But I will never forget him for his effort in Brisbane in 1963 after Ian Meckiff had been called for throwing, I hadn’t bowled Meckiff from Lou Rowan’s end after he had been called by umpire Egar in the early part of the match and feeling ran high in Australia over the whole question. Reports appeared in the newspapers that police protection was being offered to the umpires and I had wryly thought that no one was offering any to the captain. Worse still, play was washed out on the Monday and, seated in the luncheon room next to the dressing-rooms, I was musing on life in general when suddenly the team masseur appeared before me. He was dressed in masseur’s clothes with a plastic raincoat on top and a hat pulled down over his eyes, and he was carrying a copy of the pink Melbourne Sporting Globe over one hand. The paper asked in screaming type why I hadn’t bowled Meckiff from the other end and also in big type carried the story of police protection being needed.

Jock, the masseur, when I looked at him had the whites of his eyes showing and he said, “Why didn’t you bowl him from the other end?” “Go away” I said, “I have got enough problems…” He whipped the paper away to show he had a gun in his right hand and said “You should have bowled him from the other end.” All those old stories about your life flashing in front of your eyes are quite true, I can assure you, and he then pulled the trigger, producing a flash from the barrell of the gun. It took me two seconds to realise I hadn’t been hit with anything and a wave of relief swept over me until I caught sight of this figure rolling around on the floor outside the luncheon room. It was Lawry, completely overcome by the success of one of the best planned practical jokes of a cricket lifetime.

Richie Benaud, Willow Patterns

via Victor Trumper Board

For now, Martin Chandler inspects the circumstances of  Ian Meckiff’s noballing at Brisbane, 1963-64 in cricketweb.net.

The question remains then as to whether the events of that Saturday in December 1963 were part of a plan, carefully hatched, to demonstrate that Australia was taking the lead in ridding the game of the curse of unfair bowling. The accusation was that the Australian Board, their selectors, their captain and their umpires had conspired to achieve this and that Ian Meckiff was the man who would pay the price.

In this writer’s opinion the only reason that there is a conspiracy theory at all is because the Board, the selectors, Benaud and the umpires did not bother to meet in advance of the selector’s decision in order to resolve an issue which, it must have been obvious to all, was going to cause controversy one way or another before the season was out. Adding to that failure the shabby treatment of a genuinely popular sportsman, and the loose cannon that was the good Alderman, and it is hardly surprising that a very straightforward set of facts were manipulated in various ways in the weeks, months and years that followed.

http://www.cricketweb.net/blog/features/154.php

But the tarrant’s brand on his hottoweyt brow. At half past quick in the morning. And her lamp was all askew and a trumbly wick-in-her, ringeysingey. She had to spofforth, she had to kicker, too thick of the wick of her pixy’s loomph, wide lickering jessup the smooky shiminey. And her duffed coverpoint of a wickedy batter, whenever she druv behind her stumps for a tyddlesly wink through his tunnilclefft bagslops after the rising bounder’s yorkers, as he studd and stoddard and trutted and trumpered, to see had lordherry‘s blackham‘s red bobby abbels, it tickled her innings to consort pitch at kicksolock in the morm. Tipatonguing him on in her pigeony linguish, with a flick at the bails for lubrication, to scorch her faster, faster. Ye hek, ye hok, ye hucky hiremonger! Magrath he’s my pegger, he is, for bricking up all my old kent road. He’ll win your toss, flog your old tom’s bowling and I darr ye, barrackybuller, to break his duck! He’s posh. I lob him. We’re parring all Oogster till the empsyseas run googlie. Declare to ashes and teste his metch! Three for two will do for me and he for thee and she for you. Goeasyosey, for the grace of the fields, or hooley pooley, cuppy, we’ll both be bye and by caught in the slips for fear he’d tyre and burst his dunlops and waken her bornybarnies making his boobybabies. The game old merri-mynn, square to leg, with his lolleywide towelhat and his hobbsy socks and his wisden‘s bosse and his norsery pinafore and his gentleman’s grip and his playaboy’s plunge and his flannelly feelyfooling, treading her hump and hambledown like a maiden wellheld, ovalled over, with her crease where the pads of her punishments ought to be by womanish rights when, keek, the hen in the doran’s shantyqueer began in a kikkery key to laugh it off, yeigh, yeigh, neigh, neigh, the way she was wuck to doodle-doo by her gallows bird (how’s that? Noball, he carries his bat!) nine hundred and dirty too not out, at all times long past conquering cock of the morgans.

Where there are multiple players, I have linked the mostly likely name.  Don’t know who the Magrath and some others are.

If any of the above makes sense, do let me know.

Thanks to finwake.com for the text of  that very entertaining novel.

Update :  I  read somewhere that 31 cricketers are referred to in Finnegans Wake.  So there is still more work to do.

.. the geographical separation of one territory from another by hundreds and thousands of miles of ocean does pose tremendous, and unique problems to the administrators of West Indian cricket, particularly since the West Indian board exists in a permanent state of chronic bankruptcy.

I felt mildly surprised by the last few words.  Don’t know why.