|
|
||
|
Mr Elwyn Thomas
After a school team away match in which I had played well, we were returning to Brecon in a bus and Ceff sat beside me. After talking generally about the game he asked me if I would like to accompany him to a cricket match at the Cardiff Arms Park between Glamorgan and an RAF Eleven. It was war time and it would be a scratch team but I might enjoy it. I had to talk hard and fast to get my father's permission and money for my train and bus fare from my mother but in the end I succeeded. I had to get up very early on the Saturday morning to catch the train to Merthyr and thence to Cardiff. Elwyn and Dilys his wife and John Sutherland were waiting at the station. They were all members of the Glamorgan CC and I was to be their guest in the Grandstand.
It was my first visit to Cardiff and to first class cricket. To my delight Wally Hammond was playing for the RAF. They fielded first and Hammond was at first slip. They had a very fast bowler who made a batsman edge a ball into the slips. It travelled like a rocket to Hammond's left side. He was crouching on his heels, never moved an inch but simply dropped his left hand and flicked the ball up in front of him taking it on the drop in both hands. It was the sort of brilliant catch for which he was famous. After lunch he came out at number 3 and in the course of 30 minutes or so hit a brilliant century including 8 sixes one of which landed in a picnic hamper next to me shattering everything in it. He retired after he got his hundred and I made my way to the gate where he was to pass into the rooms. A cluster of boys was waiting for signatures but Hammond cuffed one of them out of the way. As he passed, within a couple of feet of me, I could see that he was drunk. Just like the picnic basket, I was shattered; to see my hero in this state. When I returned to my seat, I blurted out what I had seen. "Forget that" said Ceff, "Just remember that you have been privileged to see a masterly innings that you will never forget". A few days later when I was resting on the grass at a sports afternoon, Ceff strolled by and handed me a book marked at a chapter "Cardus on the young Hammond". What an impression on a young boy.
Several times I played cricket with Ceff for the town team and he was an elegant but very slow batsman. He was loath to run short runs; I'm sure he thought I was trying to run him out.
Several times, years later when I was at Uni and he with the BBC in Cardiff, we would meet and go to the cricket and on one memorable day in 1948 we travelled to see Bradman's Invincibles score 708 in a day against Essex. Everyone scored 100s except Miller, who wandered to the crease waving his bat to the crowd, took guard and lifted his bat out of the way of the first ball, allowing it to hit his wicket then wandered back still waving to the crowd who loved it. Ceff thought that gesture epitomised all that was great about the game. Sadly, that was the last time I saw Ceff.
After 1 year of 6th Form at Brecon, an opportunity presented for me to transfer to Pontypridd County School to complete my HSC and so my schooling, indeed my life in Brecon effectively came to an end. It was a very moving occasion for me in 1998 to return to Brecon (55 years after leaving, nearly 50 years as a doctor, 40 of them as a GP/surgeon in Australia) to a school reunion and to meet again old school mates Llew Williams, John Davies, Andrew Jones, Peter Prosser, John King and Eric Smith who were exactly as I remembered them; perhaps a little older.
|
||