Sir Gubby Allen was not, in the delicate phrase of one of his biographers, a “naturally penitent man”. Allen, England captain and MCC president, was also the chair of selectors between 1955 and 1962. It was Allen who persuaded Peter May to recall Cyril Washbrook to play against Australia at Headingley in 1956. Washbrook was 41, and hadn’t played a Test in so long that he was serving as one of the selectors himself. “The press went to town,” Allen wrote, but Washbrook made 98, and England won. As Allen recalled it, the spectators raised three cheers for the chair of selectors after the match. Which must be one of the few recorded instances of a public display of gratitude for men who work one of the more thankless jobs in cricket.
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