or in the importance of being good at cricket. In fact, his instructions ruined my cricket, because he taught us that by far the most important thing when batting was to have your bat in the twelve o’clock high position as the ball left the bowler’s arm, and that you should then bring the bat down in a vertical swing. The result, as far as I was concerned, was that I could hardly ever get the bat down before the ball was past my crease and I had been clean bowled. It was only after I went to Oxford and gave up the twelve o’clock fetish that I managed to make many runs.
