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venkyloquist's review against another edition
3.0
Trevor Wignall writing in the Daily Express once described Maurice Tate thus: "a bullock, smiling chap of undefeatable spirit who always spoke his mind and never lifted his nose in the air, his behaviour invariably natural". Justin Parkinson in his moving and mesmerising tribute to this genial English and Sussex all rounder brings to stirring life the trials, triumphs, tribulations and tragedy of Maurice Tate one of England's finest but forgotten cricketers. Possessing a pair of splayed legs and a toothy grin, Tate ran riot wih his medium pace bowling leaving a wreckage of havoc in the form of hapless batsmen both in international and domestic crickete. An explosive bat to boot he possessed hard hitting talents and Neville Cardus waxed eloquent over one of his strokes terming it the very "smile of cricket". Maurice Tate was in a way righting an acrimonious wrong meted out to his father Fred Tate who was unforgivably blamed for England losing a test match in 1902 at the Oval. In a career spanning a glorious two odd decades, Tate Junior bagged a mind boggling 2754 first class wickets with a bewitching combination of fiz, nip, whizz and pace. Yet for all his accomplishments in death he remains a tragically forgotten hero with even his gravestone remaining partly tended. Hopefully this book by Parkinson will do to Maurice what the latter himself did to his father - remedying an anomaly. John Arlott in a poignant pean dedicated a biography of Maurice Tate with the beautiful words "To Maurice because i liked him". Parkinson ends his brilliant work with the words "So do I". Maurice William Tate you now have at least three people who love you dearly.
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