Hammond

When I was a kid the name of Wally Hammond sent a thrill through me. Of course, I hadn't seen him on television because that had not then been invented, nor had I seen him in person because I did not then have an interest in Glamorgan cricket; my interest was only in hearing about him from radio commentaries. He had a reputation for displays of brilliance at times when his team were in the depths of depair. "He came in," I remember my ciousin saying, "when his team was on its knees and the first thing he did was knock a six." My father thought he was the best cricketer in the world - Bradman was too dull in comparision.
Now, reading an article in today's Daily Telegraph, my admiration for the man, who had only lived on radio and in my imagination, waned drastically. He doesn't seem a nice guy at all. In fact, the opposite. A snob who never travelled with the team he captained in Australia - Denis Compton said he never saw him until the game took place; a womaniser of the worst kind who absolutely neglected his alcoholic and depressed wife. I recall dimly that he returned from Australia in 1946-47 under a cloud due, it was rumoured, "to woman trouble". Then there was his rivalry with Bradman whom he had encountered in the 1928-29 series in Australia; then Bradman was a youngster batting at number 7 and scoring as few runs. But later when Bradman came into his own, Hammond could not live with the envy he felt for him. So his batting went down, his reputation went down and then he was taken ill in The West Indies with a "bug" which was probably siphillis.
Why do we put people on pedestals when all they are are sportsmen kicking balls around or throwing balls around. Well, cricket has always been different; it's somehow always been on a higher plane of sportsmanship. There's always been something elegant and gentlemanly about it. Hasn't there?
Well, sort of. But there was bodyline bowling. And now there's 20/20. It's not now in the tradition of that portrayed in Terence Rattigan's film "The Last Test" any more.
I used to have an oldish neighbour, a short, fat man who suffered terribly with asthma; he and I used to watch Glamorgan cricketers, playing on their old field in the centre of Cardiff, from the roof of the flats in Westgate Street. In his hardly-able-to-breathe voice he said "I once saw Wally Hammond play here. He came out and, first ball, he knocked a six into the bowling green." The bowling green was some distance away. I watched a lot of cricket at the Arms Park ground and never saw anyone hit a ball into the blowing green.