Ashes Chronicles – Part 5: Illy blasts ‘The Sussex Tour’ – 1962/63

HUW TURBERVILL recounts a series dominated by Ken Barrington, Alan Davidson and a desire for entertainment. A 1-1 series draw would see Australia retain the urn

“None of the professionals were ever invited to dinner… not that we would want to have gone, anyway. But all the amateurs dined with the Duke of Norfolk and that created divisions. The team were provided with four cars, and only the amateurs used them. I never felt at ease in the set-up. It was an issue all through the 1960s.” 

In 1962, the distinction between amateurs and gentlemen in cricket was abolished, to the disappointment of many, including Norman Preston, editor of the 1963 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, who wrote: “By doing away with the amateur, cricket is in danger of losing the spirit of freedom and gaiety which the best amateur players brought to the game.” 

Those who embraced the non-professional ethos were still in charge of England’s tour to Australia in the winter of 1962/63, however, much to the frustration of Ray Illingworth, as he made clear to me in his damning quote above. 

“Ah yes, ‘The Sussex tour’,” Tom Graveney said affectionately. 

“There was a lot of Sussex/southern bias on that tour,” said Illingworth, rather less affectionately.  

England were led by an Oxbridge captain and vice-captain – Ted Dexter and Colin Cowdrey – with a vicar, David Sheppard, as senior player. The Earl Marshal of England – otherwise known as the Duke of Norfolk – was manager. That appointment pleased Dexter, captain of Sussex, of whom the Duke was president. The pair also shared a common interest in horse racing.  

“The story goes that the Duke woke up one night, and said, ‘I’d like to manage the tour to Australia’,” Illingworth told me. “So his wife said, ‘Well, Marmaduke, you must tell the MCC’.” 

Alec Bedser was assistant manager. “Alec did all the work,” said Graveney, before adding more diplomatically than Illingworth would have done: “But the Duke was a fine ambassador.”

Illingworth and I talked just before Christmas 2009. He only played in the fourth and fifth Tests of that series, and understandably had fewer fond memories of the gruelling trip than the all-conquering one he led eight years later. 

“Ted was not as bad as some of them,” said Illingworth. “He was the best of the amateurs. You could speak to him as a man, trust him… but I didn’t trust the others. They said they were going to do one thing, and then went off and did something entirely different. Ted drifted off a bit, though, and he made mistakes in selection – we didn’t pick the right sides for the right pitches.

^{Richie Benaud was under pressure to deliver an exciting series}

“Cowdrey was less easy to deal with. Sometimes he didn’t fancy opening, and he’d pick and choose where he wanted to bat. It used to annoy everyone.” 

Illingworth also recounted a story about how he was forced to do 12th man’s duties – despite having been ill for a week – so Cowdrey could take his wife to the cinema. 

With a more professional approach, Illingworth firmly believes, England could have achieved a considerably better result than the 1-1 draw with which Australia retained the Ashes.  

England won the second Test at Melbourne – Dexter called it “the greatest elation that he ever had in cricket” – only to see Australia hit back in the third, at Sydney.

“We played pretty well at Melbourne and we should have gone on to win the series. It was unprofessional,” said Illingworth.  

His fellow Yorkshire professional, Fred Trueman, agreed: “A lot of tactical mistakes were made – vital ones – and I reckon Ted must take the blame. I liked the man a lot and he could bat beautifully, but he was no captain of England. He had more theory than Darwin, but little practical experience to back it up.” 

Not everyone had been a fan of Len Hutton’s professional captaincy, and with the English authorities concerned about diminishing domestic crowds, the selectors felt England had to entertain in Australia.  

RWV Robins, chairman of selectors, declared at the start of the previous summer’s five-Test series against Pakistan: “We want a captain – above everything else – who must answer every bid or challenge Australia make.” 

Dexter had captained in the first two Tests against Pakistan, while Cowdrey took over for the third before being struck down by a kidney complaint. This allowed Dexter to resume, and his 172 at The Oval in the final Test, as England romped to a 4-0 win, sealed his appointment for the winter. Sheppard had not played enough cricket to be considered seriously, as he was warden of the Mayflower Family Centre (a philanthropic institution) in London, while and Cowdrey was seen as lacking ambition. 

Captaincy had no adverse effect on Dexter’s batting – his 481 runs remain a record by an England captain in a series in Australia – but many felt he was distant and detached. His leadership was seen as unimaginative and rigid, and the Australians found him aloof, reminiscent of Douglas Jardine.

^{Ken Barrington was the top-scorer in the series with 581 runs}

Bedser enjoyed a beer in the bar with wicketkeeper Alan Smith and Brian Statham throughout the trip, but Dexter never joined them. This alone did not make him unpopular with all the players, but John Woodwork of The Times said he was “undoubtedly shy, often bloody-minded and sometimes even naïve”.

Statham said: “Ted was one captain I never fully understood. I don’t think anyone in the dressing room did, either. He did things at times that were difficult to understand. He made moves, and bowling changes, which were completely out of keeping with the run of the game and which sometimes resulted in the opposition wriggling off the hook.” 

There was a degree of controversy and disquiet in the ranks when Dexter’s wife, Susan, arrived to undertake some modelling work, sometimes with her husband. Keith Miller said Dexter had “turned the England captaincy into a commercial gimmick”. Dexter was furious; his wife was reduced to tears. 

“The newspapers and television programmes were full of where the Duke’s horses were running, where David Sheppard was preaching and what Mrs Dexter was wearing,” said Trueman. “I became fed up with this, reasoning that we had come to Australia to play cricket. So I was frank when a newspaperman had asked me what I thought of the tour up to then. I told him I was a bit confused, not knowing whether we were supposed to be playing under Jockey Club rules, for Dexter Enterprises, or engaged on a missionary hunt.” 

The series still witnessed a great tussle between the two captains. Richie Benaud was still at the peak of his powers, and Australia’s ‘Great Escape’ in England in 1961 was fresh in the memory. In the fourth Test at Old Trafford, England had needed 256 to win in three hours and 50 minutes, but slumped from 150 for 1 to 201 all out. Victory would have put them 2-1 up, with one to play. Instead, it finished 2-1.  

That defeat had irked Dexter, and he was desperate to put things right. He and Benaud promised entertainment – a pledge they struggled to keep. But the Australian played the media well, which was key in maintaining the pressure on his opposite number. Benaud was the first Test captain to give press conferences at the end of a day’s play, and Dexter struggled with this.  

England were optimistic nevertheless when they left on September 27, 1962, knowing they would not return for six months, having played 32 matches.

For the first time, they flew part of the way, as far as Aden, which was still a British Crown colony. They moved on to Ceylon and played a one-day match on October 3 before boarding the recently built cruise liner, the SS Canberra, for the journey to Fremantle, Western Australia, arriving on October 9.  

Dexter, ever the innovator, encountered athlete Gordon Pirie on board, and invited him to conduct exercise classes with the team. “I concluded my final session with him by expressing the hope that he could swim because if he kept bothering me he’d have every chance of going over the side,” said Trueman.

Thanks to social permissiveness Australia had noticeably changed when the tourists arrived. It was also a country at war, in Vietnam, and would remain so until 1970. Into this growing maelstrom strode an archetypal member of the British aristocracy. 

^{Alan Davidson tucked into England's batting line-up with 24 wickets}

The larger-than-life Duke stole the show in the early stages of the trip, as Ian Wooldridge described in The Daily Mail.  

“Dressing formally for dinner each night was obligatory,” he wrote. “The most urgent items on the agenda were the official evening receptions given by the British High Commissioner, the State Premier and the local cricket administration. These were to be repeated in every state and were invariably attended by many attractive wives and daughters of our generous hosts. To my knowledge, three English marriages collapsed during that, but there may have been more. There were certainly several narrow escapes.  

“The presence of the Duke evoked much local media interest. His Grace was the most warm and genial of men, but he had had few brushes with day-to-day reality and even fewer with the vulgar press. To get to know us, he gave a dinner party at which he said: ‘I wish this to be a completely informal tour. You will merely address me as ‘Sir’.” 

Illingworth, as we know, was less appreciative of the Duke’s role. “We’d arrive in each state, and he would make a little speech about ‘The bonding of Commonwealth’ – and did absolutely nothing else. Alec did all the work.  

“Billy Griffiths, the MCC secretary, even flew out for a few weeks so the Duke could go home for Christmas. This was at a time when they said there was no money. It was penny-pinching stuff, meal allowances and so on… but they could fly the Duke home!”  

Wisden explained that it was so he could ‘attend to private duties’. In his absence, Australian newspapers had a rare old time, running headlines like ‘Dukie deserts his men’. And when he arrived back in, he fobbed off reporters by saying that he had gone home to ‘feed the ducks’. Woolridge knew the real reason for the Duke’s apparent retreat, though: there was a far more serious matter for the Duke to attend to. The Duke made Wooldridge and three other reporters swear to keep the real reason for the trip secret – it was to conduct a rehearsal in London for Winston Churchill’s funeral. 

Illingworth said that the Duke struggled without some of the creature comforts of home. “In some of the up-country places it was still a cowboy town,” he said Illingworth. “There would be long bars, on which you would slip the beers down. I’d done National Service, so I was OK, but sometimes we would have only one washroom, at the end of the corridor. It was funny seeing the Duke of Norfolk having to share with us, I can tell you!” 

England made an inauspicious start to the cricket, losing by 10 wickets to a Combined XI in Perth. They then went down by an innings to New South Wales. Confidence improved ahead of the Tests, after they nearly forced an unlikely win against a strong Queensland side, even though the hosts racked up 433 for 7 in their first innings.  

The Ashes Tests were to be contested over five days of six hours each for the first time, as opposed to six days of five hours.  

🎙 "𝙈𝙤𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜, 𝙚𝙫𝙚𝙧𝙮𝙤𝙣𝙚"

The legendary Richie Benaud would have turned 90 today 🇦🇺pic.twitter.com/Q16Zt0LzVw

— The Cricketer (@TheCricketerMag) October 6, 2020

Australia had been purged of the throwers and draggers of the previous visit, – although the notorious Ian Meckiff played in two games for Victoria against England, but without much success. 

The captains performed particularly well in the series opener. After Brian Booth hit a century in Australia’s 404, Dexter responded with 70 in the reply, Benaud taking 6 for 115, his best figures of the series. Bill Lawry fell two short of a century as Australia declared, setting England 378 to win at 63 runs a hour. Dexter went for 99 as his side held out on 278 for 6 with nine men crowding around the bat. It was the first time an Australia v England Test at Brisbane had been drawn. There were 14 50s in the match – equalling the Ashes record of Headingley 1948. 

“Ted and Richie went at each other hard in the first Test,” Graveney said, “There was a lot of verbal sparring, and Ted tried to hit Richie for six. Ted was also a sharp seamer, beautifully built [he took three wickets in the game, but not Benaud’s]. It was a great contest within a contest.” 

The second Test was played over New Year. England were in good spirits after beating Victoria by five wickets, and followed up by winning the Test on the same ground, by seven wickets, and with an hour and a quarter to spare. Dexter scored 93 and Cowdrey 113, as England overtook Australia’s first-innings total. Despite Booth’s second century of the series the hosts could not cope with Trueman who took five wickets in the second innings and they were all out for 248. Sheppard had fallen for a duck in the first innings, and dropped two catches, prompting Trueman to half-joke: “You might keep your eyes shut when your praying, Vicar, but I wish you'd keep ’em open when I'm bowling.” Sheppard made amends with the last of his three Test hundreds and was run out going for the winning single. Cowdrey and Dexter maintained their personal form with half-centuries.

Dexter had made a brave move late on the fourth day. England lost Geoff Pullar, but Dexter forsook a nightwatchman to go in himself. “I felt it important, as captain, to show an example. I suppose it would have been egg-on-my-face time if I’d got out but you have to show confidence in yourself, even if it means a gamble.” 

He rates the innings, which was undemonstrative by his standards, as the greatest of his life. It was England’s first Test win in Australia since Adelaide in 1954/55, and it had been achieved in front of a quarter of a million spectators. “It was a personal triumph for me,” said Dexter. “The selectors could not make up their minds, but in the end I got the job and I felt that this victory justified the faith that people had had in me.  

“The strange thing is that it did not come to me until we were sitting on the coach outside the ground after the match. Then it suddenly dawned on me that I was captain of England and we’d beaten Australia on their own ground.” 

England did not hold their lead for long. “At Melbourne, we’d won with three seamers,” said Illingworth, “but at Sydney, because we were 1-0 up, Ted asked me what I thought about playing an extra batsman. I could see some merit in that, so I said fine, but we must field two spinners. But we went with the same side as Melbourne. They should have picked me or David Allen to play alongside Fred. He needed a spinner at the other end to create pressure. We had a team meeting, and the management said, ‘Does anyone have anything to say?’ So I said: ‘Yes, why don’t we pick the right side for the right pitch?’ That got them all of a fluster, and cost me some of my bonus money.”

England collapsed in the face of Bobby Simpson’s wrist-spin in the first innings, and when Australia batted, then scored 91 to give his side a lead of 40. Fred Titmus, who had taken four wickets in Australia’s first innings in Melbourne, justified the selectors’ faith in him ahead of the off-spinners Illingworth and Allen, by taking 7 for 79, including four for five in 58 balls.” 

^{The Adelaide Oval - venue for the drawn fourth Test}

“It was different on that trip,” said Illingworth. “If you could bowl an armball, and it drifted towards slip, as Fred could, the umpires would give lbws. On later tours they stopped giving them. However, Fred also used the wind beautifully from fine-leg.” 

But England lost the match, and possibly their hopes of regaining the Ashes, on the third day, as they stumbled to 86 for 6. Davidson added five wickets to his four in the first innings to bowl England out for 104 next day, despite wicketkeeper John Murray, who damaged his shoulder catching Lawry in the first innings, batting one-handed to survive 100 minutes for three runs. Australia made the required 67 for the loss of two wickets. 

The series had been exciting this far, but it petered out in two draws that saw Dexter and Benaud criticised for failing to encourage enterprising cricket. Indeed, some of the criticism coming Dexter’s way was from the opposition camp, and in particular from Neil Harvey, who was put down three times in his penultimate Test on his way to 154. The fielding was inadequate, and England never got close to winning. 

The only high spot was provided by Ken Barrington, who reached three figures with a six on his way to 132 not out. Illingworth told me Barrington was a nervous starter. “We were very close,” said Illingworth. “We shared a room and our families even holidayed together. But he was a nervous wreck by this stage after facing Charlie Griffith in the West Indies in 1959/60. Ken woke up in the night in a terrible state. Early on in the innings he would plant his front foot down the wicket and flash at the ball, and it would fly over the slips for four. If he survived, he’d settle down…” 

Statham overtook Bedser’s Test record of 236 wickets in the match, but Graveney said: “It was a bit of a stalemate. Australia were bowling down the legside so we couldn’t touch them, but we were worried about them getting the new ball.” 

Dexter’s leadership again came under fire when England went to Canberra to play a Prime Minister’s XI. It was Donald Bradman’s first game for 14 years, and he was now 55. Graveney was bowling and the crowd just wanted to see Bradman roll back the years for a few overs, but Dexter brought on Statham, and Bradman was out fifth ball. It was “thoughtless”, said Woodcock. 

It was nothing like the criticism Dexter would face in the fifth Test at Sydney, however. Illingworth, for one, was not best pleased when asked to open in the second innings in place of Cowdrey. It was a slow pitch, devoid of grass, and Dexter fielded all three off-spinners. England made 321 in the first innings, Barrington scoring 101, and then Burge made 103 as Australia totalled 349. Titmus took 5 for 103 – bringing his final haul in the Tests to 21. “I had not batted between the Tests,” said Illingworth. “I’d be padded up, then Cowdrey – standing in for Dexter – would come over and say, ‘Let someone else have a knock’. I was fielding in the covers in that fifth Test, next to Fred Titmus, and I said, ‘I bet you a quid they’ll come over and ask me to open because Cowdrey doesn’t fancy it’. I won my pound. Ted said: “These players are so good, coming in the middle order.” I told Ted: ‘I’ll do it for you, but I think it’s a disgrace.’ As it was, Sheppard and I put on 40, our second-best opening stand of the series. It was one of the reasons that I didn’t perform for England until I became captain. I was not bothered about playing for England because of this type of thing… certainly, there was no financial gain.”  

To compound matters, Dexter failed to give his side enough time to force a result, leaving his declaration until lunch on the final day. It left Australia needing 241, but they lost four wickets and finished nearly 90 runs short. There was slow-hand clapping and booing as the players left the field. Trueman took one of those wickets and finished with 20 in the series. By the end of the New Zealand leg of the tour – where England won all three Tests – he had become the first to take 250 in Tests. 

“The final Test in Australia was a fiasco,” admitted Dexter, “both from the watching, and to a large extent, from a playing point of view. In one game, the whole of a good tour and much fine cricket was cast aside. I had my last brush with the press when I said, lightheartedly, that the Ashes were a bane and a nuisance, and that if they were abolished and each man paid £1,000 for winning there would probably have been a result.” 

The remark was ill-judged and critics demanded that he never captain England again. However, he was still in charge when the Australians visited in 1964.

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