by Mayukh Ghosh
March 20, 2019.
About 5 pm IST.
I usually have my email open at that time.
The David Frith e-mail time. A chance to learn something new about the game of cricket. From the man who knows more than anyone else in this world.
The daily email arrives.
It ends with” I've just agreed an offer to write an update of the Archie Jackson book.”
1950s:
Young David, on the train to school, usually tried playing chess. On other days, he ‘lashed out’ on newspapers. One edition carried a sad story of a young genius who, by all accounts, was as brilliant a batsman as Don Bradman, but died of tuberculosis. Aged 23.
Archie Jackson.
The young man thought he’d ‘like to investigate that story further one day’.
1970s.
“When I returned to Sydney with my family in 1971 after my mother died, I spent a lot of time tracking down old-time figures such as Bert Oldfield (whom I'd known as a teenager), Jack Gregory, Ernie Toshack, Archie Jackson's family and friends, Alan Kippax, 'Stork' Hendry, Victor Trumper jnr, and Syd Smith jnr”
Archie Jackson’s family and friends.
Hunter Hendry: He gave Frith ‘graphic recollections about Archie and a number of other contemporaries’.
Phyllis: Archie’s fiancée.
Peggy and Jean: Archie’s sisters who gave this writer a few books which were once held and read by their beloved brother.
Bert Oldfield and Alan Kippax: Archie’s teammates and friends.
And Bill Hunt.
When Frith spoke to people in Sydney’s cricket fraternity about Archie, they all said: “You must see Bill Hunt.”
They grew up together and remained together till Archie met his Maker in 1933.
Hunt proved to be the most important link. He took Frith to see Archie’s gravestone at the Field of Mars cemetery. He also showed him letters written by Archie. And there were the anecdotes. Uncountable.
A few years earlier Frith wrote a biography of Drewy Stoddart, the forgotten England captain who won the first great Ashes series in 1894/95. He was so engrossed with ‘Stoddy’ that he had to visit a psychologist.
Archie too made him emotionally involved in the story he was writing. He discovered that Archie looked like a young Michael Wilding.
He joined the ACS once it was formed in 1973 and his first piece for the journal of the association was on Archie. He was somewhat obsessed with his subject. And he thought he’d be able to complete the book fairly quickly.
Not to be.
And Bill Hunt became impatient. His letters to this young writer became steadily more irascible. At one point, he thought Frith was useless and he’d write the book himself.
The Doc, Arthur, Archie and I
Acknowledging the support they both got from politician HV Evatt and Arthur Mailey.
When the book was finally published in 1974, Hunt calmed down.
Frith, with a bit of trepidation, did send him a finished copy. The reply came in a tape recording as he was unable to write anymore.
Just before it was published, Frith managed to meet Harold Larwood, the bowler who conceded the four which gave Archie his first Test hundred.
Larwood, after years of rough deals from the cricketing fraternity, was not the most welcoming. That was when Frith used the magic name.
Archie Jackson.
At once he was made welcome and the author even managed to convince the old fast bowler to write a foreword.
It ends this way: “Privileged were those who had known him. I for once could never forget Archie Jackson.”
Even though Bill Hunt was pleased there were others who didn’t like what Frith had written.
One of them was Karl Schneider’s brother.
Schneider, Jackson and Bradman.
Three tremendously talented batsmen.
Two of them died at 23. The other went on to become a world beater.
Schneider died in 1928 but there was something in the book which riled up his brother.
“I received a letter from Schneider's brother. It was quite heated. He was indignant at the veiled suggestion that Archie may have caught TB from Karl after the latter helped carry AJ down from the mountain in New Zealand after his collapse. TB is notoriously contagious.
Problem was: KS did not die from TB. He succumbed to some other ailment - I'm pretty sure it was leukemia. All I could do was apologise.”
Otherwise, the book did well. It was soon recognised as one of the better biographies and, with the passage of time, has been considered a classic.
It was once again published in 1987.
It made news, almost always for the quality.
In 2006, Ronald Cardwell published ‘The Fifty Best Australian Cricket Books of All Time’ (only 60 copies) and in that were five books written by Frith.
One of them, of course, was the book on Archie Jackson.
When I asked Max Bonnell to share his views on Frith’s books, he wrote: “David has had books that were commercially successful but perhaps what I admire more are the ones that were never going to have a wide audience but which he found a way to publish anyway. My Dear Victorious Stod is a good example - a biography of a great but largely forgotten player. The Trailblazers and perhaps The Archie Jackson Story fall into this category too.”
And what about the author himself?
When I asked him to pick a few favourites among the book he himself wrote, he mentioned the books on Stoddart and Ross Gregory. And the Archie Jackson biography. “For its pathos”, he added as an explanation.
Years went by and Frith kept on accumulating material on his beloved Archie. Plenty of new pictures and some fantastic anecdotes.
One such was told to him by Arthur James, the team physio.
“He said he offered to take the young and somewhat naive AJ downtown (Manchester?) to "get some experience", but the lad backed out with nerves at the last minute.”
And then, in 2019, he began updating the book.
In his own words: “A deeply poignant work since I was inserting all the new material in between hospital visits to Debbie. My feeble beloved's last days and nights were in parallel with what I was writing about Archie and his courageous and loyal fiancee back in 1933.”
Russell Jackson, the man behind the new updated edition, wrote a blush making tribute to the author in this new book.
The last line sums it up: “As this is a bittersweet book, perhaps it is appropriate to conclude on a bittersweet note: cricket will never have a friend as committed, generous and protective as David Frith.”
Archie Jackson: Cricket’s Tragic Genius is now available for purchase.
Read it. Read David Frith’s other works.
If you love cricket, there is a good chance that you would not find a better way of spending time.