An enduring talent from the age of innocence

One of cricket's mighty oaks was felled yesterday when Godfrey Evans, the Kent and England wicketkeeper, died aged 78. Like Cyril Washbrook, six years his senior, who died last week, 'Godders' had enjoyed a long and durable innings. With poignant coincidence, he lost his final wicket as England's current team warmed up for the World Cup at Canterbury, the ground he adorned as a player for 20 years.

The good fortune of cricketers like Evans was to have played in a more innocent day, when the game was more fun and the players, shielded from the all-seeing eye, savoured life to the full, without fear of intrusion. Evans will be remembered not only as a showman with gloves who played in 91 Tests, and belonged to England's strongest post-war team, but also as a man with an irrepressible sense of adventure. Like Denis Compton and Bill Edrich, he believed life was for living.

As a wicketkeeper, he is recognised as the first of the modern greats, standing up to a bowler as quick as Alec Bedser, and flinging himself to both sides, and sometimes in front of the wicket, to hold improbable catches. Bedser and Trevor Bailey, who shared with him some of England's most notable triumphs in the Fifties, considered him the best wicketkeeper they saw, ahead even of Alan Knott.

Only five men, Knott being one, have achieved more than his 219 dismissals in Tests, 46 of them stumped. In all first-class cricket, Evans was responsible for 1,066 dismissals and it was the way he accomplished them, with daring and a hitherto unseen athleticism, that endeared him to a generation of cricket-lovers. He also made 2,439 runs in Tests, with centuries against the West Indies and India.

Born in Finchley, and a handy boxer in his younger days, he first played for Kent in 1939, so he lost five of the best years of his career to the war that began at the end of his first season. After his promotion to the Test side in 1946 he retained his place until the 1958-59 tour of Australia under Peter May, when England lost 4-0. Although he came out of retirement to play briefly in 1967, his career ended properly in 1959.

He was not always a dasher. At Adelaide in 1947, as the new boy of the England side, he went 97 minutes without scoring on his way to making 10 not out, which, allied to Compton's hundred at the other end, enabled England's ninth-wicket partnership to save the match. But it was as an enthusiastic striker of the ball that he was best remembered as a batsman. His second Test century, against India at Lord's in 1952, included 98 before lunch.

His greatest moment came in Australia on 'Tyson's' tour of 1954-55. After England had lost the first Test in Brisbane by an innings and 154 runs, a match Evans missed with sunstroke, he assured his team-mates on the plane: "Not to worry. We shall be there at the finish." True to his word, he struck the boundary at Adelaide that retained the Ashes.

Len Hutton, the captain of that outstanding side, recalled later the qualities that made Evans such a good team man. "He'd be keeping wicket all day in Sydney, 95 in the shade, and never miss a thing. Like the rest he would stagger off the field, have a bath, get dressed, have a drink, sit down at the piano in the hotel and start to play. He was ready for the evening. That is what you need on tour."

Hutton's observation is worth bearing in mind these days when England tourists have been known to sit in their rooms all afternoon, or mooch no further than the pool. On the recent trip to Sharjah, a member of the England one-day party declined an invitation to go on a desert safari by saying: "I'd rather lie down in the bunker of a golf course."

They were made of sterner stuff in those post-war days, which is why players of a certain vintage find it hard to understand why their successors seem so po-faced. If you have fought a war, as those men had, playing cricket was a bonus and their gratitude was reflected in the cavalier manner of their play.

It was not all jolly good fun; it never is. England, and Evans, earned success against Australia the hard way. In 1948, the wicketkeeper missed stumping Morris, then Bradman, as Australia scored 404 to win the fourth Test at Headingley.

Eventually, they regained the Ashes at the Oval in 1953, when Evans was a fully established member of a side that, from this distance, look as proud a team as England have ever had. Led by Hutton, they were buttressed by Compton, Edrich and the young May, with Bedser, Trueman, Laker and Lock to bowl. In the middle, providing balance, was Evans.

He was not the first wicketkeeper Kent supplied to England, nor the last. Les Ames played 47 Tests behind the stumps but, as he was a good enough batsman to make 102 hundreds, there were other reasons for his selection. Evans's only real rival as England's most distinguished gloveman is Knott, whose 95 Tests brought him 269 dismissals.

For anybody who grew up watching 'Knotty', it is hard to imagine that any wicketkeeper could ever have performed better, or for a longer period of time. Nevertheless, E W Swanton, selecting his "team of the century" for The Cricketer magazine's 70th anniversary in 1991, preferred Evans to his successor.

In later years, the bewhiskered Evans set the odds at Test matches for Ladbrokes, which in 1981 led to the bookmakers making the celebrated offer of 500-1 against England to beat Australia at Headingley. Two members of the Australian team took them up before Ian Botham and Bob Willis pulled off one of cricket's most remarkable victories.

To the very end, Evans was seen around cricket grounds, home and away. To English spectators in Australia this winter he was a familiar figure, at the match and in the hotel bar, happy to recall the days when England were not always second best. He will be recalled with gratitude by those who admired him as a lissom youth. He played his part. He must be numbered in the song.

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)