Empire Cricket Booklet

•

A. B. TANCRED AND HIS BROTHERS

on well; one of them, a 'Cape boy', is as fast as any bowler we have ever had. 56

Black and White

On matters of race, A. B. Tancred was evidently no more liberal than his settler grandfather. The 'Krom' Hendricks 'affair', which is examined in detail elsewhere in this volume, rightly left a dark stain on South African cricket and white society in general, not least on the reputation of A. B. Tancred who, by putting his thoughts in writing, helped to stir the racist pot. When it was suggested that Hendricks might go as 'baggage-man' on the first South African tour to England in 1894, not only was Hendricks affronted, and in print, but so also was the white establishment and the man (and no doubt woman) in the street. Responding to the comments by Hendricks, the Standard and Diggers News in Johannesburg interviewed Tancred who said: Well, after his impudent letter ... I should certainly leave him out. If he wants to go on the same footing as the others, I would not have him at any price. As baggage-man they might take him and play him in one or two of the matches when the conditions suited him. To take him as an equal would, from a South African point of view, be impolitic, not to say intolerable, and I would not have him on those terms if he were a better bowler than Lohmann. That this was not a minority opinion is suggested by the writer of a letter to Johannesburg Star who was verbose in his rejection of the case for Hendricks's inclusion, asserting that he looked 'forward to a friendly tussle between the English and South African cousins, and if we cannot do better, we can at least take a licking like white men'. Tancred, when interviewed in London in July 1897 for Cricket, added further fuel to the fire: Hendricks is a good fast bowler, but in the opinion of the greatmajorityof SouthAfricancricketers it would not be advisable to send him, on account of the colour question, which in England you no doubt find difficult to understand. What may happen in years to come one cannot say, but there are two or three native bowlers coming

Sadly, Tancred was reflecting the dominant white attitudes shared by most of the cricketers and the general public. 57

Conclusion

Were the Tancreds a representative immigrant colonial family that climbed, and at times fell from, the nineteenth-century social and economic ladder? Do they help to illustrate the part cricket played in all of this, and did cricketers like them and the values of the game they played contribute, alongside all the other factors, economic and political, in shaping Victoria's empire? Related questions hang in the air. Why, indeed, was A. B. Tancred regarded as the South African W. G. Grace? Why were cricket and Grace so significant in the age of empire? In many respects, 'AB' and Grace were worlds apart: Tancred was for a while a big cricketing fish in a very small pond, Grace a monster of the deep. Tancred, moreover, played relatively little top-class cricket, two Tests and eleven first-class games in total, with a batting average of 35.40, and the question is why did such a talent not play more? From his early to mid twenties, evidently, cricket was relegated to a sideline of his other life - family, the law, and finding time to support other causes such as the uitlander rebellion, the defence of the members of the Reform Committee, the war, the foundation of the colonial branch of Roedean School, cricket administration, or even being one of the founders of the Pretoria Golf Club in May 1894. Single-mindedly devoted to cricket he was not. Another factor may have been 'nerves' - contemporary accounts relate how he suffered from nerves before going in to bat, the 'cure' said to be sending him in to open the batting. Family sources also described how he would sit in a comer of the pavilion silently contemplating his own thoughts before batting. Contrast this with the career of his younger brother 'LJ' who concentrated solely on cricket. After he retired from the game, he complained that people who had promised to see him right when he retired