Thursday 31 July 2014

The debagging

I have now received "Wounded Tiger", Peter Oborne's history of cricket in Pakistan which a first glance shows to be as thoroughly researched as his biography of Basil d'Oliveira.

Naturally, I turned to the section on the debagging of the Pakistani umpire Idris Baig, and it seems that my supposition about the effect this had on Peter Sainsbury's test career was completely mistaken. Sainsbury, along with Tony Lock (Surrey), Alan Moss & Fred Titmus (Middlesex), Ian Thomson (Sussex) and Allan Watkins (Glamorgan) was entirely innocent. Indeed the members of the guilty squad fared rather better in terms of caps or a MCC career: Donald Carr, Billy Sutcliffe, Harold Stephenson, Peter Richardson, Brian Close, Roy Swetman, Jim Parks and Ken Barrington. (A stray thought: that touring party was well-endowed with wicket-keepers.)


No comments: