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THE PROFIT PROPHET
“Nothing matters very much and few things matter at all” was the opinion of Arthur James Balfour, Conservative prime minister in the early years of the last century. He can hardly have been a fan of our summer game.
The plain fact is that while recession stalks the land and house prices fall faster than a Man U player in the opposition box, and while global warming seems likely to turn Motherwell into Morocco and Guildford into the Gobi, there is really only one sensible topic of conversation for a proper Englishman to essay: the state of Andrew ‘Freddy’ Flintoff’s ankle.
Not since Beckham’s troublesome foot gave tabloid journalists the word ‘metatarsal’ to roll around on their tongues a couple of years back has there been such concern about a young Englishman’s lower leg. Will it be strong enough to bowl at test level? Should Freddy stay in the county game until the troublesome joint has proved its enduring strength? Will he retain the giddy heights of the Ashes Series of 2005 ever again?
These thoughts have been much on my mind of late. Whereas, in the past, evenings chezMaclaren tended to be spent, say, rearranging the set of captain’s chairs ‘just so’ in order that the light might capture the amber warmth of the wood, before settling down to pore lovingly over a stack of old sales catalogues, I now find myself thinking of Freddy and reflecting that, in this changing world, one thing is certain: there will never be a production run of 11” tall Staffordshire figures of the Lancashire and England cricketing god.
In some ways, this is a shame, because Freddy, had he lived in the C19th, would have been an ideal candidate for immortalisation. His bluff, roguish charm and palpable decency has a boy’s-own quality that is quintessentially British and that has endeared him to the world outside cricket (Simon Grey likened him to the opening stanzas of a Housman poem, which captures it exactly). The Staffordshire potters liked nothing more than a people’s hero and, in my heretical view, the unsophisticated style of the work is suited to such portraits in a way it is not when applied to royalty or figures from classical mythology.
Two bowlers feature in the wish lists of any serious Staffordshire collector. Frederick William Lillywhite was, according to contemporary critics, the best in England, an opinion endorsed by none other than Lillywhite himself. His farewell benefit match (England v. Sussex) was played in 1853 when he was 63; he died a year later. His pottery figure, 6.5” high, shows him facing half-right, a ball in the right hand and a spill-holder background with a coat hanging from a branch.
A very rare jug depicts the figure of Lillywhite but identifies it as that of “Wm. Clarke”. Clarke was the Kerry Packer of his day, founding, in 1846, an ‘Eleven of England’ as a private venture, picking the top-class players and touring the country with an open challenge. Unlike Packer, he was ranked as the finest under-arm bowler, with a vicious leg-spin.
As for batsmen, George Parr, ‘Lion of the North’, was born at Radcliffe-on-Trent on 22nd May 1826 and became something of a local hero. He was famed at the Notts ground for leg hits out of the park that frequently landed in the branches of an elm, which was almost in line with square leg. By the mid-C19th it became known as George Parr’s Tree and, when he died in 1891, a branch was fashioned into a wreath and placed on his grave, and sports equipment manufacturers Gunn and Moore fashioned a bat from wood taken from the tree, which, last time I was there, was in the Long Room at Lord’s. The Staffordshire Parr figure, 13.5” high, shows him holding a ball in the right hand with a bat leaning against the stumps, the traditional way of indicating captaincy, for in 1865 Parr captained the second, unbeaten, team to tour Australia. The player is bearded, wears a sprigged shirt and sash and the regulation cap of the day.
A companion figure is usually identified as Julius Caesar, the magnificently named, hard-hitting Surrey batsman who played for the All England XI from 1849 to 1867. Fourteen inches tall, the figure has a similar shirt and sash to Parr’s but has taken guard in a manner that suggests the artist had heard of cricket but not actually seen it… not unlike some of the players in the current England squad.
Smaller versions of both figures were made, 10.5” high with similar markings. All are almost impossible to come by. I once traced a pair for sale in the US but, after initial approaches had been warmly welcomed, my enquiries regarding price and provenance were met with a deafening silence. Reproductions are around and can be easily identified by clumsy modelling and harsh colouring. If someone tries to sell you one of Freddy, it’s probably a fake…
Stuart Maclaren