THE LAST SUMMER BEFORE WORLD WAR TWO

by JV Smith

There is only one thing I can recall about the entire summer of 1939, my last peacetime school holiday. ~

Like many other boys I was mad about sport, and earned pocket money by reciting the current cricket County Championship Table as it changed in every Wednesday and Saturday morning daily newspaper. In our case it was the News Chronicle, and I would earn a tanner --six old pence - - from my father and his long-suffering friends. In the winter I would earn my money reciting the Arsenal team when their captain was a Scotsman, Alex James, and except when the Irishman, Joe Hulme was playing , the rest were all Englishmen. But I digress for my story is about cricket.

Gloucestershire cricket supporters were fortunate in those days in the 1930’s for they had available to them five or six Test cricketers: Wally Hammond, Charlie Barnett, Charlie Parker, Tom Goddard, Reg Sinfield, and a New Zealander, Cecil Dacre. In school holiday there was, as now, the Cheltenham Cricket Festival held on the grounds of Cheltenham College, and it was there that summer that I saved up my pocket money to go and watch the county play the incoming tourists from West Indies.

I was thirteen years old and the proud possessor of a bicycle. My mother had no fears at all in giving me a packed lunch for my carrier bag and sending me off to cycle the thirty miles there and back from the far side of Stroud. It was there that in just one fleeting moment I witnessed the finest piece of cover point fielding I have ever seen. It has remained there in my memory for sixty seven years. The fielder was Learie Constantine.

Those who know the Cheltenham ground know it runs away downhill towards the hospital and town centre and a well struck ball stands a good chance of reaching the boundary. It was this area Constantine was defending when the ball was firmly struck well to his left. Most fielders would have made a token attempt at saving the four and then applauded the shot. Not Constantine. Leaping cat-like into action he sprinted to his left, fielded with his ‘wrong hand’ - the right hand - and simultaneously circling in mid¬air, threw directly on landing , at the speed of the fast bowler he was, and threw down the batsman’s wicket some thirty yards away.

You may well say that this was just a boyhood impression and that boys tend to exaggerate, but in 1950 some eleven years later, Don Bradman in his autobiography, “Farewell to cricket” writing about Learie Constantine said “without hesitation I rank him the greatest all-round fieldsman I have seen”.

My case rests, but one thing I would add. The Christian name, Learie, makes me wonder. In the West Indies the similar name Leroy or Le Roy is also used with its French connection. Learie Constantine was certainly king for me.