Hignell one of the last sporting all-rounders
The England-New Zealand cricket series will be twothirds over next month before the domestic rugby season staggers to its close two days ahead of the Summer Solstice. That the longest campaign should stretch almost until the longest day shows how far the winter game has intruded into the cricket season, something which would have been unthinkable when a pair of likely lads from different footballing backgrounds joined forces in the Lincolnshire Colts’ Xl circa 1969.
Alastair Hignell and Phil Neale had no way of knowing then that they would be the last of a rare breed, allrounders blessed with the ability, enthusiasm and discipline to play different sports all round the year.
Almost 50 years later, Hignell remains the last England rugby international-cum-regular county cricketer, Neale the last to achieve an even more improbable double, that of captaining Worcestershire to the county championship title despite the distraction of long winters with Lincoln City.
Hignell’s cricketing career overlapped with that of another Gloucestershire batsman, the late Arthur Milton, the last of the few capped by England at football and cricket. No Englishman has done the rugby-cricket version since MJK (Mike) Smith in the Fifties.
Back then, and for decades thereafter, the seasons were clearly defined. Rugby’s ran from the start of September until the end of April, football’s from a week earlier to a week longer and then only for the FA Cup final on the first Saturday of May.
While their European club season ended in Marseille last night, rugby’s goes on and on and on. One round of the regular English Premiership and Top 14 campaign has still to be completed followed by play-offs and finals, at Twickenham on June 18, in Paris six days later.
Hignell’s experiences of juggling different balls on a global scale almost half a century ago show how the landscape has changed beyond all recognition. On Saturday May 31, 1975 he was England’s full back against Australia in what became known as the infamous ‘battle of Ballymore’ in Brisbane.
The following Tuesday he watched England’s second string end their tour against Queensland Country in Townsville. Hignell, then studying at Cambridge University, touched down at Heathrow on the Thursday to be given a telegram from Gloucestershire County Cricket Club asking: ‘Can you play against Middlesex in Bristol on Sunday?’
“It sounds daft now, playing Test rugby for England in Australia one weekend and Sunday League cricket for Gloucestershire the next,’’ he says. “At the time it seemed a good idea.
“I didn’t have a car and before I could catch a bus to Bristol, I had to go to Twickenham for a tour debrief over breakfast, then back to Cambridge to check that all was well there.
“After the Sunday match, we had a three-day fixture against Yorkshire in the county championship on the Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. I was aching all over by the end of it.
“International tours were few and far between in those days so the tricky times were in April getting ready for the cricket season and in August for the rugby season. Luckily for me, Gloucestershire cricket and Bristol rugby were in the same road. So at the end of a day’s cricket in late August, I’d walk up that road and start training for the new season.’’
Had Hignell been born 30 years later, he would have been denied the option of pursuing different sports, let alone playing one to international level and the other well enough to have taken a century off the West Indies during their triumphant tour in the blazing summer of 1976.
The budding Hignells and Neales of today have no such choice. Hignell is in no doubt that sport is all for the poorer as a consequence.
“Youngsters today are being told to specialise far too early in their lives,’’ he says. “That is a matter of great regret to me because I always believed that each sport helped me with the other. Playing more than one sport gave me a better outlook on life. The more sports you have the opportunity to play, the better for your all-round development.
“If you’re good at two sports you should be encouraged to play both instead of being discouraged to drop one in favour of the other. Siphoning children off into football academies at the age of eight or nine strikes me as an abrogation of sporting responsibility.
“These days I would have been siphoned off into a county cricket academy at 13 or 14 because I was small and precocious. I probably would never have had the opportunity to play rugby.’’
Perhaps the most striking example of a one-match wonder in one sport who fared rather better in another can be found on page 487 of the 1963 Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack. It gives details of Essex’s 28-run win over Lancashire in Liverpool including how their debutant batting at No.9 did not trouble the scorers in either innings:
G Hurst, not out 0 in the first, was bowled (Colin) Hilton 0 in the second, never to be seen in the Essex first Xl again. Four years later the same G Hurst of West Ham United scored the first and so far only hat-trick in a World Cup final. Arise Sir Geoffrey.