicket (a few years ago he was one of our swiftest outfields, but now he is more than 40 years old). He bends forward with his hands on his knees and his anatomy sticking out comically. If ho misfields a ball he becomes momentarily forlorn, his whole body wilts. When he

catches a great catch he is the happiest man alive. I shall never forget the way he finished off the Test match at Lords the other week; he dashed in from (“silly”) mid-off, and held the ball falling over and round and round like a clown in the circus. A day or two afterwards, at Lords he chased a hit to the boundary, and a little girl retrieved the ball. Patsy made a motion with his right arm, representing a throw. He was getting in touch with the little girl, showing her how to send the ball back to him. That was Patsy all over; is it a wonder that people are fond of him, here and in Australia, and everywhere!