Tom Cartwright
Wisden's obituary for Tom Cartwright
15-Apr-2008
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Cartwright, Thomas William, MBE, died on April 30, 2007, aged 71.
Tom Cartwright was a cricketer's cricketer. Perhaps no player of his generation
had so much respect from his colleagues - for his abilities, his character, which
was forceful without being abrasive, and his love and knowledge of the game.
Not everyone was so appreciative: committee men often thought him truculent,
and he played only five Tests for England, a figure that does no justice to his
skills or his standing.
Cartwright grew up in Coventry, and the family were forced out of their home
for a month by wartime bombing. He himself started work in the Rootes car
factory, but Warwickshire had spotted his batting, and in 1952 he accepted a pay
cut to join the then county champions. He made his first-team debut, at Trent
Bridge, when he was just 39 days past his 17th birthday, and made an unflustered
82 - no one younger had scored a Championship fifty since 1906. There was no
instant stardom: immediately afterwards, he returned to his Rootes. The next season
was harder when he was promoted to open and could not quite sustain the position.
National Service followed, and it was 1958 before Cartwright finally made a
century, 128 against Kent, and secured his first-team place. He was bowling his inswingers more now, and at Dudley the following summer came what he regarded
as the pivotal moment of his career: "I just ran up and the ball swung away," he
told his biographer Stephen Chalke. "It was the first time I'd done that since I
left school. The miracle was that I knew exactly what I'd done."
In 1959 Cartwright scored 1,282 runs and took 80 wickets, was chosen for the
Players, long-listed for the Caribbean tour, and talked about as Trevor Bailey's
successor; Warwickshire leapt up the table. After an injury-hit year in 1960, he
returned to form with both bat and ball, and in 1962 became the first Warwickshire
player to do the double since 1914. After a near-miss in 1963, he finally made
his Test debut in the Old Trafford Ashes Test of 1964 when both teams passed
600. But Cartwright ("England's best bowler" - Wisden) stoically got through 77
overs and enhanced his reputation, and attracted approving murmurs again in the
rain-ruined draw at The Oval. He was picked for that winter's South African tour,
but struggled with both injury and his distaste for apartheid - he was, then and
always, left-wing in his politics. The following summer, Cartwright played twice
more, taking six for 94 on the opening day at Trent Bridge when everything was
overshadowed by Graeme Pollock's batting. Before the close, he broke his thumb
attempting a return catch: though he kept going and took two more wickets, he
would never play another Test match. His batting fell away in time but his bowling,
on uncovered county pitches, remained awesome, and he averaged less than 20
for eight of the next ten seasons. He had a rare mixture of unrelenting accuracy,
cunning and skill, which included the ability to bowl an inswinger from close to
the stumps and an outswinger from the wings. Perhaps no one ever thought more
about the art and craft of bowling.
All this was recognised in 1968 when Cartwright was picked again, this time
- astonishingly - in the touring party for South Africa from which Basil D'Oliveira
was omitted. There was a huge furore, and Cartwright was battling a shoulder
injury, a reluctance to be away from his young family and his ambivalence about the morality of touring South Africa at all. Originally, he told Chalke, he believed
the tour should go ahead, but then he saw a news item saying the whole white
parliament in Cape Town had stood and cheered when the exclusion of the nonwhite
D'Oliveira was announced. "When I read that, I went cold," he said. It for
ever remained unclear, perhaps even in Tom's mind, which reason was uppermost
for his withdrawal - though the injury was the one cited publicly. The rest really
is history: D'Oliveira replaced him, South Africa cancelled the tour, and England
would not play another Test against them until 1994.
Cartwright came back as strongly as ever for Warwickshire in 1969 and, amidst
some messy committee-room manoeuvring, had the chance to become the county's
captain and/or coach. But he was attracted by an offer to coach at Millfield and
play for Somerset, and defied precedent by fighting off an attempt by his former
employers to make him qualify for a year. In 1972 he was appointed Somerset's
player-coach, and became the mentor of the club's thrilling new generation until
his refusal to kowtow before committee men led to a row in the toilet with the
club chairman, and then the sack. He had already settled in his wife's home town
of Neath and now he moved to Glamorgan, where he played for a while in 1977
before concentrating on the job of cricket manager, a rather thankless task, until
1983. Then, much more happily, he became director of coaching for the Welsh
Cricket Association, a job he held for 23 years. Cartwright remained in charge of
the Under-16s until he had a heart attack while shopping; he died a few days
later. Generations of youngsters will remain grateful to him: "He always had time,
always had faith in me," said Ian Botham. But nothing will match the admiration
of his contemporaries: "Tom was a master of his craft," wrote David Green. "His
incredible accuracy caused some people to classify him as 'negative'... I cannot
see how you could be negative if you have five close catchers and bowl every
ball at the stumps."