Nigel Howard blazed across the cricketing world of the late 1940s and early 1950s like the proverbial shooting star. He was a forcing batsman who made his debut for Lancashire in 1946. In 1949 he was appointed Lancashire’s youngest ever captain and the next year, 1950, he led Lancashire to a share in the County Championship, their first trophy for sixteen years, and to third place in each of the next three seasons. He was appointed captain of the 1951-2 MCC tour of India, again the youngest man to receive that honour, and achieved an unbeaten record of one win and three draws in the first four test matches. Off the field he was a dashing and handsome figure, turning heads as he drove his blue MG sportscar.

But Nigel’s achievements were gained despite having limited ability as a batsman, and few leadership qualities as a captain. For Nigel was an amateur, and a well-connected one, at a time when in was customary that captains of county sides – and the England team – should be amateurs, even though their cricketing abilities might not be high.

Nigel has been called ‘the last of the true amateur captains of England’ (I will call him ‘Nigel’ to distinguish him form others in this tale with the same surname). He was not the last amateur to captain England in the years before the distinction between amateurs and professionals was finally abolished in 1962, but he was the last to be appointed because he was an amateur, despite his dubious playing ability. His appointment came as English cricket was starting to slowly embrace change, and he holds the unique position of being the only man to be succeeded as both county and England captain by professionals. In this article I will trace Nigel’s career, and the (unwitting) role he played in the long, slow death of amateur captaincy.

Nigel Howard

The Road to the England Captaincy

Nigel David Howard was born in Preston in May 1925. His father was Rupert Howard, an army officer who played a few times for Lancashire during the 1920s. In 1932, Rupert Howard became Secretary of Lancashire, a position he held until 1948, when he gave it up to concentrate on the family textile business. He remained a prominent member of Lancashire’s committees, however, and for years was the ‘power behind the throne’ at the club. His successor as Secretary, Geoffrey Howard, who was no relation to the Lancashire Howards, found Rupert a thorn in his side, and Rupeet’s constant interference eventually led Geoffrey to leave the club to take up a similar position at Surrey.

Nigel attended Rossall School in Fleetwood and Manchester University. He was a good all-round sportsman, playing hockey and golf to county standard as well as cricket. He made his debut for Lancashire as an amateur middle-order batsman in 1946. His day-job was as a partner in the family textile firm, with his father as his boss, so there was no problem with him getting time off to play cricket. His younger brother Barry also played as an amateur for Lancashire.

In 1949, Lancashire needed a new county captain, and Nigel was appointed at the age of 23, the youngest captain in the county’s history. His appointment was controversial. He had not made a great impact as a batsman, and with his father’s presence looming large over the club, there were inevitably accusations of nepotism. However, there were no other amateurs playing regularly for the club at the time (the only other possible amateur candidate was Barry Howard, who was appointed captain of the second eleven), and the powers-that-be would not countenance a professional captain, despite the presence of Cyril Washbrook, a county and England great, who had captained the team several times and had considerable support for the full-time job. Two other counties, Sussex (James Langridge) and Warwickshire (HE ‘Tom’ Dollery) had appointed professional captains, and Dollery led Warwickshire to the county championship in 1951.

Nigel’s first season as captain (1949) was not successful. He scored just 752 runs at an average of under 18, and Lancashire finished tenth. He was criticised for not consulting the senior professionals, preferring to telephone his father or members of the committee for advice. There were rumours of a plot to replace him, though he was given credit for supporting the inclusion in the team of younger players, in particular a gangling fast bowler named Brian Statham.

The critics were quietened in 1950, however, when Nigel had his best season with the bat, scoring 1105 runs at an average of 39.46, and leading Lancashire to become joint champions with Surrey. In reality, Nigel probably didn’t have much to do with that success. Lancashire had made the decision to deliberately prepare pitches that supported bowlers, and their trio of spinnners, Roy Tattersall, Bob Berry and Martin Hilton, supported by Brian Statham, filled their boots. At the same time, five other Lancashire batsmen scored 1,000 runs, with Cyril Washbrook having a dominant season.

Nigel’s batting fell away somewhat in 1951, but Lancashire still finished third. He was now on the test selectors’ radar, and captained the Gentlemen in their annual match against the Players. When the MCC team was selected for the 1951-2 tour of India, Pakistan and Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Nigel was first choice to captain the touring party.

The Cricket Captaincy: An Amateur Preserve

The axiom that cricket captains should be amateurs stretched back to the early years of the game in England. There were two reasons for it, one spoken, the other tacit. The spoken reason was that only an amateur, whose livelihood did not depend on cricket, could make objective, disinterested decisions on the field. Professionals would always be mindful of the precarious nature of their employment and would make decisions based on self-interest, or safety-first. Amateur captains would be more likely to be attacking, going for victory rather than avoiding defeat. The tacit reason was to do with class. Amateurs were overwhelmingly middle or upper class, while professionals were overwhelmingly working class. It was the order of things that the higher classes should be the leaders, and to put a working class professional in charge was the thin end of the wedge towards Bolshevism.

The arguments in favour of amateur captaincy could be easily countered. Firstly, while some, like Nigel, were ‘true’ amateurs with independent incomes, others, especially those at the top of the game, were ‘shamateurs’, who derived much of their income indirectly from cricket, through generous expenses, sinecure jobs with county clubs, or commercial deals. Shamateurs were effectively professionals, and logically could be expected to make decisions as a professional would. Also, even ‘true’ amateurs were mindful of the professionals whose incomes they were responsible for, and were often reluctant to make decisions that would harm their colleagues’ livelihoods (though some captains had a ‘Battle of the Somme’ mentality, with no concern for the implications of their orders for the players who had to carry them out).

Secondly, amateur captains who were top quality players were in short supply, meaning that often the captain was more-or-less a passenger on the field. A team whose captain was a poor player was at a disadvantage when faced with a team whose captain could hold his own. Thus Australia often had an advantage over England, as the Aussies had never bothered with such class-based niceties, but generally selected the best available team and then appointed a captain from within it; the opposite approach to England, who appointed the captain first, then fitted the rest of the team around him.

Thirdly, it was illogical to expect an amateur captain, who often had limited playing experience, to make better decisions than a professional with years of achievement and knowledge of the game. Indeed, inexperienced amateur captains had long relied on their senior professionals for advice – or were sometimes leant on by said professionals. A story is often told (possibly apocryphally) of a gauche amateur captain of Yorkshire at the time when Wilfred Rhodes was senior professional. The captain was taking a walk around the ground during Yorkshire’s innings when a player caught him up to say, “You’d better come back to the pavilion, sir – Wilfred’s declared!” We noted above that a couple of counties had appointed professional captains by the early fifties, and Lancashire’s Cyril Washbrook had captained the side on several occasions when the official captain was unavailable.

Nevertheless, in the 1940s it was still an unshakeable rule that the captain of England should be an amateur, leading to a somewhat motley series of appointments. The incumbent when test cricket was suspended for WWII was Wally Hammond of Gloucestershire, England’s best batsman of the 1930s. He had begun his career as a professional, but following a strong hint from the MCC’s eminence grise Sir Pelham Warner, found a sinecure job as a sales ambassador for a motor company and declared that he was now an amateur. A few years later, as Warner had implied, he was made captain of England, despite admitting in his autobiography that his new status made absolutely no difference to his outlook or approach to the game. When test matches resumed in 1946, Hammond, now 43, was appointed captain again, leading England to one win and two draws against India. He was captain for the 1946-7 tour of Australia, which England lost 3-0, with two draws, then retired from test cricket.

Hammond was replaced by Norman Yardley, 31-year-old captain of Yorkshire. An all-rounder and a ‘true’ amateur, he played for England on merit before the war. He was captain against South Africa in 1947, and against the Australian ‘Invincibles’ in 1948, then returned against the West Indies in 1950, finishing with an overall record as captain of: played 14, won 4, lost 7, drawn 3. A wine merchant by trade, he did not make himself available for the intervening winter tours, necessitating interim skippers. For the 1947-8 tour of the West Indies, the MCC turned to the 45 year old GO ‘Gubby’ Allen, who had captained England before the war. He missed the first test through illness and the side was led by the vice-captain, Ken Cranston (32), a dentist by profession who played just two seasons of first-class cricket, both as captain of Lancashire (Nigel replaced him), and had been selected for England on merit during the first of those seasons. Despite (or because of) such exotic captains, England lost the four-match series 2-0.

Next winter, the captain for the tour of South Africa was Old Etonian George Mann of Middlesex (31), a scion of the London brewing family, who had not played test cricket previously. He acquitted himself well enough, winning the series 2-0, and continued for the first two tests of 1949 against New Zealand, before giving way to another re-tread from the pre-war years, 39-year-old Freddie Brown, who had played for England on merit while playing for Surrey, but was now captain (and assistant secretary (a classic ‘shamateur’ occupation) of Northamptonshire. Norman Yardley returned against the West Indies but neither he nor George Mann was available to tour Australia in 1950-1 and so Brown was given the captaincy. England lost the series, but Brown did well enough to retain the captaincy against South Africa in 1951, winning the series 3-1. By now, however, his performance as a player had fallen away, and so a new captain was needed for the 1951-2 tour of India, Pakistan and Ceylon.

Given this history, Nigel’s appointment as captain for this tour was neither surprising nor controversial. At 26 he was younger than all his recent predecessors, and had three years experience as a successful county captain. He was an attacking batsman and his playing record wasn’t significantly worse than those who came before him. With few amateur rivals, Nigel had a golden opportunity to make the captaincy his own for the foreseeable future.

MCC in India, Pakistan and Ceylon, 1951-2

Test tours of the Indian sub-continent today are swift, forensic strikes. The team flies out, plays a warm-up match or two, tackles the test series and flies home again. They stay in luxury hotels, and travel by fast jets. An extensive support staff look after their welfare and ensure they are ready to play. Things were very different for Nigel and his players. The six-month-long tour began in late September with the team travelling by boat. There were no fewer than 27 first-class matches, including five tests against India and two unofficial tests against Pakistan. Accompanying the sixteen players was just a single support person, the manager Geoffrey Howard, Secretary of Nigel’s club, Lancashire. Accommodation was variable, with good hotels interspersed with much less salubrious establishments. In some far-flung areas the players stayed in the homes of ex-pat British residents. Internal travel was by train, or rattling Douglas DC3 Dakota aircraft, on occasion flown by Geoffrey Howard, who had commenced pilot training during the war.

MCC team in India, Pakistan and Ceylon, 1951-2

India was not a popular destination for many English cricketers, and, having gone through a long, hard winter in Australia the year before, most of the best players opted out of the tour. Consequently, the team that Nigel led was widely regarded as a ‘second string’ side. The sixteen players had just 34 caps between them and several, like Nigel and his vice-captain, Donald Carr of Derbyshire, had not played test cricket before. This did not particularly bother their hosts, who were just happy to welcome the MCC to their newly independent countries. India had become independent in 1947, and Pakistan was a new nation, formed from the trauma of partition, during which some half a million people died. Indian cricket had many years of development to go through before becoming the powerhouse it is today, and Pakistan was not yet a test playing country (Ceylon, now Sri Lanka, did not become a serious cricket playing country until the 1970s). The MCC team were welcomed everywhere with lavish hospitality.

The standard of cricket was unexceptional. Indian pitches tended to be flat and slow, offering little for either batsmen or bowlers. MCC ended the tour with an overall record of played 27, won 10, lost 3, drawn 14. The unexciting test series with India was shared 1-1 with 3 draws, while Pakistan won the unofficial series 1-0. Overall, the team did not exceed its ‘second string’ status; the only players who went on to have long international careers were the batsman Tom Graveney and fast bowler Brian Statham. The team finally, and gratefully, returned home in mid-March.

Everybody’s Making Plans for Nigel

So how did Nigel fare on his first tour as MCC captain? In short, the tour was a personal disaster. Nigel was exposed as being completely out of his depth as both a player and a captain. He did actually finish with a winning record as a test captain, drawing the first three tests and winning the fourth, but his own role in that victory was negligible, it being due to fine bowling by England’s (and Lancashire’s) spinners Martin Hilton and Roy Tattersall. Nigel scored just 86 runs in four tests, at an average of 17.20 and with a top score of just 23. He then succumbed to pleurisy and missed the fifth test, which Donald Carr captained and lost, India’s first ever test match victory. On the whole tour, Nigel scored 335 runs at an average of 16.75, comfortably the worst record of MCC’s specialist batsmen.

Recollections from tour participants years later emphasised Nigel’s inadequacies. Tom Graveney, interviewed in 2002, said of Nigel, "It was very, very tough for Nigel, a nice bloke, but with due respect we all knew he wasn't a good enough batter...All the joy and success of the trip was down to Geoffrey [Howard, the tour manager], along with senior pro, Glamorgan's Alan Watkins, who sorted out us kids when we needed sorting out and forever led on the field by example”. In 2012, the Kent fast bowler Fred Ridgeway, then aged 89 remarked, "Nigel Howard wasn't with it all the time, you know? He started off batting at No. three or four, but kept dropping down the order, to six, seven, then eight. I thought 'Christ almighty, he'll be in at 10 at this rate’. Don Carr was the better player”.

Geoffrey Howard, the tour manager, had to compensate for Nigel’s shortfalls as a leader and ambassador. To be successful in these roles on the tour required open-mindedness, resilience and diplomacy, which Geoffrey Howard possessed in spades, but Nigel lacked. As Geoffrey put it in a letter to his wife,

“I was rather unsuccessfully trying last night to persuade Nigel that true civilisation did not depend on plumbing, wireless and motor cars! I am afraid his philosophy has not yet developed”.

Years later, Geoffrey Howard told an interviewer, “He was very young and his upbringing had been so materialistic. In a way, he’d had things too easy in his life. He got where he had because of his father”.

Nigel became obsessed about his health, fretting inordinately about the numerous flies that buzzed around the hotels, and taking every quack medicine going. His batting form was poor, and the suggestion was made at a selection meeting that he should stand down from the team for the second test in favour of Tom Graveney, who was in fine form. But Nigel would not do so, and it emerged that he had been given strict orders by his father, Rupert Howard, that he should not step down under any circumstances. So his vice-captain Donald Carr, a better batsman and diplomat, had to give up his place to Graveney. Finally, after four months of imagined illnesses, Nigel finally succumbed to an attack of pleurisy and spent the fifth test in a nursing home. Donald Carr was at last restored to the side as captain – and had the misfortune to lose the match, India’s first ever test victory. So the test series ended all-square, and Nigel returned home with his cricketing reputation in ruins.

After India

Nigel’s confidence was understandably at a low ebb at the start of the 1952 county championship season. Indeed, Geoffrey Howard had had to talk him out of giving up the Lancashire captaincy. In the first few games his average was just 6 runs per innings and he asked to step aside for a couple of weeks to get his form back. Cyril Washbrook, still waiting in the wings, stood in as captain again. Returning to the side Nigel did a little better, but averaged just 22.86 over the year. But Lancashire came third again, and towards the end of the year the question was put, would Nigel continue as captain next year? Tellingly, the question was put not to Nigel himself, but to his father. In the event, Nigel did come back, and Lancashire came third again in 1953. But Nigel averaged just 25.30, and at the end of that year he resigned the captaincy. He told reporters that his father could no longer spare him from the family business, but one suspects that he had had enough. So just two years after captaining England, Nigel’s cricket career was over. He was still only 29. His replacement as captain was Cyril Washbrook, Lancashire’s first professional captain at the age of 39.

Nigel returned to the textile trade, and in 1954 married Ann Phillips, a women's golf champion. Rupert Howard died in 1967. In the 1970s, Nigel served for a while on Lancashire’s committee and chaired the cricket committee. Then in 1976, aged 51, he retired from the family firm and moved with Ann to the Isle of Man. Doubtless, they looked forward to many years of golf, but it was not to be, as Nigel died suddenly in 1979, of undisclosed causes, aged just 54. An ironic end, given his hypochondria whilst in India. His Wisden obituary was brief and to the point, the captaincy of England covered in a sentence. Geoffrey Howard offered this cricketing epitaph, “He never quite acquired the leadership skills or the batting ability to command the full respect of the professionals, or to fulfil his father’s aspirations”.

Postscript: Amateurs, Professionals and the England Captaincy

In 1952, the Indians came to England for a four-test series against the full England side. There was of course no question of Nigel Howard leading England, and in the absence of any better qualified amateurs, the selectors gave the captaincy to the professional Len Hutton of Yorkshire. The editor of Wisden, Norman Preston, approved of the appointment, remarking (with a dig at Nigel) that:

“The selection committee made a vital decision in the interests of England, because it should mean that in future no man will be picked as leader unless he is worth a place in the side”.

Hutton proved a successful leader, defeating India 3-0, winning back the Ashes in 1953 and retaining them in Australia in 1954-5, albeit with the assistance of a new generation of quality players. But his selection did not lead to a rush on professional captains. The four men who captained England after Hutton and before the amateur/professional distinction was abolished in 1962 were all amateurs: Peter May (Surrey), Rev David Sheppard (Sussex); Colin Cowdrey (Kent) and Ted Dexter (Sussex).

Amateur status was abolished for two main reasons. Firstly, it was recognised as increasingly incongruous in a more egalitarian age, with such things as separate dressing rooms, accommodation and travel arrangements for amateurs becoming anachronistic. More important, however, was the decrease in the number of ‘true’ amateurs, who could take time off unpaid to play first class cricket. ‘Shamateurism’ reached epidemic proportions. The cult of the amateur remained, however: when Ted Dexter, the incumbent in 1962, stepped down, he was succeeded by another former amateur, MJK (Mike) Smith of Warwickshire. It was not until 1966, over ten years after Len Hutton retired, that England had its next ‘pre-1962’ professional captain, another Yorkshireman, Brian Close. He had some success, but blotted his copybook by egregious timewasting in a county championship game and the emollient Colin Cowdrey returned. Then in 1969, another ‘pre-1962’ Yorkshire professional, Ray Illingworth (now captain of Leicestershire) was given the job.

By now, memories of the amateur-professional divide were starting to fade, with the advent of a new generation of players who came into the game after 1962. But the cult of the amateur captain was not quite dead. In 1972-3, England toured India and Pakistan, and in an echo of 1951-2, Illingworth and other senior players opted out of the tour and the captaincy was given to Tony Lewis, a Cambridge Blue and captain of Glamorgan, who had not played test cricket previously, but was a classic ‘good egg’. Lewis batted and captained adequately, but when Illingworth returned in 1973, he was quickly banished and never played test cricket again. So perhaps the last ‘true amateur’ England captain wasn’t Nigel Howard after all – but Tony Lewis?

Sources Used