The Twelfth Man 2015

21 of which one can see the windows of The Stone House Hotel. Hens are clucking and pecking away at the earth in a pen behind the pavilion. On the cricket field, pied wagtails are dotted, mostly in positions ‘saving one’, as if out of respect for the absent groundsman’s preference for them to stay off the pitch. It was on that pitch, on this field, beneath the lush rolling slopes of Abbotside Common, that Percy Jeeves worked and played and, one freak day, was plucked by outrageous fortune out of country-house cricket into the first-class game. The Stone House was built in Arts and Crafts style as a private residence in 1908 by Hugh Arden Crallan, a cricket-lover who had recently inherited money. He situated the house uphill and, further down, had a cricket field laid out. The team comprised mostly locals but Crallan wanted it to win games so, in 1909, placed an advertisement in Athletic News for a professional. Far across Yorkshire in Goole, Percy Jeeves, uninspired by the prospect of a life on the railways like his father and brothers, saw the advert and applied. He was the perfect fit. For two summers in cricket’s Golden Age, Jeeves tended the grounds of the Stone House and prepared the cricket pitch. And at weekends he dominated matches for Crallan’s team. When Pendle Nomads came visiting from Clitheroe one Whit Monday, Jeeves scored 108 and took four for 6, and a collection for him among the spectators raised 30 shillings. Clearly this dapper young man with the dazzling talent was equipped for grander stages. Yorkshire County Cricket Club gave him a trial, but did not ask him back. Then one summer’s day in 1910, Warwickshire secretary Rowland Ryder passed through Hawes on holiday. A minor accident required a Saturday- morning visit to the local doctor who, discovering his patient’s cricket connection, prescribed a visit to the village ground that afternoon. Ryder followed the doctor’s orders. He came to this lovely ground and, on this field, saw Jeeves shine. As soon as Ryder was back at his desk in Birmingham, an offer of a professional contract was dispatched and Percy Jeeves became a Warwickshire player. July 2014. Spectators are filing into Cheltenham College cricket ground as they have done for more than 150 years. Marquees buzz with contented chatter. The seats around the boundary are well populated. The yellow stone of the college buildings forms a glorious backdrop as Gloucestershire and Worcestershire renew their old rivalry. The timeless joy of festival cricket. Much of this scene – the marquees, the chatter, the colourful ring of spectators – was in place in August 1913 when Gloucestershire began a County Championship match against Warwickshire. But also present that day were two men whose paths’ fleeting convergence was to leave an indelible mark on English literature and English life. For on this field Percy Jeeves played in front of journalist and author Pelham Grenville Wodehouse. Wodehouse, his career starting to take off in England and the United States, spent the summer of 1913 at his lodgings in west London. Rarely did he visit his parents in Cheltenham – he was not close to them and did not care for the town. But there was one magnet capable of drawing him to Cheltenham. Wodehouse was an ardent cricket-lover and found the cricket festival irresistible. So one sunny morning in 1913 he left his parents’ house in Wolseley Terrace to make the ten-minute walk to the ground and enjoy some cricket. Gloucestershire were to win the match easily, but it was a player on the losing team who left a lasting impression on the writer. Percy Jeeves was performing brilliantly in his first year as a county player and seven for 34 against Worcestershire at Edgbaston the previous week had taken him to the brink of 100 wickets in his maiden season. At Cheltenham he had a thinner time of it, scoring one run and taking one wicket in the match, but his immaculate conduct and attire on the field enchanted the ever- observant Wodehouse. When, three years later, he created a character with exactly those attributes, Wodehouse thought back to the College Ground. “I remember admiring his action very much”, he recalled in a letter to Warwickshire CCC in 1967. “I remembered him in 1916 when I was in New York and starting the Jeeves and Bertie saga and it was just the name I wanted”. And so, from Jeeves the cricketer, Jeeves the famous manservant was born. A summer’s day in 2014 in the south of England. The Oval is in fine fettle, gleaming amid the perpetual fumes and grind of south London traffic. The outfield is immaculate; lovingly watered and verdant green despite the hot summer. Above it looms the imposing pavilion through which almost every great player has passed. The Oval is well attended by spectators enjoying a day at the cricket as so many generations have before. There are bigger and more striking cricket grounds but few which resonate such confidence. This, the visitors just know, is an important place. Go back 100 years. To the summer of 1914. After a splendid first season for Warwickshire in 1913 (106 wickets at 20.88 apiece and 765 runs at an average of 20.12), Jeeves excelled again in 1914. As a boy his bowling was far too good for the village teams around Goole; as a man he continued to rise to every challenge put before him. He carried an ageing Warwickshire attack almost single-handedly at times, his victims in county cricket including Jack Hobbs, Frank Woolley and Philip Mead. Had England played any Test matches in 1914, Jeeves would have been selected. Instead, he was picked for the prestige fixture – Gentlemen v Players – at The Oval. Jeeves was in a Players side including Hobbs, Woolley, John Hitch, George Gunn and Jack Hearne to face a Gentlemen’s team captained by C.B.Fry and including ‘Plum’ Warner, Gilbert Jessop, Reg Spooner and Percy Fender. The man, who four years earlier was tending the grounds at Hawes, now rubbed shoulders with the greats of English cricket. And he was perfectly at home amongst them. For an hour on the second morning of the match, Jeeves’s seam and swing bowling was almost unplayable against the Gents’ acclaimed top order. Dropped catches left him with only one wicket and figures of 13.2-3-24-1, but in the second innings he harvested the wickets he deserved. As the Gentleman chased 393 to win, he unpicked them with 15-3-44-4. On this field, one of the most important in world cricket, did Percy Jeeves bowl with a potency which prompted England captain C.B.Fry to predict for him a glittering future. Up these pavilion steps he led his team to a huge ovation, Hobbs and Hitch, great players, following in his wake. In the bars and seats of this great ground, while Jeeves took the train back to Birmingham, did The Oval regulars speculate that they would surely soon see this young man