CM-Jenkins: Standard Bearer Reaches 90 Not Out (13 Feb 1997)

13 February 1997

Standard bearer reaches 90 not out

Christopher Martin-Jenkins

It is evidence of time well spent if, after a long life and immense success in your chosen profession, the worst thing of which anyone can accuse you is pomposity.

E W Swanton, CBE, 90 on Tuesday, still has what one might call a proper sense of his own importance, but his friends come from all walks of life and from generations beneath him, as well as from the dwindling few among his own. They admire him at least as much for what he is as for what he has done, which is not a common thing among notable men.

In modern sporting jargon, Jim Swanton - he prefers the Jim to his given names, Ernest William - not only talks a good game, but plays it as well. Like those rare captains who would not put a young fielder in a dangerous position in which he would not be prepared to put himself, he has generally applied to his own long life the principles that he has espoused in print. Prominent among them is a desire for fair play in all things, though these days he has been known to tee off at Royal St George`s wherever he thinks he might have a reasonable chance of reaching the green in two.

He has his prejudices and his favourites - which is partly what makes his writing interesting -but there has been a fairness about his assessments of people and events which, allied to a profound knowledge and experience, has made him a cricket writer challenged since the war only by his long-standing friend, John Woodcock. Even in the sere and yellow, much of what he has read and seen is retained by a capacious mind, but it is constantly stimulated by his interest in contemporary events and in people of all ages.

He does not, therefore, seem old. Mellow, certainly, and almost benign for one who once dominated cricketing press boxes around the world and delivered impeccable, unhurried summaries of the day`s play on radio or television, but still imposing in almost any company. If there had to be one word for his character it would be formidable; pro- nounced, perhaps, with a French accent. As expressed by the equally indefatigable Bill Deedes, former editor of The Daily Telegraph, he has put a stamp on everything he has written.

THE magisterial touch he has applied to all his professional work since joining the Evening Standard in 1928 (69 years ago, to save you the mental arithmetic) has gained still greater gravitas with age. Only last spring, he enthralled his fellow members of the Cricket Writers` Club at Lord`s with a speech which was ideal in content and timing. A month or so ago, he gave some of them a rap over the knuckles for unfair reporting of England`s tour of Zimbabwe.

He was back at Lord`s on Tuesday for a dinner in his honour, the first of two in the Long Room. The second will be given by the MCC, on whose arts and library sub-committee he still serves. The club have made him an honorary life-member, an accolade normally reserved for distinguished former Test players. Swanton himself was a most effective opening batsman in good club cricket and a bowler of leg-breaks a little less venomous than those of Shane Warne.

Of all his birthday celebrations, Tuesday evening`s will have been especially enjoyable because it involved some 200 members of the cricket club he co-founded, the Arabs. They have become one of the most celebrated of the wandering cricket clubs, and by keeping a fatherly eye on all their activities - choosing new members carefully selected for their cricketing ability and social acceptability, cajoling match managers and generally being genially bossy -it has kept him young.

He will have enjoyed the laudatory atmosphere, but also the mickey-taking. Like all who express strong opinions from lofty perches -thanks to him, none loftier in cricketing circles than the correspondent`s chair at The Daily Telegraph which he occupied from 1946 to 1975 - he has needed to have his pomposity pricked from time to time. Knowing his worth, he has let the jibes, occasionally venomous, usually affectionate, bounce off him like so many shuttlecocks.

AS a heavily-built man with a certain hauteur and a willingness to throw his weight about, he has been, perhaps, an easy target. It was either Warr, or Ian Peebles, with whom Swanton and Henry Longhurst shared a flat in their bachelor days, who said of him: "He was no snob; he was quite prepared to travel in the same car as his chauffeur."

As an underling at The Cricketer, I held him in great awe until dining with him and his wife, Ann, at their home in Sandwich during an Arabs tour. Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie, the ex-captain of Hampshire, now president of MCC, was a fellow guest and had no such inhibitions. He pulled Jim`s leg unmercifully throughout the evening, and he loved it.

He is essentially, however, a serious man, which is hardly surprising for one who spent three-and-a-half years in the prime of life as a prisoner of the Japanese. As is often paradoxically the case after sadness or adversity, the experience and his survival strengthened his faith in God. No doubt it also helped him to put sporting matters into perspective when he resumed writing about cricket and rugby after 1945.

It is certainly not true (I have read a hundred or more of his articles in their handwritten state) that, like Shakespeare, he never blotted a line, but he has always been absolutely certain of what he wanted to convey to his readers and listeners, and he found far less difficulty than most in expressing himself, in a method famously described by the same irreverent Warr as being somewhere between the Bible and Enid Blyton.

If that was partly meant to suggest that Swanton is always a "good read" it was apt. His books are testimony to his excellence, especially two volumes of autobiography packed with anecdote and detail.

It is not just his own standards that he has jealously guarded. On the contrary, he cares about the rectitude of things, be they moral, social, sporting or factual, and he tells people straight when they get it wrong.

I have heard him contradict a London taxi-driver about his chosen route (and win the argument, of course) and ask a youthful waiter at the now defunct Bath Club to re-enter the room and serve his dish from the other side.

If that was bossy, the motive was honourable and there are many who will testify to the trouble he has taken to help them. He is essentially a kind man, and charity is the greatest of all the virtues.

Source :: The Electronic Telegraph ( https://www.telegraph.co.uk )