Lost Voices of Cricket by Dellor Ralph; Lamb Stephen;

Author:Dellor, Ralph; Lamb, Stephen; [Ralph Dellor]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1692170
Publisher: Bene Factum Publishing
Published: 2014-08-14T16:00:00+00:00

Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie

1933–2006

Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie

IT COULD BE ARGUED long into the night, and often is, whether a captain is as good as his team or the team is as good as the captain. Even those who swear by the former code have to admit, however grudgingly, that the skipper does have an influence on the performance of the players around him, in some cases quite disproportionate to his personal ability. It should not be suggested that Hampshire’s captain when the county’s first Championship title was secured in 1961 was anything other than a thoroughly good player who contributed more than his fair share of runs to that success. It is just that the team was very much a reflection of their captain’s character; it was his team.

The captain in question was Alexander Colin David Ingleby-Mackenzie, born at Dartmouth in Devon in 1933. He arrived at Hampshire via Eton and made his debut for the county in 1951. By the time of his retirement in 1965 he had played in 343 first-class matches, scoring 12,421 runs at an average of 24.35. He hit 11 centuries, recorded 1,000 runs in a season five times, and held 205 catches as well as making one stumping. What those statistics do not reflect is the way he played his cricket. He attacked. That meant that his batting average was lower than it might have been, because he was not one to massage the figures behind the barricades of not outs. It is for that, as much as the 1961 Championship success, three years after he took over the captaincy and four years before he gave it up, that he will forever be remembered by Hampshire folk.

Those followers of Hampshire cricket will subscribe to the theory that the team he led was a reflection of the captain’s personality, but to what extent did the captain himself accept that view of his players? “I think the thing about them was that they were all able to accept a very young captain, which I find a most unusual character study of them. The essence of and the core of one’s success, which I am very proud of because they were a fantastic team to play with and work with, really was a man called Desmond Eagar who I took over from in 1958.

“We were joint captains in 1957, which was a recipe for a pretty good disaster because he had his style and I had mine. Basically it didn’t really work, although we had lots of fun but he was not really a cocktailer, which I must confess at moments I was. He led in a different sort of a way. He was a strong disciplinarian, although I certainly did have certain codes and ways that I thought we could build up strategies and try and win our matches. I think both of us wanted to win, and that was the key question. We were different people, and he was wonderful in leading me through to be able to take over the captaincy of seasoned professionals and campaigners at a fairly young age.

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