Tom Graveney, who has died aged 88, was the greatest, as well as the most elegant and graceful, professional batsman to emerge in Britain in the years after the Second World War.
With his high backlift, and his eagerness to attack the bowling with the full flow of the bat, Graveney stood out among the grafters and accumulators as a throwback to cricket’s golden age. Instinctively a front-foot player, and blessed with a long reach, he excelled especially in the cover and straight drive, dispatching fast and slow bowling alike with tremendous power born of perfect timing and classical technique.
Graveney made batting seem not merely a glorious, but also a highly enjoyable art. Such was his skill, moreover, that he was capable of mastering an attack on doubtful as well as on good wickets.
Although statistics can never capture the essence of Graveney, they do show his remarkable endurance as a run-gatherer. Between 1948 and 1971 he played 1,223 first-class innings in 732 matches, scoring 47,793 runs (including 122 centuries) at an average of 44.91. Seven times he surpassed 2,000 runs in a season.
Neither Len Hutton nor Denis Compton came near to matching his aggregate; and of post-war batsmen only the relentless Geoffrey Boycott has outscored him.
The figures for Graveney’s performances in Test matches are hardly less impressive. He played in 79 Tests and scored 4,882 runs (including 11 centuries) in 123 innings, at an average of 44.38.
But this record conceals a chequered progress. For much of Graveney’s career, his place in the England team was in doubt, and during the seven years between March 1959 and June 1966 he played in only seven Tests.
Cynics might reflect that the selectors found Graveney’s genius unredeemed by public school education. Certainly England’s opponents could hardly believe their luck when he was omitted. “Is Tom playing?” was the only question that interested Frank Worrell when the England team was announced.
Graveney batting for Worcester in 1964
Yet Graveney did give the selectors cause for doubt. After his second Test, in which he untypically laboured for more than eight hours to amass 175 against India in Bombay at the end of 1951, he failed for many years to live up to his potential for England. To some he appeared too relaxed to steel himself to the rigours of Test cricket.
In particular, Graveney fell short in moments of crisis against Australia, the ultimate test for England batsmen. In 22 matches and 32 innings against Australia he would score only 1,075 runs, at an average of 31.61. Against the West Indies, by contrast, he made 1,532 runs in 31 innings, averaging 58.92.
The whisper went around that Graveney lacked the strength of character to succeed when the going got tough, though there was certainly nothing easy-going about some of the West Indian attacks he mastered.
Nor did the Australians themselves doubt his quality. “I was always content,” wrote Ian Johnson, who captained Australia from 1954 to 1956, “when somebody else came to the wicket in what we thought should have been Tom’s place.”
Part of the trouble was that Graveney’s naturally confident and attacking style sorted ill with the dour and cautious approach of Len Hutton, captain of England from 1952 to 1955.
On the evening of the second day of the Lord’s Test in 1953, Hutton and Graveney, batting together, appeared to have the Australian attack at their mercy; even Lindwall and Miller were making no impression.
Graveney felt that the moment had come to put the old enemy to the sword. But at 5.35, with England 143 for one wicket, Hutton issued his instruction: “Right,” he said, “that’s it for tonight.” In the last hour the two great batsmen added only 34 runs; and next morning, Lindwall, fresh again, bowled Graveney for 78 with his fourth ball.
Eight months later, batting against the West Indies in Barbados, Graveney began by dispatching two half volleys straight for four. Once more Hutton came down the wicket. “We’ll grind this one out,” he admonished.
Graveney believed that Hutton finally lost patience with him when he was caught at the wicket for nought attempting to drive at a vital moment in the second innings of the second Test at Sydney in 1954. After that, as Graveney put it: “I finally realised that Len, to put it mildly, had mixed emotions about me.”
Omitted from the next two Test matches, Graveney found himself unexpectedly recalled for the last Test at Sydney. He made a brilliant 111, an innings described by Alec Bedser as “the best of the tour”. But Graveney’s detractors still refused to be appeased: the Ashes had already been decided; the match had been ruined by rain.
A disappointing series against South Africa in 1955, and failures in the first two Tests against the Australians in 1956 meant that Graveney was again discarded, despite being the leading run scorer in the country in the latter year. Nor was there a place for him on the tour of South Africa in 1956-57. To be fair to the selectors, over his first 54 Test innings Graveney had averaged only 35.21.
Graveney with Gary Sobers of the West Indies in 1969
In 1957, however, his form was so dominant – again he would finish the season as the leading run scorer – that he forced his way back into the England side to play the West Indies at Lord’s. He failed to score.
Given one final chance at Trent Bridge, he edged his second ball just short of leg slip – and went on to make 258, his highest first-class score. He rubbed home his point with an innings of 164 in the final Test at the Oval.
Again, though, Graveney faded, both against New Zealand in 1958, and Australia in 1958-59. It would be three years before he played for England again.
In the interim Graveney suffered a traumatic experience at county level. Appointed captain of Gloucestershire for 1959, he led the county to second place in the championship – even if sceptics observed that the team seemed to do particularly well when he was injured.
The next year Gloucestershire slipped to eighth place, amid some rumblings of discontent. On the field Graveney was a sound if not notably imaginative or inspiring captain; off it he was a stickler for old-fashioned values in matters of discipline and dress.
In November 1960 he was outraged to be told that he was to be replaced as captain by Tom Pugh, whose batting hardly surpassed old Etonian standards. Graveney might have swallowed this insult, but for his discovery that the committee had decided two years previously – when he had been appointed captain – that Pugh should be groomed to succeed him. After that, he determined to leave Gloucestershire.
This meant that he was banned from the county championship in 1961, while qualifying for his new county, Worcestershire. At this point Graveney, already 34, and condemned to second XI cricket, almost decided to retire from cricket.
His return to the county championship, in 1962, proved a triumph. The Worcester wicket was fast and true, and though he had to learn how to cope with bouncers, he soon emerged as a better player than ever. Graveney’s heavy scoring saw him recalled to the England side for the first Test against Pakistan; he averaged 100 in that series, with scores of 97, 153, 37 and 114.
Yet that winter he was left out of the team for the first Test against Australia at Brisbane, and failed to distinguish himself greatly when he did play. Back in England he was again consigned to international oblivion.
In county games Graveney was at his peak in 1964 and 1965, helping Worcestershire win the title in both years. “For three seasons or so, from 1962,” he averred, “I had a feeling at the back of my mind that I was the best batsman in England.” Only the Test selectors seemed to doubt it, apparently unimpressed that in 1964 Graveney became only the 15th batsman in the history of cricket to make 100 first-class hundreds.
Not until 1966 did England pick him again, for the Lord’s Test against the West Indies. He scored 96 and received a standing ovation. A century followed in the next Test, and then, in the fifth Test at the Oval, he made 165, arguably the best innings of his life. Although 39, he was still sure enough of eye and timing to be able to hook Wes Hall and Charlie Griffith off the front foot.
Tom Graveney (back row, third from left) with his England team mates in 1953
From 1966 to 1969 Graveney would play 24 Test matches, over which he averaged 49.31. There were further centuries against India (Lord’s, 1966), the West Indies (Trinidad, 1968) and Pakistan (Karachi, 1969). In 1968 he even managed to perform respectably against the Australians.
At Headingley that year, in the absence of Colin Cowdrey, Graveney captained England; though the match was drawn, his tactics earned praise. He also skippered Worcestershire from 1968 to 1970. But when Cowdrey snapped an Achilles tendon at the beginning of 1969, it was Ray Illingworth who took over as England captain.
Graveney’s international career ended in controversy. On a Sunday in June 1969, in the middle of a Test match against the West Indies at Old Trafford (he had scored 75), Graveney earned £1,000 (more than eight times his fee for the Test) by turning out in a Sunday exhibition match at Luton.
Alec Bedser, the chairman of the selectors, maintained, against Graveney’s own recollection, that he had clearly warned him before the Test not to go to Luton. In the upshot, Graveney received a ban for three Test matches. Aged 42, his Test career was over.
Some thought that he was too casual to care. In truth he probably cared too much; at any rate, for the rest of 1969 he was badly out of form. His confidence was always frailer than it seemed; in his own judgment he was “a very good player, not a great one”.
Batting aside, however, he would probably have wanted it remembered that, as an occasional leg-break bowler, he snaffled up 80 wickets in first-class cricket at 37.96 apiece.
Thomas William Graveney was born at Riding Mill, Northumberland, on June 16 1927. His father Jack Graveney, an engineer who worked in armaments at Vickers Armstrong in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, came from a family with its roots in London; his mother was the daughter of a Northumberland farmer. Jack and Mary Graveney had three boys and two girls; Tom was the second boy and third child.
The sports-mad Jack Graveney had the satisfaction, when Tom was five, of seeing him swing a golf club with inborn ease and grace. Indeed, Tom might have succeeded as a professional golfer; in 1957 he finished fourth in a national long-driving competition open to all comers.
Jack Graveney died in 1933, and his widow married another engineer, Jack Gardner, who in 1938 was assigned to a project at Avonmouth docks.
So Tom Graveney became a Gloucestershire man, who found a hero in Walter Hammond.
His elder brother Ken would play for, captain and eventually take on the chairmanship of Gloucestershire, while Ken’s son David also captained the county, and later became chairman of the Test selectors. None of them, though, would last in Gloucestershire cricket.
At Bristol Grammar School Tom excelled at all games; as a cricketer he was then primarily a medium-pace bowler who only turned his hand to batting as occasion demanded.
On leaving school, Graveney required only a few days to discover that accountancy, the profession chosen for him, was intolerable. Instead, he followed brother Ken’s example and joined the Army. In May 1946, 2nd Lieutenant T W Graveney was posted to the Middle East with the Gloucestershire Regiment.
He had now grown, and when he played cricket on the hard pitches of Egypt, soon discovered that his extended reach and ability to hit through the line of the ball made him a formidable batsman.
Tom Graveney in the dressing room at Bristol in 1998
By 1947 Tom Graveney had the enviable job of sports officer at Suez. But when he visited England on leave in August 1947, he found that his brother Ken had fired the interest of Gloucestershire. “I can’t get a ball past him,” Ken would say.
Tom appeared in a few Sunday charity games that summer, and the long arc of his bat as he drove soon convinced the cognoscenti that they were seeing something special. Gloucestershire offered terms at £200 a year, and Graveney, with some hesitation – for he loved life in the Army – accepted.
In his first-class debut, against Oxford University in the Parks in April 1948, Graveney made a duck, and further failures led to his omission from the side. At the end of the summer, however, he began to establish himself and was awarded his county cap.
Graveney continued to make progress in 1949 (1,784 runs at 33.03), and the word began to go round that he was a potential England batsman. His Test debut came in 1951 against South Africa at Old Trafford. Although he made only 15 and was dropped to make room in the Test side for Peter May, his record that summer – 2,291 runs at 48.74 – earned him a place on MCC’s tour of India.
On the sub-continent Graveney, fearful of LBW decisions, became, for the only time in his life, chiefly a backfoot player. By the time the party returned he seemed to be an established England batsman.
The end of Graveney’s Test career in 1969 was not quite the end of his batting triumphs. In 1970 he finished second only to Garfield Sobers in the first-class averages, on 62.66. His eye, he knew, was still good enough to go on for longer, but fielding was becoming an increasing burden, while the new Sunday League, he considered, was “to a man of my age nothing less than an act of cruelty”.
At the end of the 1970 season, Graveney and his family emigrated to Australia where he took up a post as player and coach for Queensland. They were not a good side; and the experiment was not a success. Graveney returned to England in December 1972.
There followed spells as the manager of a squash club at Westcliff-on-Sea, as traveller for a shoe company, and as landlord of the Royal Oak, Prestbury. More satisfactorily, for some years from 1979 he was a television commentator. His views on the game remained conservative. He did not, for example, approve of batting in helmets, which he thought only encouraged short-pitched bowling.
In 2004 the seal was set on Graveney’s career when he became the first professional cricketer to be elected president of MCC. He had been appointed OBE in 1968.
He married, in 1952, Jackie Brookman, whose father was a considerable club cricketer, and whose cousin Monty Cranfield bowled off-spin for Gloucestershire. She predeceased him and he is survived by a son and daughter. His brother Ken died on October 25.
Tom Graveney, born June 16 1927, died November 3 2015
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