The Rio Cricket Club

As I sit in my study wading through a difficult paper in Philosophy, the sounds of BBC Five Live drift through from the next room. The England-India test match at Headingly has started. My thoughts turn to my childhood.

Cricket forms some of my earliest memories. After the war, my father joined Cable & Wireless and in 1953, the year of my birth, was posted to Rio de Janeiro as part of the Western Telegraph Company. Rio in the 1950’s was considered to be a hardship posting. Cable & Wireless was run much like the Civil Service or Foreign Office. The posting attracted some benefits, one of which was membership of local clubs.

So my father joined the ‘Rio Cricket Club’, which was actually situated across the bay from Rio in Niteroi. The club was run like an old-fashioned ‘gentleman’s club’ which was probably irksome for my mother, but it was the only place where you could meet other British expats. The club allowed other foreign nationals and Brasilians, but few Brasilians joined at the time.

Rio Cricket Club bar 1959. I am on the bar. The younger man is my Dad who has just come off the cricket field.

The club had extensive grounds which included a cricket field, tennis courts and a huge Portuguese colonial style club house that overlooked the cricket pitch. It had a bar and a restaurant. Much later, in the 1970’s, a swimming pool was added, and the club became angled towards Brasilians.  

I still remember the sound of men playing Bidou at a large circular table on the verandah, each with a gin and bitters, slamming their leather cups on the table in bluffing bravado. The game originates from North Africa where some of the club’s members had been stationed, including my father, who spent time in Tunis and Aden in the late 1940’s. So I expect this is how the game reached Rio.

I remember the dark cool snooker room where women were not allowed. Members didn’t see the irony of the solitary signed photograph of Queen Elizabeth 2 on the wall.

I remember stealing my fist kiss with a girl behind the tennis courts. Her name was Melissa. I would have been about 6.

I remember lying on the cricket pitch at night listening to the cicadas and marvelling at the immensity of the southern starry sky. There was little light pollution in those days.

But most of all, I remember the cricket.

As a family, my father, mother, brother and I spent every weekend at the Club unless a trip to the interior or to a remote beach had been organised. We also went to the club on Wednesdays, when my mother played Bridge and my father played Bowls. We lived only 10 minutes away by car. I didn’t go to school until I was 8.

My father became cricket captain, and my mother was the chief scorer. Her understanding of the game was detailed. I often wonder what happened to the many scorebooks she must have completed over the years, meticulously kept in pencil.

I learned to play cricket from about the age of 6. When I was packed off to boarding school in England I quickly took to the game at my prep school and public senior school. I started off by being a leg spinner, but eventually moved to be first change bowler, bowling out-swingers. I had quite a bit of success at that. My school averages are written up in the Wisden Almanack of 1972.

When I returned to Brasil during the long summer holidays, I would often stand in for someone in the Rio cricket team. Two memories abide with me. The first was facing up to the fastest bowler in the World at the time: Wes Hall. Wes was an employee of Cable and Wireless on one of the Caribbean islands and was in the Cable and Wireless Caribbean touring team that visited Brasil. I was out second ball.  The second was playing against the MCC touring side, captained by M.J.K Smith.

Cricket was a frequent topic of conversation at home. I got to understand its idiosyncrasies and depth by a process of osmosis. My father followed all the test matches of the era on the BBC World Service. I remember the radio whining in and out as my father struggled to adjust the antennae to hear the broadcasts.

Occasionally I’m asked who my favourite cricketers are. In the modern era, it would be Joe Root. But going back to earlier eras Dexter, Boycott, Sobers, Botham and Gower all feature for different reasons. On the pure bowling side, there has never been a more mesmerising cricket duo to watch than Thommo and Lillee firing from both ends. Who can forget Bob Massie’s swing bowling at his test debut for Australia at Lords in 1972? 15 wickets in his first Test!  I remember it had an effect on my own bowling at the time.

And let’s not forget the cricket commentators. There have been many good ones, but I am drawn to John Arlott, Richie Benaud, Henry Blofeld, Jim Laker, and of course, Aggers and Tuffers. Banter is essential.