Alf Harrison – The Greatest there was

In my opening blog I said that Anson has always had some big characters who have made the club what it is.  The greatest of those was Alf Harrison. When I started playing for Anson Alf was already an old man and you had the sense that he’d been an old man all his life. When I mentioned previously about looking forward to the jokes and japes of every Sunday, Alf was very much central to that.

Alf loved cricket and he loved to entertain. He loved to tell jokes and stories and he loved to be the joke and the story. The list of stories and anecdotes I have about Alf is too long to share them all here so I am sure there will be a part 2 of this post at some point.

Most of the jokes he told were direct from the Hal Roach joke book and always started off with an attention grabbing ‘listen sonny’. Most of the jokes about him concerned his bald head (apparently a sign of virility), his car, his cat, or his low swinging testicles which could be tucked into his socks, hence one his nicknames, Mr Low Dangles. Sometimes we just called him AH (Arse Hole). He would always delight in telling anyone in the opposition who he hadn’t met before what we called him or the things we had said to him because he knew that it all came from a place of affection.

Drinking was a big part of Alf’s character, and he would keep tins of London Pride in his cricket bag or behind the boundary markers. When we took a wicket, he would run off for a toilet and a sip of beer. He didn’t start drinking till his mid-20s which left him feeling that he had a lot of making up to do. He once told us that after drinking a pint of Bombardier he felt unfaithful to London Pride and never deviated from his favourite drink again. He was an advocate for real ale and was probably the main person to steer me towards that as a choice of drink. He used to tell you it was full of hops and wheat and barley and then thump his chest and thigh shouting out ‘I’m healthy’. He’d remind you that they used to give Guinness to people in hospital and that lager was just full of chemicals. When I was about 15, he bought me half a pint of bitter which I drank just before going into bat which left me a bit tipsy.

He had little interest in eating and was a vegetarian on account of his love for animals. I remember that he once stopped a bowler halfway through his run up because he saw an ant crawling across the crease and didn’t want to risk it getting hit by the delivery. 

In his working life Alf was a window dresser on Savile Row, as well as at other fine locations. His own attire was absolute finery and other than cricket whites I only ever remember Alf wearing the best three-piece suits. He didn’t talk too much about his work, but I do remember him telling of a customer (in his best Lady Bracknell voice) “I’ve got a hole in my trousers and wrecked ‘em. I can have a look at the hole in your trousers madame, but I can’t do anything about the one in your rectum.” One thing we do know about Alf’s working life was that it put him very near to some very good pubs and gave us great opportunities to catch up with him in one of his favourites, the Lord Aberconway, near Liverpool Street. 

Outside of work Alf was also a poet and a painter and believed that he was Horatio Nelson in a past life. One Sunday he brought along a picture of the HMS Victory which he had painted. We immediately, and ever after, referred to it as the Bismarck, to Alf’s chagrin. 

On the field it was obvious that Alf’s best days were behind him by the time I had joined the club. We never ribbed him for his playing ability (a notion that is still sacrosanct in the club) and it’s clear from the history that he was a good player. Nonetheless, he was as enthusiastic about playing as ever he could have been and was still honing his skills every week by training down at the lakes (where exactly? We will never know) by putting his bat against a tree, laying a handkerchief on the ground as a marker and aiming his off spinners at the handkerchief and hitting the bat. Alf’s assurances to us that he hit the handkerchief every single time could only lead us to conclude that he had placed it as a legside longhop, based on the bowling we saw in matches. 

Alf’s bowling style was not sophisticated. He tried to spin the ball. He didn’t. He tossed the ball high up into the air hoping to bamboozle the batsman. Many batsmen were caught in two minds (they didn’t know whether to hit him for 4 or 6) and an array of fielders deep on the leg side were there to mop up (drop) the catches. Some batsmen foiled the trap and wicketkeeping to Alf became deadly because he bowled so slowly that many batsmen came down the pitch and were able to turn their body 180 degrees and aim shots straight backward over the keeper. When Alf was eventually prescribed his ‘Daniel Vettori’ glasses it didn’t seem to make any difference.

Alf saw himself primarily as a batsman and as you can imagine his batting style was flamboyant. He didn’t block much, and the flashing blade of a late cut was his signature shot, and it looked fantastic, regardless of whether he hit the ball or not. 

I don’t think he would have scored more than a 1000 runs from when I joined in 1995 up to when he retired, which puts the 6,177 runs he scored into some perspective, and those last 15 years pulled his career batting average down to 13.85, which is probably an unfair reflection of his former ability. I’m pretty sure I did see him hit a 50 and I definitely saw him hit a six (a top edge over square leg) at Blackshots leisure centre. I batted with Alf quite a bit and I remember sharing a crucial lower order partnership with him against Goresbrook in a rain affected run chase. 

In the field Alf took up position at square leg where he would natter away to the umpire (perhaps telling them why we called him AH). As the innings progressed, he would increasingly make his way closer to the batsman, almost finishing at short leg and we’d have to force him to step back.

Although Alf’s catching had deserted him (did he ever have it?) there was a moment of glory to recall in a low scoring game against South Loughton. In a time game on an awful wicket and an outfield with grass up to the ankle, we had remarkably scored 61 runs in our time without being all out. South Loughton had reached the 20s nine down and were playing for the draw and looking in danger of achieving it. Suddenly the ball popped up off the bat to Alf who had wandered in from square leg again and took a simple catch. A 10-man pile on ensued and eventually Alf emerged holding the ball and promptly declared that he had won the game.

Alf played the game for honour and glory and loved the idea of winning the game. He hated the idea of coming into bat with only a few runs needing to be knocked off as there was no glory in that. Alf was a noble man and cricket was his noble pursuit. One team once made a spurious appeal for caught behind against Alf and laboured their point. Although Alf had done nothing wrong the opposition team’s protests had upset him and made him doubt himself. He stewed over these complaints all week and it was clear that the whole situation had unsettled him because he turned up the following Sunday with a heartfelt written apology, addressed to our skipper, about his conduct and he had to be convinced of the needlessness of such writing. 

We didn’t see the old boy very much once he had retired from playing other than occasionally meeting up with him in the Lord Aberconway. We did manage to lure him to a surprise 70th birthday party around George Collins’ house. It was a wonderful occasion and lots of newer members who had never played with Alf had a chance to finally meet the man we had talked so much about. The night was just like one of those An Audience with television programmes that were common on ITV up to that time. Clearly Alf still loved being at the centre of attention telling his stories and jokes with everyone splitting their sides with laughter.

Alf did come back for one last game in 2010, then aged 71, for the inauguration of the Harrison-Hancock trophy named after himself and another older statesman player of Coopersale CC with whom we had a very friendly but strong rivalry with and was always the culminating fixture of the season. He didn’t go out with the glory that he probably wanted but the true glory was in having him there, sharing the field with him one last time, telling his stories.

I will share one more story in this post because it was after that last game that he told one of his most famous stories about a pigeon in his car boot. It’s the only story that I think we have recorded of Alf recounting, so it will get full justice. The pigeon story starts at 52 seconds, but you get a few titbits before that giving a bit more light into the man and the club from before my days.

Alf died 10 years ago this week, peacefully in his sleep. Part of me thinks he would have liked to have died on the cricket field, in a blaze of glory taking the winning wicket, or catch or hitting the winning runs, and for years he’d given us all strict DNR instructions in case it happened. Those who knew him and classed him as friend miss him greatly, but we won’t forget him, and I hope this post will help keep some of these memories and stories clear in our minds.

For me, Alf encapsulated everything that I love about Anson St George CC, that we measure character and camaraderie over playing ability. No one is a passenger in our club if they carry the essence of Anson within them. Of everyone that I have played with or seen at the club, on playing ability, Alf probably wouldn’t get into an Anson 3rd XI but still he would be the first name I’d want to put down on my team sheet for any given Sunday.

I think that one of Alf’s favourite quotes, that he shared often with us, sums this up quite beautifully.

“For when the One Great Scorer comes,

To mark against your name,

He writes – not that you won or lost –

But how you played the Game.”