Remembering Jack Fingleton – Greg Growden

Issue 1 | 17 March 2009

Jack Fingleton is one of many Australian cricketers whose career was played out in the shadow of Don Bradman. The outspoken, sometimes caustic Fingleton was renowned for his clashes with Bradman, which continued long after both had put down their bats. Greg Growden, the author of Jack Fingleton: The Man Who Stood Up To Bradman (Allen & Unwin 2008) and a Sydney Morning Herald sports writer is very much an authority on the character and history of Jack Fingleton. On Tuesday 17 March 2009, Greg Growden  addressed The Sydney Institute and shed light on much of the tension between Fingleton and the Don.

REMEMBERING JACK FINGLETON

GREG GROWDEN

Jack Fingleton, probably Australia’s greatest, certainly most honest, cricket writer and the most courageous of Test opening batsmen, was and always will be a biographer’s dream. Then again, what else would you expect from a hard street-wise reporter, a man tainted and influenced by the Great Depression, who through his sporting ability walked with kings and paupers, but trusted only a few!

Forever sceptical, forever probing, a seeker of the truth… he had the ideal way of ensuring that no-one ever put anything over him. Jack Fingleton, known to friend and enemy alike as “Fingo”, became a hoarder. He kept everything- copies of letters received and sent, articles, clippings, notes, any information that might come in handy when the real history had to be written. Whenever someone disputed him, he would fossick through to find the letter, the note, whatever was required to show who was right and who was wrong. He made certain he had the proof.

This defence mechanism also had something to do with what happened with his first manuscript. When writing his masterpiece, “Cricket Crisis”, Fingleton made one fatal error. Near completing his first draft, Fingleton decided to send the manuscript to his former newspaper editor A R B Palmer, who had agreed to provide advice and guidance. Fingleton duly sent the manuscript to Palmer in the post. It never arrived. Worse. Fingleton had forgotten to make a carbon copy. He was shattered. All that work wasted! He would have to start all over again. He learnt an important lesson the hard way. From that day on, Fingleton made, and meticulously preserved, carbon copies of every manuscript, letter and note he wrote.

In the middle of it all sits the Jack Fingleton Papers – without doubt among Australian sports most important collections.

Just down the road from where we are assembled tonight is the Mitchell Library. In the bowels of the library lie the secrets to Australia’s past, through countless collections, manuscripts and works. In the middle of it all sits the Jack Fingleton Papers – without doubt among Australian sports most important collections.

The Papers comprise of 27 boxes, containing Fingleton’s correspondence, notebooks, scrapbooks, pictures and diaries. In addition, there are several rolls of microfilm, which contain his letters over a 60-year stretch from the early 1920s to illustrious writers, cricketers, team mates, allies, enemies and several prime ministers – who were also friends or enemies of “Fingo”. One minute you would be reading lush wishes of goodwill from Neville Cardus, the next gossip and hot political news from Sir Robert Menzies. Then you would be given an insight of Australian cricket dressing room altercations with Keith Miller, the next the ramblings of R C Robertson Glasgow, followed by some fun and cheek from Bill O’Reilly.

No wonder his colleagues in the Canberra press gallery were astounded how Fingleton could find enough room in his small, pokey office on the Senate side of the old Parliament House building to sit down, let alone have a desk, such was the enormous clutter he constructed around him through piles of newspapers, letters, notes and books heading to the ceiling in all directions.

For months, years, on my way to work, most mornings I would trudge from Wynyard Station up the hill to the Mitchell Library for the task of going blind for several hours deciphering microfilm, personal notes and strange letters. It was an arduous, but never painful duty. Delving through the 27 boxes was an endless joy because you discovered the person, his fears, insecurities, passion, needs, triumphs, failures. There was also some great gossip, tremendous “off the record” information about controversial cricketing and political issues, and enough juicy morsels to keep your interest alive – because you knew that here was certain truths that needed a wider audience.

The Collection was able to provide the nuts and bolts to what Bill O’Reilly had told me about Jack and that contentious era. For many years I had sat next to Bill in the Sydney Cricket Ground press box, as he observed day after day of Sheffield Shield play in the 1980s. Before Tiger flung open his school exercise book shortly after the tea break to write his latest cricket column for the Sydney Morning Herald, he loved to yarn: Bradman, Fingleton, Bodyline, Ashes tour, what exactly happened all those years ago. And now in these 27 boxes was further proof that Bill was right.

It also reminded you that in this immediate internet age, biographers in the not too distant future will struggle to find the primary information.

You were also delighted that previous generations, unlike the present, were so eager to preserve something of themselves. It also reminded you that in this immediate internet age, biographers in the not too distant future will struggle to find the primary information. Everything is now cut and pasted, private and important correspondence deleted with the latest computer crash, and so only crumbs will be left. The art of biography will become an ever more arduous, exasperating task.

Thankfully, Fingleton left so much behind, so that you can understand the sentiments of cricket’s most accomplished radio commentator John Arlott. Arlott, who shared the BBC microphone on several Ashes tours with Fingleton, described him as “himself – and a diverse himself it is”.

Fingo was himself. A very complex himself. And that diversity was at times overwhelming.

How true. Fingo was himself. A very complex himself. And that diversity was at times overwhelming. Fingleton is a notable Australian sporting and social identity for various reasons. He was first and foremost a formidable Test opening batsman. His first-class figures are impressive, tallying 6816 runs at 44.54, with 22 centuries and 31 half-centuries, which included 1189 Test runs at 42.46. With a rigid defence, an iron-will and a refusal to shirk responsibility, Fingleton became the first batsman in history to score four successive Test centuries.

He was a compiler of runs, rather than a composer. He was no great stylist. He didn’t smash and grab like the most recent successful Australian opening batsman Matthew Hayden. He wasn’t flashy and flourishing like Arthur Morris. Instead his batting style was based on a fierce survival instinct.

Having Waverley Oval as his home ground taught him to take no delivery for granted. On this devilishly tricky wicket, deliveries would be at your throat one minute, skidding towards your ankles the next.

As he wrote to the English cricket writer Alan Gibson, some years after he had given the game away: “You missed nothing by not seeing me bat – but I could field. Loved it.”

Surroundings made the cricketer. Having Waverley Oval as his home ground taught him to take no delivery for granted. On this devilishly tricky wicket, deliveries would be at your throat one minute, skidding towards your ankles the next. The natural response was caution.

There was no flourish in his back lift. He took the bat back only marginally and, relying on strong wrists and forearms, pushed the ball away from the centre square. Jack could square cut, drive and glide as well as anyone, but the hallmark of his game was his excellent defence; he was focused on and determined to wear down any bowler he faced. Even more crucially, he was so audacious. He was fearless, prompting both Harold Larwood and Douglas Jardine to remark how courageous he was in the lead-up and during the infamous Bodyline series. Both argued that Fingleton was among the most difficult to get out. He just refused to budge.

There were two massive bruises on his left knee, one just above it, another halfway up his thigh, one on his hip where the skin had been cut, a large black bruise on his wrist, two more near his heart and one across his right hand.

Their admiration stemmed from Fingleton’s brave, unbeaten century for NSW against England at the Sydney Cricket Ground, just before the 1932-33 Test series began. Confronting intimidating bowling from Bill Voce, Fingleton was hit on the body over and over again. At the end of his innings, across Jack’s body were nine large welts. There were two massive bruises on his left knee, one just above it, another halfway up his thigh, one on his hip where the skin had been cut, a large black bruise on his wrist, two more near his heart and one across his right hand. Here and there were smaller bruises, some still bearing stitch-mark indentations where the cricket ball had pounded into the body.

Several times during the innings, he collapsed, one time being assisted to his feet by Jardine, another time by his NSW batting partner Donald Bradman. He was battered, sick to his stomach, but refused to complain publicly. All he would say, when probed by his brother Wally that night at their Bondi Junction home was: “It’s unfair cricket.” Their mother wasn’t so diplomatic. Mrs Fingleton had arrived at the SCG just before the toss and found a seat in the Ladies Stand. She was horrified by England’s tactics. In protest, she refused to witness another match, even shunning her son’s first Test against England, the following week in Sydney.

Jack ended up playing 18 Tests – twelve against England- with the admirable batting average of 42.46. But Jack prided his fielding prowess higher than his batting capabilities.

As expected of such a courageous character, Fingleton loved fielding in close – hovering a few metres away from the batsman at short leg. And he was in his element when his lifelong mate Bill O’Reilly had the ball.

Fielding in tandem with Victor Richardson, the pair was the mastermind behind O’Reilly’s deadly leg trap. As if O’Reilly’s wild spitting medium-pace leg spinners weren’t enough of a danger to the South African batsmen, Richardson and Fingleton would perch themselves within the batsman’s shadow at forward and square short leg. They described it as “Madmen’s Corner”. It produced an abundance of wickets. Fingleton relished playing the psychological game, savouring the nervous twitching of the batsman as they tried to avoid the edge. O’Reilly was forever grateful.

More than a decade after both players had finished their playing careers, O’Reilly sent Fingleton a copy of his book Cricket Conquest. On the inside cover he wrote: “To John Fingleton as a token reparation for his trials and tribulations in the leg trap – a position he filled with great distinction for himself and immeasurable satisfaction for Bill O’Reilly.”

where Fingleton was even better than O’Reilly – rated by Bradman as the world’s greatest bowler – was on the written page.

But where Fingleton was even better than O’Reilly – rated by Bradman as the world’s greatest bowler – was on the written page. Fingleton’s cricketing reputation was enhanced by his writing abilities.He wrote two classics – Cricket Crisis and Brightly Fades the Don (a cheeky, revealing autobiography), Batting from Memory and seven other cricket books. He was also a mighty cricketing journalist for numerous Australian and overseas newspapers – the most notable the Sunday Times and the Observer in London, where for decades he wrote an obligatory column on the game.

What is even more amazing is that he was such an accomplished and learned writer, considering that he was forced to leave school when only 12 following the death of his father, a state Labor Member of Parliament, with tuberculosis in 1920. Jack, who was unable to have a secondary school education as he instead had to find work to help feed a fatherless family, was basically self-taught.

Unlike so many cricketers, who now hover in the media, Fingleton was a journalist before he was an international cricketer.

Unlike so many cricketers, who now hover in the media, Fingleton was a journalist before he was an international cricketer. He began as a copy boy when just 14 or 15 with the new Sydney Daily Guardian in the 1920s, and revelled in the noise and bustle, the rush as reporters grabbed their hats and dashed out after police cars and fire engines, the yelling into telephones, the urgent clatter as they banged away at typewriters, frantic to beat the latest deadline. Jack learnt the media game while on the run.

One of Jack’s first assignments was hunting down evidence in a murder case in which a victim’s body was rumoured to have been stuffed into a luggage trunk. Reporters were sent all over the city in search of the elusive trunk. Fingleton headed towards the Rocks area. His colleague went the other way, and instead grabbed a front page scoop when he succeeded in buying cocaine from a Pitt Street chemist. The reporter was Frank Packer.

Fingleton did everything in the newspaper office. Police rounds. Courts. Shipping. Gossip columns. Industrial rounds. He soon learnt how to write with bite. He also discovered how to drink. As his cricket career began to gain momentum, Fingleton had moved to the Daily Telegraph as a general reporter, where he sat near the paper’s chief columnist Lennie

“Writing a column is simple”, the famed US sports writer would say. “You open a vein and bleed.”

Observing Lower reminded Jack that column writing, any writing of note, did not come easily. Day in, day out, Jack witnessed through Lennie Lower what Red Smith described as the harsh art of writing. “Writing a column is simple”, the famed US sports writer would say. “You open a vein and bleed.”

Readers would laugh their way through Lower’s daily column, but Jack knew what it had cost him to produce. Lower, author of the immensely popular Here’s Luck, would sit for hours at his desk, glaring into space or painstakingly typing and retyping, every so often ripping the sheet from his typewriter, screwing it into a ball and hurling it to the floor. When he was stuck, he’d go to the pub and eventually stagger back drunk just before deadline to finish the column.

Jack took note. Drink before, he told himself. Drink after. But never drink while you’re writing. And never do a daily column. It’s too harmful to your health. He instead decided to cover cricket tours, pursue politicians in Canberra and freelance for anyone and everyone on anything and everything. He was the genuine journalistic all-rounder, as comfortable writing about sharks for the Argus papers in South Africa, or covering sharks in the House of Representatives in Canberra, as he was bashing out on his clattering portable typewriter, three or four Test cricket match reports for various papers at the end of a day’s play.

the prime reason why the name Jack Fingleton will remain in the public domain is due to his fractious relationship with Australian sport’s most recognisable figure – Sir Donald Bradman.

However the prime reason why the name Jack Fingleton will remain in the public domain is due to his fractious relationship with Australian sport’s most recognisable figure – Sir Donald Bradman. They were colleagues, Australian Test team mates during one of the game’s most trying times, opponents and vehement critics of each other for well on 60 years. This was no hug and kisses relationship. It involved thorns, pain and deep personal anguish, a frosty pairing that was ignited by numerous controversial events, which to this day are still debated.

Right from the start, their relationship was prickly. They first crossed paths in 1929 at the Daily Guardian offices. Bradman, who had just started travelling from Bowral each week to play grade cricket in Sydney, was being shown over the paper’s offices, when he was introduced to Fingleton. Fingleton opted for small talk, telling him about a friend of his who had the makings of a champion cricketer until the day he ran a nail into his foot. Jack said: “He was left with a stiff right knee; he had tee-tanus.” Bradman immediately corrected him. It was tetanus, Bradman said, with what Jack took to be scorn.

Fingleton took a mental note. This bloke certainly had a high opinion of himself. They soon became NSW and Australian team mates and, while obviously overwhelmed by Bradman’s incredible cricketing prowess, Fingleton was not so impressed with Bradman the man. And, in the dressing room, Fingleton was far from being alone.

Right from the start, Bradman was different from the rest. He was aloof. He preferred his own company.

Right from the start, Bradman was different from the rest. He was aloof. He preferred his own company. He was invariably the first to leave the dressing rooms after play. He was a teetotaller – not seeing the point of drinking or smoking. While his team mates were sharing beer and cigarettes in the rooms, he would be off writing letters or listening to music in his hotel room.

This was also a defence mechanism – as he never really got over all the ribbing he received on his first tour away with the NSW team, when he was a victim of numerous hideous practical jokes and treated like a country bumpkin. For his own wellbeing, he thought it was best from then on to just stay away from the many ratbags who played with him. That caused further resentment among his NSW and Australian colleagues. Many thought him selfish. That he played for himself rather than the team. And he had no sympathy or interest in anyone else in the team.

But as a cricketer, they could not fault him. He was the best, and all acknowledged that, but as a person, he had some disconcerting faults. Fingleton wrote that Bradman’s chief problem with his team mates was that they resented his

…apparent lack of effort to bridge the widening gulf between himself and the rest of the side. They rarely saw him. He was always busy with an engagement here or an appointment there and practically the only time some of his team mates met him was when he walked with them through the pavilion gates. “Who’s the stranger?” was the sarcastic quip. Bradman did not make friends easily nor did he court popularity.

They were disgruntled that on Ashes tours he would return separately from his team mates to get all the kudos.

They were disgruntled that on Ashes tours he would return separately from his team mates to get all the kudos. And, in his early days as Australian Test cricketer, Bradman hardly appeased his team mates by staying in a different hotel. Adding to the friction was that the players like Fingleton and O’Reilly were so different in character from Bradman. The quiet, self-conscious introvert who was happy to be left alone was the polar opposite of the volatile, rambunctious, gregarious Fingleton and O’Reilly, who both loved a tussle and knew how to hate.

O’Reilly said that he and Bradman were as compatible as a cat and a fox terrier. It wasn’t quite that with Fingleton and Bradman, but they were hardly pups from the same litter. Bradman and O’Reilly irritated each other because they were such opposites. Bradman irritated Fingleton, primarily through numerous emotional incidents where Jack was convinced the Don had deliberately dudded him.

Diplomacy at times was not Fingleton’s best suit.

The first revolved around the selection of the 1934 Australian team to play for the Ashes in England. When Fingleton was left out of the team, even though he was one of the form opening batsman of that time, he blamed Bradman and told him so. Diplomacy at times was not Fingleton’s best suit. He could be abrasive, petulant, infuriatingly forthright, as Bradman discovered some hours after the team was officially announced.

Fingleton was incensed that on the day the team was selected, Bradman had used the pages of his own newspaper, the Sydney Sun, to criticise his running between the wickets.

That night, Bradman and Fingleton bumped into each other in The Sun offices. Fingleton shook Bradman’s hand and wished him well for the tour. When Bradman replied “Bad luck” for having been omitted, Fingleton gave him a piercing look and said: “I think I have largely got you to thank for missing out.”

Fingleton never forgave Bradman for missing that tour, believing that the Don had convinced the Australian selectors to pick Bill Brown instead. Bradman even conceded that was a fact to Fingleton some years later.

Fingleton never forgave Bradman for missing that tour, believing that the Don had convinced the Australian selectors to pick Bill Brown instead. Bradman even conceded that was a fact to Fingleton some years later. That didn’t make Fingleton feel any better. Still this did not cause as much of a ruction over who leaked as the dispute during the Bodyline Test in Adelaide and who leaked to the press the infamous quote by Australian captain Bill Woodfull to the England team manager Pelham Warner – “There are two teams out there. One is trying to play cricket and the other is not”.

Woodfull’s comment ranks as one of the most famous of all sporting quotes, with enormous ramifications, even for some time threatening diplomatic relationships between Australia and England. Damning the intimidatory tactics of the England team under the captaincy of Douglas Jardine where they bowled at the body of the Australian batsmen who were helpless because of a leg-trap field, this comment came after Woodfull had been hit above his heart from a Harold Larwood delivery.

That night, an Australian Test cricketer telephoned the well known Sydney journalist Claude Corbett in his Adelaide hotel room and said he had important information to pass on. Corbett and his caller met in the cricketer’s car, which was parked several kilometres from Adelaide Oval. The cricketer, knowing that he would be immediately detected if any fans wandered past his car, had driven to a secluded spot near the Adelaide Parklands. There, the cricketer told the journalist what had happened when Warner came to see Woodfull.

For Corbett, it was a dynamite story. But believing the leak was too hot to keep to himself, Corbett shared it with the other reporters covering the Test. The following day it was headlines all over Australia and, prompted by the controversy, a few days later the Australian Board of Control sent a cable of complaint to the MCC, protesting that England’s Bodyline bowling was a “menace” and “unsportsmanlike”. For the cricketer who leaked the story, it had the desired effect. It put England, whose prime aim was to curb and maim Bradman, on notice.

But who had leaked the dressing room conversation? Fingleton was convinced that Bradman was the leaker. In later years, he repeatedly wrote this as fact, including the account of the North Terrace rendezvous with Corbett. Bradman, rather than suing Fingleton for these claims, preferred merely to insinuate that Fingleton was the culprit. The issue fatally poisoned their already strained relationship.

At first Warner believed it was Fingleton, as at the time he was the only full-time journalist in the Australian team. A furious Warner told Larwood he would give him one pound if he could bowl Fingleton out in the second innings of the Adelaide Test. When Warner inferred Fingleton was a leaker in a book written a decade later, Jack went on the warpath.

He retaliated in Cricket Crisis by chastising Warner for targeting him, and stating: “I know, as do others, who gave the story out, and unlike Sir Pelham, I can give facts.” By then he had those facts straight from Corbett’s mouth. Corbett and Fingleton were close friends. Corbett told Fingleton that Bradman told him the story. The link between the Corbetts and Fingletons was strong. Jack’s younger brother Wally went to school with Corbett’s son Mac, and as Wally told me: “I knew exactly who was telling the truth.”

Wally, a Catholic priest, is also fervently of the belief that Jack and Claude were telling the truth. As Wally said in a recent letter to me: “The Don was not the first, or the last, hero of the public who had some clay between his toes.”

Gilbert Mant, a colleague of Corbett on that Bodyline series, later provided revealing information to renowned cricket writer David Frith. Mant explained that Corbett’s daughter Helen had told him that her mother had confided to her that her father had explained “Bradman had been the culprit, confirming the secret of the after-dark meeting as alleged by Fingleton.” Nonetheless Bradman, through the pen of several sycophantic writers, was able to use the issue to vilify Fingleton. Bradman was as adamant that Fingleton was the leaker.

Some may think of all this as nit-picking, but for the pair it became an over-riding episode. Another cloud hanging over both of their heads was the sectarian issue. Bradman was a Mason. Fingleton, O’Reilly and Stan McCabe were Catholics. Cricket’s roots lie deep in Protestant England, and for most of its history in Australia it revolved around a similar base, with Protestants dominating both on the field and in the administration of the game. So much so that the NSW Cricket Association is not believed to have employed a Catholic until the 1970s, more than 110 years after it was formed.

There was naturally a feeling among numerous Catholic cricketers that they were looked down upon by those who ran the game. This became an issue during the 1936-37 Test series against England, when suddenly during the series, four of the Catholics in the team – O’Reilly, McCabe, Chuck Fleetwood-Smith and Leo O’Brien – were summoned to appear before the Australian Board of Control, for supposedly being drunks and slackers, while not giving their full support to the captain, Bradman.

Bradman claimed that he had no knowledge of the meeting and to the players’ disgust refused to attend the hearing where he could have defended them.  Instead he said as he rushed out of the dressing rooms. “It’s nothing to do with me. You know how well I get along with the Board.”

The players were incredulous. O’Reilly turned the meeting into a farce, when he called it a Spanish Inquisition and it soon broke up. But the players forever resented that Bradman did not attend the meeting with them, again in their eyes showing that he was a weak, self-centred leader. And O’Reilly, Fingleton and O’Brien were also convinced that Bradman had dobbed his teammates in to the Board, so they could be ticked off. That just put further acid on the relationship.

From then on, O’Reilly did not trust Bradman. Fingleton was forever reticent. Was Fingleton jealous of Bradman the cricketer. No. No-one wrote more glowingly about Bradman’s sporting conquests. Did Fingleton become over-obsessive about Bradman the man? No. He had a too broad range of interests. Irritated? Infuriated? Yes. He had justifiable reasons. Bradman had an over-riding influence on his life.

Nonetheless this much publicised and discussed feud should not be treated as the be all and end all of Jack Fingleton. It is only part of the rich Fingo tapestry. More importantly he will always be remembered as a robust, indomitable cricketer and the most marvellous of cricket writers, once described by Sir Robert Menzies as being alongside Neville Cardus and E.W Swanton as the best cricket writer of modern times.

My prime hope through the biography is that it will encourage the reader to track down Jack’s many marvellous books and discover more about this incredible character. It is well worth the search. And, as crucially, Fingleton was so instrumental in healing old wounds with Harold Larwood – and reminding all that there was life and bonhomie after Bodyline. Fingleton was influential in getting Larwood to leave England and move to Sydney, and a better life, in 1950.  For the rest of their days, Larwood was indebted to his one time enemy, Fingleton.

An important influence in the Larwood move, was the then Prime Minister Ben Chifley, who unbeknown to probably the world’s greatest pace bowler, had paid half his accommodation bill, after Tom Watson of Tooths Brewery had converted a hotel in Kingsford to accommodate Larwood’s large family. When Larwood had settled in, Fingleton invited him to Canberra and organised a meeting with Chifley at Parliament House. Larwood shook Chifley’s hand and in his strong Midlands accent said: “Mr Chifley, I would like to thank you very much for what you have done for me and my family. You have given us a wonderful break in life and we want to express our appreciation to you.”

Chifley looked at Larwood, then at Fingleton, and said: “What did he say Jack?” Fingleton translated. Chifley replied in his rasping, nasal voice: “It’s very nice to have you out there Harold. I hope you settle down all right. Things going well for you?” Larwood looked at Chifley, then at Fingleton, and said: “What did he say Jack?”