David Frith - Silence Of The Heart: Cricket Suicides

CONTENTS

OTHER BOOKS BY DAVID FRITH

Runs in the Family (with John Edrich)

My Dear Victorious Stod: a biography of A.E. Stoddart

The Archie Jackson Story

The Fast Men: a 200-year cavalcade of speed bowlers

Cricket Gallery: 50 profiles of famous players from The Cricketer (ed.)

Great Moments in Cricket (as Andrew Thomas)

England versus Australia: a pictorial history of the Test matches since 1877

The Ashes 77 (with Greg Chappell)

The Golden Age of Cricket 18901914

The Illustrated History of Test Cricket (ed. with Martin Tyler)

The Ashes 79

Thommo (with Jeff Thomson)

Rothmans Presents 100 Years England v Australia

(ed. with D. Ibbotson & R. Dellor)

The Slow Men

Crickets Golden Summer: paintings in a garden (with Gerry Wright)

England v Australia Test Match Records 18771985 (ed.)

Pageant of Cricket

Guildford Jubilee 19381988

By His Own Hand

Stoddys Mission: the first great Test series 189495

Test Match Year 199697 (ed.)

Caught England, Bowled Australia (autobiography)

The Trailblazers: the first English cricket tour of Australia 186162

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licenced or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the authors and publishers rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

Epub ISBN: 9781780573939

Version 1.0

www.mainstreampublishing.com

Copyright David Frith, 2001

Foreword J.M. Brearley, 2001

All rights reserved

The moral right of the author has been asserted

First published in Great Britain in 2001 by

MAINSTREAM PUBLISHING COMPANY (EDINBURGH) LTD

7 Albany Street

Edinburgh EH1 3UG

ISBN 1 84018 406 X

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for insertion in a newspaper, magazine or broadcast

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ILLUSTRATIONS

Between pages 128 and 129

1 Charlie Skipwith

2 George Harrison

3 David Bairstow (right) with Godfrey Evans

4 Danny Kelleher

5 Sunil Jayasinghe

6 Shane Julien [West Indies Cricket Annual ]

7 Drewy Stoddart

8 Arthur Shrewsbury

9 Will Scotton

10 Montague Druitt

11 George Griffith

12 Jack Iverson

13 Sid Barnes (right) with Don Bradman

14 Barnes off the field

15 Jim Burke

16 News of Burkes death

17 Albert Relf with wife and daughter

18 Relf coaching

19 Dave Sherwood

20 Cyril Bland

21 Tommy Cook

22 Peter Doggart

23 George Arlington

24 Marjorie Pollard

25 Aubrey Faulkner

26 Faulkner later in life

27 Vincent Tancred

28 George Shepstone

29 Eddie van der Merwe [Brian Bassano]

30 Glen Hall

31 Joe Partridge

32 John Wiley

33 Stuart Leary (centre)

34 J.W. Zulch

35 Harold Gimblett

36 Gimblett in action

37 Raymond Robertson-Glasgow

38 John Gale [ Jane Bown]

39 Berry Sarbadhikary

40 Percy Hardy

41 Arthur Sanders

42 C.P. Nickalls

43 R.J. Lucas

44 H.F. Meeking

45 C.H. Benton

46 Alan Rotherham

47 Ronald Frank Vibart

48 Sutherland Law

49 Cyril Buxton

50 Harry Pickett

51 Fred Bull

52 Richard Humphrey

53 Arthur Woodcock

54 Billy Bruce

55 Dick Wardill

56 Tom Wills

57 Jack Cuffe

58 Bruce Such

59 Fenwick Cresswell

60 Noel Harford

61 William David Frame

62 Barry Fisher

63 Baqa Jilani

64 Cotar Ramaswami

65 Rusi Modi

66 Tom Hall

67 Harry Roberts

68 Desmond Donnelly

69 Ted Moult

70 Willie Llewelyn

71 Brock Williams

72 Hugh Simmonds

73 Tony Jose

74 Ian Gibson

75 John Lomas

76 Tony Davis

77 Hugh Thompson

78 Albert Trott

79 Trott getting older

80 Trott: Australian reject, Middlesex hero

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors special appreciation is extended to Philip Thorn, Brian Hunt, Duggie Ettlinger and Brian Bassano for important notifications; to Mike Brearley for his perceptive foreword; and to Eddie Clark of Mainstream Publishing for his caring and constructive surveillance of my typescript. The following friends and acquaintances and even a couple of close relatives have also provided help of varying magnitude in this project and the authors warmest gratitude is extended to them: Jonathan Agnew, Maurice Alexander, Don Ambrose, Chris Aspin, Jack Bailey, Philip Bailey, David Barber (Football Association), Stephen Best, John Bishop, Robert Brooke, Jack Burrell, Tracy Callis, Don Cameron, Donald Carr, Richard Cashman, the late Geoffrey Copinger, Tony Cozier, Brian Croudy, Brian Crowley, John Day, Phil Derriman, Hubert Doggart, Mike Doherty, Anandji Dossa, Alan Dowding, Graham Dunbar, Robin Feather, Ric Finlay, David Foot, Graeme Fowler, Debbie Frith, John Frith, David Green, Imogen Grosberg, Walter Hadlee, Gideon Haigh, Bob Harragan, Chris Harte, the late Reg Hayter, Jonathan Heher, Andrew Hignell, Eric Hill, James Hogg, Robin Isherwood, the late David Jowett, David Lloyd, Eric Lomas, Jeremy Malies, Jack McLaughlin, John McMahon, Ken Mills, Barbara Moor, Greg Morrissey, Pat Mullins, Peter Nathan, Don Neely, Brian OGorman, Neville Oliver, the late Ossie Osborne, Roger Packham, Peter Parfitt, Mudar Patherya, Gordon Phillips, Bill Pinder, the late Terry Power, Qamar Ahmed, Wanda Reynolds, Netta Rheinberg, Clive Rice, Joseph Romanos, Michael Ronayne, Veronica Rose, John Rowlands, David Roylance, Geoff Sando, Charanpal Singh Sobti, Subroto Sirkar, Alan Smith, Philip Snow, Mike Spurrier, Terry Taylor, John Thicknesse, Ern Toovey, Nigel Ward, Richard Williams, Alf Wilson, Wendy Wimbush, Geoff Wright. Thanks are also extended to Melbourne Cricket Club. A number of others offered to assist but never got around to doing so. The author thanks them all the same for the kind initial thought.

TO THE

MEMORY OF

ROSIE,

MY DEAR SISTER-IN-LAW,

WHO SO MUCH

WANTED TO LIVE

FOREWORD

Suicide is almost always a terrible thing. What drives a person to this destruction of his or her whole world?

No doubt there are many kinds of suicide. At one extreme are the Stoic deaths, so admired in ancient Rome. In the same vein, so to speak, was that of Socrates, who died, according to Plato, as he had lived, philosophically and with open-minded scepticism about whether there is a life to follow. He took the hemlock willingly. The state had sentenced him to death but he had taken no steps to save his skin, nominating as his proposed penalty after being found guilty of corrupting the youth of the city that he should be dined at the states expense for the rest of his life. Similarly we may admire, however ambivalently, someone who, when beset by crippling illness and the prospect of unrelenting pain, takes action to end it while still in control.