Mark Pirie’s new cricket poem Merv Wallace

Last year I wrote a review of Merv Wallace: A Cricket Master by Joseph Romanos. It’s a fine book and I’ve added it to my List of Favourite Cricket Books down the side of this blog.

I also wrote a poem based on the book and Joseph’s research in tribute to his excellent work at bringing Merv’s life back into focus and reassessing his standing in NZ cricket.

The poem has just been published in Poetry NZ 44, ‘New Zealand’s foremost poetry magazine’:

MARK PIRIE

Merv Wallace: A Cricket Master

For Joseph Romanos

At Lord’s, 1937, a young

man with a silver fern across

his cap, looks to leg and drop-kicks

Hedley Verity up into the stands,

then walks down and apologises

to his captain. His name

may not be remembered now,

but he counts among our greats.

On the’37 and ’49 tours

of England, he was among

our best bats, and he’s still among

our best bats ever. Like all

the greats, he timed the ball

superbly, hit hard, had sound technique,

footwork, played an array of strokes,

and was severe on anything loose.

It made sense, after play ended,

that he was to influence so

many in New Zealand cricket, first

as selector then as coach. Like Hobbs

(in England), he kept a profile in

a sports shop. In Auckland, he was

always helpful, dishing out advice:

generous, sincere, ever-loving of cricket.

Poem © Mark Pirie 2012

(From Poetry NZ 44, March 2012)

The latest issue of Poetry NZ features emerging writer Maris O’Rourke and a high quality selection of poets, guest edited by Auckland poet Siobhan Harvey. More on the magazine and how to subscribe is at: http://www.poetrynz.net/

(Poem source: Merv Wallace: A Cricket Master by Joseph Romanos, Joel Publishing, 2000)

Poetry NZ 44, guest edited by Siobhan Harvey

Classic Reads: Merv Wallace by Joseph Romanos

During the winter off-season in New Zealand, I’ve been reading a book about New Zealand’s hugely under-rated batsman Merv Wallace. Wallace was a member of the 1937 and 1949 New Zealand touring teams to England. Wallace receives considerable attention in Rod Nye’s Martin Donnelly biography and Richard Boock’s recent Bert Sutcliffe biography. The respectful mentions of him in these books made me want to read further.

Merv Wallace: A Cricket Master (Joel Publishing, 2000) is researched and written by Joseph Romanos in discussion with the late Merv himself, and is, I feel, an important addition to New Zealand’s cricket history. Much has been said and written about other members of the ’49ers such as Walter Hadlee, Martin Donnelly, John R Reid and Bert Sutcliffe, but till this book appeared little was known about the extent of Wallace’s contribution to New Zealand cricket.

Romanos expertly fills in the gaps with enthusiasm and energy. He is an ardent admirer of all sports but cricket is a large part of his focus. Romanos has again produced an excellent biography with impressive knowledge, artful use of photos and memorabilia, comprehensive research and a humanist empathy for the subject and his life. I must thank too the benefactor Sir Ron Brierley’s financial commitment to the publication of this book.

The story about Merv begins in Grey Lynn, Auckland, where he was born and raised. It follows his early advances into cricket as a schoolboy and later as a young man playing his club cricket for Point Chevalier (which amalgamated with Parnell) and his First Class cricket for Auckland (captaining them 23 times from 1939-1958). Wallace’s final First Class match was for Lord Cobham’s Governor-General’s XI in the 1960-61 season.

The two main chapters of interest (as a player) are the tours of England in 1937 and 1949 where he was among New Zealand’s best batsmen on both tours. In 1937, under Curly Page’s captaincy, it’s safe to say he was the leading New Zealand batsmen of the period (between Stewie Dempster and Bert Sutcliffe) and was well written up by the English cricket writers. Pelham Warner wrote in The Cricketer: ‘Wallace has, so far, proved himself the best batsman … Short in height, Wallace is strongly built and times the ball beautifully. He has a very good eye, is quick on his feet and seems to possess all the strokes.’

He topped the 1937 tour averages in England and Australia with 1887 runs at 41.02 but, as Romanos points out, never fulfilled his Test potential, losing his best years of Test cricket to the Second World War. Wallace’s contribution as a player could’ve been greater at Test level marking him out clearly as one of our greats. Instead, he finished with a modest Test average of 20.90, no Test century, and sadly a mostly forgotten player status in the game.

The other side to Wallace’s story is his role as a coach and selector and his influential job as a sporting goods proprietor. Wallace spent a good deal of time, after retiring as a player, coaching and selecting teams, both at international and domestic level. His major success came when he coached New Zealand to their first ever Test victory over the West Indies in 1956-57. Yet, as Romanos notes for reasons unknown, Wallace was not used often as a coach and selector by the New Zealand Cricket Council. It’s baffling to know why. Walter Hadlee and other members were clearly friends of Wallace’s with no axe to grind and who respected Wallace’s ability. Wallace’s input as a coach and selector for New Zealand should’ve been greater at international level but instead, as with his batting, we only had tantalising glimpses of what he could’ve done for New Zealand cricket.

Despite this, Wallace was always involved one way or another. For years, he ran a sporting shop in Auckland: Wallace and Webb Ltd. There are delightful chapters here on Wallace’s influence through the shop, his passing on of tips to players, coaches, fathers and schoolboys who visited. As well, Romanos captures the essence of Wallace by presenting a whole chapter of Wallace’s views on cricket giving out his handy tips. Some of these appear dated now, but it seems a nice way to preserve Wallace’s mind and thoughts on the game throughout the period where he made his largest contribution.

This book proved hard to track down but was worth the effort. I searched local book fairs, second hand shops and the Wellington Public Library and could find no copy. It wasn’t until I stopped by the New Zealand Cricket Museum’s Library at the Basin Reserve, Wellington, that I was able to borrow a copy and it was well worth the wait.

Merv Wallace: A Cricket Master is a must read for those interested in the key figures who’ve developed the game here as well as New Zealand’s reputation as a cricketing nation over the past century. As John R Reid writes on the cover: “Merv Wallace was the most under-rated player to have worn the Silver Fern. This long overdue book pays eloquent tribute to a great cricketer.”

Merv Wallace: A Cricket Master
by Joseph Romanos
(Joel Publishing, Wellington, 2000)

Article © Mark Pirie 2011

Tim Finn’s NZ cricket song Runs in the Family

One cricket song of note that doesn’t appear in A Tingling Catch is Tim Finn and the Record Partnership’s ‘Runs in the Family’.
Cast your minds back to 1995 and the 100th anniversary of the New Zealand Cricket Council. A one-day tournament was played featuring Australia, New Zealand, India and South Africa. Given New Zealand’s run of losses at the time, it was termed ‘the birthday bash from hell’. Penned especially for the anniversary and tournament and maybe to give the Black Caps a boost, Tim Finn’s song climbed to No. 9 on the New Zealand single’s chart. Finn appeared on the Holmes show to promote the single’s release, and all looked bright.

Blair Mulholland, however, later included Tim’s song in his “Worst NZ Songs of All Time” on nzmusic.com in 2004. Here’s the link: http://www.nzmusic.com/node/9029 Blair notes that Finn’s ‘appalling NZ Cricket anthem Runs in the Family … can be number six. It sank even lower than the fortunes of the team in 1995, which was no mean feat really.’ On the second page of comments on Blair's post, one comment by SuperElmo defended the track: ‘Runs In The Family is ok. I remember the video for it.’ I can’t remember the video now myself, but if it had some cricket highlights in it, it was probably okay.

After all the dire predictions and Tim’s efforts, how did the New Zealand team fare in the tournament? The Black Caps surprisingly made the final after beating India and South Africa, largely due to the batting of Mark Greatbatch who had recently returned to the squad, skipper Ken Rutherford and a young Stephen Fleming. Martin Crowe played just one game before picking up an injury. Justin Vaughan, the current CEO of NZ Cricket, was also in the squad. Danny Morrison, Chris Cairns, Chris Pringle, Shane Thomson, Gavin Larsen and Vaughan were the bowling attack.

In the final Shane Warne took 2-21 and Tim May, his spin partner, took 3-19 to reduce the Black Caps to 137-9 at Eden Park. Rutherford made 46 and without Vaughan’s 20 not out, the total could’ve been lower. Captain Mark Taylor, Mark Waugh and David Boon knocked off the runs for Australia in the 32nd over.

Back to Tim Finn’s song, which is worth including on the “Tingling Catch” archive. I made a transcript of it. I admit I’m a fan of some of Finn’s music, particulary the Finn Brother’s album, Everyone is Here (2004), and some Split Enz tracks like ‘Dirty Creature’, ‘I See Red’ and ‘Poor Boy’ as well as Tim’s solo songs like ‘Persuasion’ co-written with English musician Richard Thompson. Tim’s songs for the most part are worth commenting on. The opening stanza of ‘Runs in the Family’ for instance features beach cricket, a Kiwi tradition at holiday baches during summer time:

Runs in the Family

I remember long ago playing

cricket by the sea

My father’s love of grace and skill

still runs in the family

Leather ball and willow bat

the scene of generation’s come

Pay your dues and show respect:

runs in the family

I like Tim’s idea here of a generational tradition in New Zealand, passed down through families, and that’s how some of our best cricketers have been taught. In these opening lines Tim acknowledges his father Richard. Around that time, Joseph Romanos wrote a book called Great New Zealand Cricket Families (1992). In the book Joseph discusses among others: the Hadlee family, the Cairns family, the Crowe family and the Bracewell family - to which you could now add the McCullum family.

Tim’s chorus that follows the opening verse is simple enough, a repeated refrain of ‘Runs in the family’, sung about four times. Overall, I guess it has that anthemic quality, and I can see how SuperElmo thought it was okay to some extent. The single’s not bad in places.

The bit that jarred for me was the attempt to mix in some hip-hop and ragamuffin. Here’s that rap lyric part from the guest performer:

100 years run in the family

watch me now, don’t play Mr Hadlee

Rutherford, Greatbatch, Morrison, Crowe

Coney, Wright, Patel and Jones

broad to the bat is the stylee

wickets and cricket and feeling irie

googly, bouncer, yorker and leg-break

from Eden Park to Kingston, Jamaica

Aotearoa!

What’s odd here is that some of the players named were not in the New Zealand team playing the centenary tournament. Except for ‘Greatbatch, Morrison, Crowe’, the others were no longer in the Black Caps. And the West Indies weren’t at the tournament either, making you wonder why they chose a ragamuffin part for the song. I’m not sure when the song was written in 1994, maybe they thought the Windies were coming and some of these players were still playing, but when it was released, it was those little bits that tended to lessen the impact of the song. Were they using the names of greats like ‘Hadlee’, ‘Coney’ and ‘Wright’ to sell the song? Or were they there to give us a sense of the history of the game. If so, why not Sutcliffe and Reid? The only interesting thing in the rap part was throwing in the word ‘Aotearoa!’ at the end.

I guess that’s why I left it out of A Tingling Catch, though I do like Tim’s opening stanza and the beach cricket idea acknowledging his father very much.

Article © Mark Pirie 2011

Sources: Runs in the Family by Tim Finn and the Record Partnership (cassette single, Epic, 1995); Tim Finn, A Timeline (2009): A Solo, And Sometimes Solitary, Man by Graham Reid, Elsewhere website, 2009; Great New Zealand Cricket Families by Joseph Romanos (Random House, Auckland, 1992); Wikipedia - the free encyclopedia; ESPN Cricinfo Archive; and Worst NZ Songs of All Time by Blair Mulholland, nzmusic.com, 2004.

Summer Reads: The Awa Book of NZ Sports Writing

Review by Mark Pirie of The Awa Book of New Zealand Sports Writing edited by Harry Ricketts, Awa Press, RRP $40.00.

Harry Ricketts released his book of New Zealand sports writing in June this year. I went along to the launch at Unity Books, Wellington. It was a full house. Writer and columnist Steve Braunias launched the book. I used to enjoy Steve’s football pieces when he was writing for the New Zealand Listener. At the launch, he told a story about his meeting with football writer Brian Glanville.

So, what will you get if you buy The Awa Book of New Zealand Sports Writing? Well, what you get is a carefully selected and highly personal compendium of national sports writing. It has an excellent introduction written by Harry himself. This book is the first of its kind since Lloyd Jones’ Into the Field of Play. Personal taste is definitely a hallmark of Harry’s selection. Harry is keen to capture odd as well as famous moments in New Zealand sport that convey a sense of literary craft as well as being memorable. Wit, humour and poignancy seem important. He has lifted various pieces from New Zealand sports books, newspapers, blogs, anthologies and biographies.
The oldest piece here is about canoe racing from The Nelson Examiner, 1843. Jeremy Coney’s snippet (from his autobiography The Playing Mantis) features Coney breaking his arm in the 1980s against the Windies - Joel Garner was the bowler. Brian Turner writes a poem for his brother during Glenn Turner’s difficult season in 1975/1976 (also included in A Tingling Catch). Other cricketing quirks are Hamish McDouall’s injury list for Chris Cairns used by Harry as a found poem.

Rugby and cricket are the most prominent. T.P. McLean, Keith Quinn, Chris Laidlaw, Greg McGee, Lloyd Jones and Spiro Zavos form the backline on rugby matches. Martin Crowe observes New Zealand’s semi-final cricket loss to Pakistan in the 1992 World Cup, and there are pieces by Joseph Romanos on New Zealand’s lowest Test innings total of 26, Lynn McConnell on New Zealand’s first Test victory in 1956 and Dick Brittenden on Bert Sutcliffe and Bob Blair during the Second Test against South Africa, 1953/54 season. Other sports featured are netball, racing, bowling, running, canoeing, swimming, mountaineering, fishing, yachting, boating, boxing, golf, aviation, archery, tennis, cycling, and soccer. Unfortunately, there is nothing here about rugby league or rowing. As Harry says, he ‘couldn’t find anything that was particularly memorable’.

Some of the best pieces in the book are by people one wouldn’t identify with a particular sport. Literary writers with much smaller audiences feature alongside big name sports writers and columnists from major dailies. Bill Sewell writes on Richard Pearse. Poet James Brown takes us to a child’s netball practice. You can sense the craftsmanship, with carefully chosen lines like: ‘Practice drizzles to a close’. Alongside conventional sports writing, poetry receives a fair amount of space. Bill Manhire has two racing poems, one very good poem on Phar Lap. Bub Bridger has a comic poem about wanting the Whetton brothers for Christmas. Pity the poem wasn’t better to really immortalise the Whetton brothers. Harry might’ve been better to have included one of his own cricket pieces in its place.

Overall, the great thing about this book is you can take it with you to sporting matches or on the airplane travelling. It’s the kind of book that’s perfectly designed for dipping into during the lunch breaks at Test matches or reading and storing at your summer bach. Not all the writing here is that memorable to me but I really like Harry's idea of a New Zealand book of sports writing as well as the range of sports on offer. Another editor might've picked an entirely different team, e.g. the cricket writing of Don Neely and Sir Richard Hadlee for instance. As Harry points out, 'You could probably assemble three or four parallel anthologies to this one without serious duplication’. Questions of personal taste aside, it’s nice to have a book like this to read, enjoy and return to in our leisure.

Review © Mark Pirie 2010

The Awa Book of NZ Sports Writing
edited by Harry Ricketts
(Awa Press: 2010)

Joseph Romanos discusses A Tingling Catch

Well known sports commentator and writer Joseph Romanos discussed A Tingling Catch with Kathryn Ryan on "9 to Noon", Friday 26 November 2010.
Here's the link to the downloadable audio version: http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/20101126

Here’s a transcript of their discussion for those who can't download the audio version:

Kathryn: Shall we talk about A Tingling Catch first?

Joseph: Yeah, let’s talk about it, as it’s unusual.

Kathryn: Let’s talk about it. Why not? A Tingling Catch: A Century of New Zealand Cricket Poems 1864-2009, well, that’s longer than a century, a long century, got your hundred and fifty up, almost, well not quite. We know we've got some wonderful writers writing about sport and cricket but did we ever know we had so many...

Joseph: Well, it’s a collection by a Wellington bloke Mark Pirie who’s a cricket lover but really he collects poetry, he’s a poet and did an Arts degree in English and so on.

  I think it’s the first collection of cricket poetry in the world as a national collection from one country and this collection as it says here goes back to 1864, a poem [by Samuel Butler] that was in the Christchurch Press about the English cricket team that toured here in 1864. I think it’s really fantastic, I mean there are people who contributed to this book like John Clarke (aka Fred Dagg) and David McGill (a well known author) as well as your Brian Turners, Denis Glovers and so on. I mean there’s a collection of people, some of them are not well known for writing literature and some of them are not known as poets but they’re all in this book, it’s very interesting. And the other thing is Kathryn the way he’s gone about it. I mean the guy’s a fanatic, he said to me he went down to the Turnbull Library and asked for their collection of New Zealand Cricketer  - that was a magazine that started in the 1960s. So they brought him up every edition and gave him some funny sideways looks and he just went through turning page after page and he said…

Kathryn: Looking for poems?

Joseph: Yeah, and he said it was like walking along a beach, upturning stones and every now and then you uncover a gem.

Kathryn: I handed over my collection of cricket annuals once to a secondhand shop, had every year for about 12-13 years edited by Don Neely, who I think has written the foreword for this. I found some poetry in that, one by Brian Turner for his brother Glenn in 1976 - I think it was - when there was this stoush going on…

Joseph: Glenn wasn’t that popular then.

Kathryn: And it was completely over my head. What it talked about and what I remember, I’m not sure whether it’s in the poem now - forgive me, Brian, if I’m wrong here – was the idea of the gear being put away, like, you know, in a wardrobe over the winter months and the crusty bits of grass around, the spikes, the physicality of it. You could smell it.

Joseph: Good eh.

Kathryn: And the political overtones went completely over my head. But there’s certainly a tradition of it.

Joseph: There is. There’s a lot of good Brian Turner work. There’s one here he’s written, a sonnet about Ken Wadsworth, when Ken Wadsworth had died. Wadsworth was a New Zealand wicketkeeper before he died from cancer when he was only 29, and he was playing.

Kathryn: He was still playing wasn’t he?

Joseph: Yeah, just finished making a fifty in a One-Dayer. Very nice. It was read at his funeral, it was a eulogy at the Wadsworth funeral. And there’s a great one here about the First World War. I mean there’s some very moving stuff in here. I think it’s a really nice collection. It’s a lovely idea.

  He said he couldn’t fit all the poems in this book which is 180 odd pages so he started a website and put the rest of them on there, and he said he’s been amazed how many more poems have come in since then which have gone on the website. So he may have started something. He said he’s had enquiries from all round the world about it.

Kathryn: It’s a sport more than any other that lends itself to poetry because of the vagaries of cricket, the length of time, the physical environment…

Joseph: And the other thing he said to me about it is that cricket lends itself to poetry because of the weird words like ‘square leg’, ‘silly mid-on’, ‘cover’, all those.

Kathryn: How do you get a rhyme with ‘silly mid-on’?

Joseph: Yeah but it’s evocative isn’t it?

Kathryn: ‘Deep fine leg’…there’s quite a few when you think about it.

Joseph: Very much so. I won’t go into them all. And so he said these words lend themselves to poetry…

Kathryn: ‘Middle stump’, you know…

Joseph: Yeah, so it’s a good collection.

Kathryn: What about the likes of Glover who is first and foremost, as is Brian Turner, recognised for poetry … although I should recall [Brian's] days as a New Zealand hockey rep… [Brian]’s first and foremost known for poetry. How have [those like Glover] approached what they’ve written?

Joseph: Well, he’s gone through and pulled out any poems by anyone whether it pertains to New Zealand cricket. It could be Thomas Bracken or Brian Turner. It could be anyone. So people find themselves in this book who aren’t really poets but they might have written a sonnet once and got it published in the 1972 June edition of New Zealand Cricketer, and here it is.

But he has tried to get good poems. He hasn’t put anything in here.

Kathryn: It’s funny. It’s a wonderful tradition and one that’s slightly been lost. I’m interested to see it revived this week in this circumstance. The idea of writing as a means of recording how people are feeling, a record of what people are expressing, and a lot of those old sports magazines used to run them as a matter of course in poems.

Joseph: It’s true. I like the title A Tingling Catch, it’s from a line by one of the poets [Seaforth Mackenzie]. It’s nice isn’t it.

Kathryn: A Tingling Catch: the hand can tingle, it certainly can and wicketkeepers have got plenty of experience of that.

Joseph: Plenty of tingling.

Kathryn: Now, to the sport.

Joseph also discussed A Tingling Catch on Radio Sport, Saturday, 27 November 2010 and read a poem from the book, 'Ken Wadsworth' by Brian Turner.
I hear A Tingling Catch has been selling very well at Unity Books in Wellington.
Thanks Joseph

Joseph Romanos' article on A Tingling Catch

I was really pleased when one of my favourite sports writers, Joseph Romanos, asked to interview me for A Tingling Catch.

Meeting Joseph was a great experience. I’ve admired his sports column in The Wellingtonian for a while now, reveling at his almost encyclopedic knowledge of sports history. I like how Joseph resurrects forgotten sporting names, e.g. his ‘Top 10 All Blacks Hookers’ includes Hika Reid - a nice touch!

Joseph has written many books, including an autobiography of Martin Crowe and a lovely book on New Zealand cricket families.

Here is the article Joseph wrote on A Tingling Catch, which was accompanied by a nice photo of me at the Basin Reserve by Jim Chipp:

JOSEPH ROMANOS

A tingling collection of cricket poetry

Mark Pirie compares the works in A Tingling Catch, his collection of New Zealand cricket poems, to a cricket team.

"Like any team, there are a few greats and a few making up the numbers. You need them all," he said.

Pirie has produced what is believed to be the first national collection of cricket poems of any country.

With his dual loves of cricket and poetry, he was the right person to attempt this book.

He has been a keen cricket follower since his days with the Onslow junior cricket club and at Wellington College.

Pirie said he got into cricket in the 1980s when the one-day game was exploding.

"I got excited by the day-nighters, and by Lance Cairns hitting all those sixes. These days I follow test cricket more. It's more a game for purists."

Poetry has been a continuing influence in his life. He got into it, he said, through the lyrics of popular music. At university he studied arts and poetry. He became a DJ for Active 89FM and gradually turned his attention more towards poetry.

"People used to tell me I wrote good song lyrics and that I should put out a book, so I gradually got more involved in looking at lyrics in terms of poetry."

But pulling together the collection in A Tingling Catch was a massive undertaking.

"When I was younger I used to read some of Brian Turner's cricket poetry. And at university I was taught by Harry Ricketts, who was cricket-mad.

"That got me thinking it was possible to write cricket poetry. Under Harry Ricketts' influence I wrote some cricket poems as a student."

Since then his cricket poems collection has grown massively.

"I dug deeper. I'd go to the Alexander Turnbull Library and search key words, such as "cricket", "batsman" and "bowler".

"There are about 4000 New Zealand poetry books. I've probably read half of them, so I knew what to look for when I went back to them.

"Sometimes the searching got tedious. You'd go through 10 books and get one poem. But it's like walking along a stony beach and suddenly turning up a gem."

Pirie turned up at the Turnbull Library one day and asked for all the copies of New Zealand Cricketer magazine. "That got a few funny looks. But I turned each page of them and uncovered a few more. You have to do the work."

His favourites? "I like Brian Turner's sonnet about [wicketkeeper] Ken Wadsworth, who was so young when he died. It was read at his funeral."

One poem that had drawn much attention, he said, was Arnold Wall's World War I poem 'A Time Will Come'.

Pirie said cricket seemed to lend itself to poetry. "The terminology helps. All those descriptive words, such as `slips', `square leg', `covers', `sweeper', `silly mid-on' – they're a dream for a poet."

A Tingling Catch is 188 pages long, yet Pirie had to exclude many poems. And since his book was published, more have come to light.

"I've started a blog [Tingling Catch], and added new poems there."

About a dozen of Pirie's own poems are included.

One of the curiosities of the book is that there is work from many noted writers not normally associated with cricket, and occasionally not even with poetry – David McGill, Denis Glover, Elizabeth Smither, Kevin Ireland, Alistair Campbell, Peter Olds, John Clarke [aka Fred Dagg] and Kendrick Smithyman among them.

The earliest work is Samuel Butler's 'The English Cricketers', from a letter to The Press in 1864 about George Parr's touring team.

Even when Pirie had identified the poems he wanted to include, which took five years, it was another year before he gained copyright clearances. These included the front cover illustration of a cricket match at the Basin Reserve, drawn by Jocelyn Galsworthy in 2002.


Avid collector: Cricket poet Mark Pirie at one of his
spiritual homes, the Basin Reserve. Photo © Jim Chipp 



A Tingling Catch, by Mark Pirie (HeadworX), $34.99.

Article © Joseph Romanos

(From The Wellingtonian, 18 November 2010, p. 23)