Blithe spirit

Allan Border's 1989 Ashes tour was my first major assignment as a journalist. On the first day of the fifth Test at Trent Bridge, as Mark Taylor and Geoff Marsh were batting out the whole day on the way to an opening stand of 329, a colleague and I, with our deadlines passed, decided to have a well-earned pint. As we chatted in the Members' pavilion, I looked up at the row of old bats screwed onto the panelling above the bar. There, in the centre, was a dark brown one with a metal plaque under it which said it was Victor Trumper's bat from his legendary 1902 tour to England.

On that tour Trumper made 11 first-class centuries, one of them in a session in the Old Trafford Test. Admittedly the rest were made against the counties but, as ever with Trumper, it was the style of those innings that became part of the legend. Trumper entertained the English crowds and, as he always did, he won their hearts. He scored quickly and with great flair, prompting Wisden Cricketers' Almanack to describe him as the best batsman in the world.

I'd always been intrigued by the legend of the tall, dashing batsman who played with carefree grace. In the history books I read as a boy that he was described as Australia's greatest batsman before Don Bradman. But it was legend of the man himself that made him special. Bradman's legend was based on unbelievably phenomenal statistics. He was the run machine par excellence. Trumper was the artist, the genius who cared more for his team-mates and his fans than for his place in the record books. Trumper's status could easily be missed by a look through the statistics, but to read a biography was, and still is, to be entranced by a man as charming off the field as he was on it.

Trumper was generous to a fault, casual in his dress, kind to children, and greatly loved by opponents and team-mates. Truly, a romantic figure. Trumper ran a sports store in Sydney but was no great success as a businessman. He was not hard enough, giving free equipment or discounts to people short of funds. During his career, there was a stand at the Sydney Cricket Ground called the Penny Stand - because it cost a penny to get in. Legend has it that Trumper would always arrive early enough, and with pockets full of enough loose change, to walk over to the side of the ground opposite the dressing rooms to hand out pennies to poor boys hoping to get in. They came to expect Vic to give them a day at the famous ground to see their heroes in action.

Steve Waugh's love of his battered old baggy green cap was inspired by Trumper's attitude to his Australian skull cap. He cherished it and never wanted a new one. To him, the first was so precious that a replacement would not do. He was also celebrated for his casual approach to his playing clothes. Not for him the adage that if you can't be a cricketer you should at least look like one. After a day's play Trumper would roll up his cream trousers and drop them in his kitbag. The next morning he would simply unfurl them, put them on and head out for the day's play. He was obviously interested in substance rather than appearance, and I loved him for it.

One of the reasons Trumper's Test average ended below 40 was that he never sought easy runs. If the weather was fine and the pitch flat he usually threw his wicket away to give his team-mates a chance to make runs. But when the pitch was wet and treacherous, Trumper, as the senior batsman, would take full responsibility. This was not merely a whim. It is said that at New South Wales' practice sessions he would slip the groundsman a shilling or two to prepare one wet wicket at the far end of the table. After a net on a good pitch, he would go up to the end and practise on a sticky. I remember going to the same nets for a state squad practice session and looking up to the far end and wondering if that was the strip the great Trumper used for his wet-weather practice.

Years earlier I was a teenager playing lower grades in Sydney club cricket. One day we played at Redfern Oval, a summer dustbowl of a ground ravaged by a winter of rugby league. Before play, as we inspected the unwelcoming pitch, a team-mate pointed out to me a window on the second storey of a building across the road, behind the sightscreen. He said it was the window Trumper broke with a straight drive about 60 years before. It was a big, big hit. The window had been left broken for years, in tribute to the great batsman. It had been repaired by the time I saw it. I think the building is sill there but the state government has major plans to develop the area and who knows what fate awaits it.

I once saw some action footage of Trumper batting. He's wearing a large white hat, looks tall and elegant - more the shape of Rahul Dravid than Sachin Tendulkar. He's facing a fast bowler and late-cuts him with aplomb, a classy, clever shot and exactly what you'd expect from a batsman said to have had three shots for every ball. The only other footage I've seen of Trumper is that of his funeral at Waverley cemetery in the eastern suburb of Sydney in 1915. Like so many romantic heroes, Trumper died young, at 37, after a few years of sad, public decline. It was a hero's funeral, the horse-drawn hearse followed by dignitaries and the parade watched by thousands of the fans who loved their Vic more than any other player.

If the mature Bradman stands for the ruthless pursuit of success that typifies modern Australian cricket, Trumper stands for the spirit of an earlier age, for a more carefree approach that put style and entertainment above results.

And yes, my colleague and I had a ritual pint under that bat every afternoon of that Test back in 1989.