Bob Crisp: A once-in-a-generation character who also played cricket

Bob Crisp, born May 28, 1911, led a life matched by few. From taking four-in-four twice in First-Class cricket to climbing the Kilimanjaro twice to swimming Loch Lomond naked to identifying and mentoring Keith Miller, Crisp was a person you do not come across every day. Abhishek Mukherjee looks back at one of the most amazing lives.

What is life all about? Generation X, seldom hesitant to put a foot out of line, swears by the mantra YOLO (you only live once), which is a comfortable philosophy to live with. There is, however, a question: since you get to live only once, what do you do out of it? How do you make sure that you have got the most out of life? What is it like to live life to the fullest?

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Had he been alive, Robert James Crisp would have been among the best to provide a proper response to mere mortals like us. We are so comfortable with our turgid lives that almost every stage of Crisp’s life comes across as a shock to us, making us wonder whether we know how life should be lived.

Crisp is the only Test cricketer to have climbed Mount Kilimanjaro twice. He swam naked across Loch Lomond, where The Great Scottish Swim was hosted in 2013. He nearly died from shrapnel in his skull and subsequent injuries in World War II, and lived to tell the tale of his War experiences in two books. He worked as a journalist. He wrote for Wisden. He founded Drum, a tabloid only for the black population in South Africa. He farmed minks in Suffolk. He left “civilisation” to settle down in a hut in Greece. He was diagnosed with cancer, which led him to take a tour of Crete. He is usually credited with identifying the immense talent of Keith Miller. And even that was not all.

He also played 62 First-Class matches, taking 276 wickets at 19.88. He remains the only bowler to take four wickets in four balls twice in First-Class cricket. Nine of these First-Class matches were Tests for a weak South African side, in which he captured 20 wickets at 37.35 — all within one year. But then, you do not expect Crisp to hang around to one thing forever, do you?

It was of Crisp that Gideon Haigh wrote “Many lives in one, all of them worth living.” Few have summarised Crisp’s life so eloquently. Wisden wrote: “statistics are absurd for such a man.” Andy Bull, in The Guardian, called Crisp “the most extraordinary man to play Test cricket.”

Crisp found a place in Ben Thompson’s weekly blog Badass of the Week (now compiled into a book). Few compliments could have been more appropriate. Thompson also called him “ultra-prolific fornicator,” but that is another story.

Hat-trick man

Crisp was born in Calcutta months after the capital of India was moved from the city to Delhi. The Crisps moved to Rhodesia when Bob was young. He went to Prince Edward School, Salisbury, where he was named Victor Ludorum for two successive years, for he won the 100-yard sprint, long-jump, high-jump, hurdles, and heavyweight boxing.

He was a natural athlete. He played rugby as a forward for Mashonaland. He came second in the 100-yard swimming championship in Bulawayo. And, of course, he bowled fast; very fast.

Crisp was 6’4”, and weighed 14 stone (about 90 kg). Bull wrote: “Crisp was a fast bowler, who had the knack of making the ball bounce steeply and, when the weather suited, swing both ways.” That sounds ominous. Indeed, he made life miserable for batsmen with his pace and life and movement for a short career spanning less than a decade.

He made his First-Class debut at Bulawayo in 1929-30, reduced Transvaal to 15 for 2, and had 3 for 88 against his name. Thereafter something unusual happened, not for the last time in his illustrious life: Crisp decided to travel in a cattle steamer as a deckhand, and a minor epidemic of sorts broke out on the vessel.

He subsequently shifted to Cape Town. He impressed on debut for Western Province, taking 7 for 56 against Natal at Kingsmead. This was a couple of years after Herbie Taylor had marked him out as a future Test player.

He honed his skills in the Western Province nets. He was already equipped with a dangerous in-swinger. Now, as age matured him, he added an equally potent out-swinger to his armoury.

It was against Griqualand West at Old Wanderers that where he achieved his first 4-in-4. Two men did not bat, and Crisp claimed the remaining eight wickets for 31. He removed Frank Nicholson. In a later burst, he got John Glover and Dudley Helfrich in quick succession, and accounted for Charles McKay, James McNally, Leslie Lowe, and Sidney Viljoen in consecutive balls before cleaning up Louis Promnitz: 4 in 4, 5 in 8, 6 in 12, 7 in 25.

Just over a week later he ran through Transvaal at the same ground. His 4 for 34 does not sound spectacular, but the wickets of Threlfall Baines, Ronnie Grieveson, “Buster” Nupen, and Frank Walsh came in five balls — and included a hat-trick.

One of his finest performances came in the Cape Town encounter between North and South in 1932-33. North were sailing on 370 for 6 before Crisp cleaned them up for 396, but South conceded a 162-run lead. North decided to bat on, and Crisp, with 7 for 22, skittled them out for 117, setting up a 5-wicket victory.

Crisp was at it again at Kingsmead in 1933-34. He claimed the first four wickets, and later came back for another 4-in-4, the victims being Bobby Woods, Robert Williams, Harold Fawcett, and Henry Sparks. He finished with 9 for 64 (a new best for Western Province) and 3 for 99, but Natal still won the match.

Scaling new heights

Crisp spearheaded the Western Province attack till 1935-36. As was expected, he was picked for the England tour of 1935. Crisp had an excellent season with 107 wickets at 19.58, finishing next to only “Chud” Langton (115 at 21.16).

However, there is an anecdote here that demands a retelling. It is believed (there are several versions of this story) that Crisp was climbing Kilimanjaro when South Africa announced their squad for England. On his way back, near the foothills, he met a friend who had never climbed the peak. On hearing this, he made up his mind to climb the peak again, this time with his friend in tow. When they had almost made it, his friend broke his leg; so Crisp carried him up and then all the way down.

He also made his Test debut that season at Trent Bridge. Herbert Sutcliffe and Bob Wyatt added 118 before England slid (if that is the word) to 179 for 3. It did not matter, for Wyatt and Maurice Leyland dominated the bowling, adding 139 in two hours.

Crisp had “limped off with a foot inflamed by a bloody blister” (The Fast Men, David Frith). He defied medical advice to return to the field. He had both men (Wyatt was his first Test wicket) in the space of 7 runs, and that was that.

He played all five Tests in the historic series that South Africa won 1-0. The series was marred by rain, with South Africa winning the Lord’s Test by 157 runs inside three days thanks to Bruce Mitchell’s 164 and Xenophon Balaskas’ 5 for 49 and 4 for 54. It was the first time South Africa won a Test in England.

Crisp’s finest moment came in the fourth Test on the green pitch of Old Trafford. He had 5 for 99 (his only Test five-for), including the wickets of Wally Hammond (bowled), Wyatt, and Leyland. Crisp picked up 13 wickets in the series at 34.15. It would not be the last time that he would snare Hammond.

He was picked for the home series against Australia, which turned out to be his last. Once again he failed to deliver the goods at the highest level. A tally of 7 wickets at 43.28 was what he could come up with from 4 Tests. In fact, he faced the ignominy of scoring two pairs in his last two Tests, thus finishing his Test career with four consecutive ducks.

He later played for Sir Julien Cahn’s team and had a stint with Worcestershire in 1938, where he enjoyed an excellent season. His 9 matches fetched him 44 wickets at 23.63 and included five fifers. He did not play First-Class cricket after that.

As Wisden later wrote, “it is astonishing that he ever found a moment for such a time-consuming game as cricket.” Long-term attention span was certainly not his forte.

Tanks and shrapnel

World War II, with its relentless action, intrigued him. Crisp arrived in London in December 1939 to join The War. Alongside him were 40 other South Africans. The team consisted of several men in white-collar professions; for example, four journalists, a doctor, a lawyer, an accountant, and several insurance agents.

They took eight weeks to reach London, whereas usually only three weeks were required. Crisp justified: “We took five weeks longer than usual, because the ship spent time at a port of call en route. We were too slow to join a convoy, but we saw no signs of submarines.” They were paid £10 at London Docks for eight weeks.

He was initially posted in Alexandria. Thompson wrote: “He blew all his pay-checks on gambling bets and booze and covered the difference in his bar tab by either singing songs for the bartender or seducing any woman in the bar with a twenty-pound note in her pocket.”

Crisp’s tenure as Tank Commander in the Royal Tank Regiment was more significant than that as a cricketer. He became Captain in three months, and explained the reason: “I owed this entirely to the fact that I played cricket for South Africa and my commanding officer had once played county cricket for Hampshire.”

He commanded an M3 Stuart Tank, and once used the words “it’s a honey” to describe it (Brazen Chariots, Crisp). He had no clue that the British, even in the 21st century, would refer to Stuarts as ‘Honeys.’ But there was more to Crisp than nomenclature.

Thompson described in his characteristically colourful style: “During the action in the Balkans, Bob Crisp managed to have three tanks (tanks!) shot out from under him (he bailed out and survived with minor burns/shrapnel wounds all three times), fired a .38-caliber revolver at a German Mark IV Panzer on more than one occasion, blasted a dozen enemy tanks, and miraculously shot down a twin-engine Henkel Bomber with a cupola-mounted .50-caliber Browning machine gun right as it was about to make a bombing run on a British Armoured Column.”

Things took a grave turn after those early days of gay abandon. He was hit by shell shrapnel in his skull in the Libyan Desert. It was only due to the timely emergency surgery performed by a gynaecologist that he survived. His companion in the tank died of the same assault.

Crisp recollected those moments of horror in News (Adelaide): “My knees started to buckle under immediately and, at the same time, I knew I had been hit in the head. My first emotion was astonishment. Almost coincident with the explosion was this feeling of great surprise: ‘I’ve been hit. Well. I’m damned.’ It was a few minutes before I went unconscious. I was only out for 20 minutes. From the first impact I had felt no pain at all. Yet my skull had been fractured, a piece of metal was touching the brain, and half my ear had been torn off. I spent six hours, conscious, in the bottom of that tank before they could get me out, but the agony came not from my head but from my legs. They were crunched up awkwardly underneath me without circulation, and I was too heavy and the space too confined for anybody to move me. It was excruciating.”

He fought many a bloody battle, where six tanks “had shot out or blown up underneath him” in 29 days. Four of them happened in one day. Crisp took on the Germans in Greece and North Africa. Then Major Robert Crisp, he participated in Operation Crusader against Ervin Rommel’s Afrika Korps on the Egyptian borders.

He used his machinegun to great effect to bring down a German bomber. He fought for a fortnight at Tobruk with a daily dose of 90 minutes of sleep. Then came Sidi Rezegh, which earned ‘Desert Rat’ Crisp a Distinguished Service Order.

Crisp had only his Stuart. At the other end was a German Panzer formation. It is not known what the Germans thought when they saw a solitary tank approaching, for few survived to tell the tale. The ‘Honey’ thwarted 70 tanks. And Sidi Rezegh became part of World War II folklore.

Most would have moved to newer heights, but this was Crisp. He found himself on the wrong side of the authority. General Bernard Montgomery (no less) intervened, and his award was downgraded to Military Cross. It was the first time: he would be demoted twice more, and re-promoted every time.

Following injuries, he was ‘invalided out’ in Normandy. During a rendezvous King George VI asked Crisp whether his bowling would take a toll as a result. Crisp responded: “No, Sire, I was hit on the head.” The sense of humour would remain with him till his last days.

George Lait, a War Correspondent, recalled an incident. Crisp was admitted in a New Zealand Casualty Clearing Station near Agedabia, Libya after yet another day at work, which involved his tank getting blown away as he tried to pave way for other British tanks over a German minefield at El Agheila.

In the bed next to Crisp lay Chester Morrison, another correspondent and a friend of Lait. As the two journalists discussed the horrors of The War, Crisp kept moving uneasily in the bed with “pass the bottle” requests. By the time Lait was asked to leave by the attendants, the Scotch was over.

The moment Lait left, Crisp turned towards Morrison, and said: “You correspondents certainly do lead thrilling lives, old man. But not for me, no Sir; TOO BLOODY DANGEROUS!”

His War experiences led him to pen two books — Brazen Chariots (in 1959) and The Gods Were Neutral (in 1961). Both books were richly reviewed. Los Angeles Times called Brazen Chariots “unquestionably the finest narrative of tank warfare to come out of World War II.”

The book starts with a lesser known wartime match at Cairo, between Gezira Sporting Club and England XI. Crisp recollected: “I took two wickets in one over, including that of Wally Hammond, and the applause rippled around the khaki-crowded ground. The applause was for me, and I enjoyed it, as I always have done, but it could not drown the sound of distant gunfire.”

If Crisp had done nothing else he would have been a successful author, thanks to his flair and crisp (pardon the pun) storytelling. However, there was another side of his books that is seldom reflected in autobiographical works: remorse.

For example, he does not hesitate to admit that he had accidentally shot his gunner: “As they pulled him out, the head rolled side-ways and two wide-open empty eyes looked straight into mine. In that moment I touched the rock-bottom of experience.”

Later, in 1964, he also wrote The Outlanders: The Men Who Made Johannesburg.

Finding a gold nugget

It was during wartime cricket that Crisp helped unearth a talent that would go on to startle world cricket in years to come. He saw the potential in Keith Miller — at that point a batsman who bowled, but far away from the man who would intimidate batsmen across the world.

Ashley Mallett wrote: “Bob Crisp saw in Miller what others could not see. Crisp sought out the Australian Services captain, Lindsay Hassett, and pestered him to give Miller the new ball. Crisp successfully persuaded Miller to go off a 15-pace run, though Miller did not always run so far.”

Mihir Bose spoke on the same lines in Miller’s biography: “He had successfully persuaded Miller to settle on a fifteen-yard run and he was determined to get him to open the bowling.”

However, Crisp himself never played again, though he was barely 35. The War had taken a toll on his physique. He announced his retirement abruptly. Gubby Allen was probably the first in cricket fraternity to find out. He told Army News (Darwin): “I ran into Bob Crisp, South African fast bowler, yesterday. He has won the DSO and MC. Crisp was badly wounded in the right arm, and said he would be unable to bowl again.” The interview appeared in February 1945.

The Newcastle Sun had predicted this in December 1944: “Crisp, star South African Test bowler in pre-War days, might never grace the wicket again. Apart from wounds in his head and body, he was badly hurt in one leg.”

When he got to know of Crisp’s valiant efforts and resultant career-ending injuries, even Don Bradman was moved to write: “That did not surprise me. Bob was the real soldier-type of man. I admired him greatly.”

Post-War

Following the War came a phase of inactivity, which was certainly not the Crisp way. He went into journalism. In 1951 Crisp co-founded Drum, a tabloid for the black population of South Africa, where he had an argument with the editors.

Wisden explained: “He wanted a magazine about tribal matters rather than something appealing to urban blacks and rapidly fell out with his proprietor.” Crisp was a staunch warrior against apartheid for the rest of his life, even when he left South Africa for good. One can only imagine what he felt when the ban on South African sport was lifted in the early 1990s.

Incidentally, Jim Bailey, with whom Crisp founded Drum, was the son of Abe Bailey, the brain behind the triangular Test championship in 1912. Drum still runs, and is one of the most popular magazines in Africa.

Crisp returned to England, and took up a job in Fleet Street, reuniting with his old friends Miller and Denis Compton. As it often happens with many, life took different, often unwanted (depends on your point of view) turns for Crisp. His books had repetitive references to nightclubs and female acquaintances, but that was an understatement.

In The Guardian, Bull recollects a conversation between Godfrey Evans and Crisp’s son Jonathan during World Cup 1992:

Evans: Your father is here? Oh God, I’ve got to meet him, he’s my hero.
Jonathan: Come off it, Godfrey, you were a proper cricketer, how can he be your hero?
Evans: Bob Crisp was the first man to make a 100 on a tour.
Jonathan: What? How can he be? Plenty of people have made 100s.
Evans: No, no, not runs, women, 100 women.

Crisp married and had two sons, but married life did not suit him. Mrs Crisp won on the football pools in the mid-1950s. At the same time Bob quit his job at Daily Express: he felt insulted because he was asked to write on corruption in greyhound racing. He took his wife’s money and bought a mink farm, but it turned out to be a disastrous decision. He later joined East Anglian Daily Times.

Emperor of maladies

Crisp moved to Greece in the late 1960s. It was his way of “escaping from civilisation” (Frith). By the time he was found, he was residing in a goat herder’s hut on Mani Peninsula with “no running water, and no lavatory” (Bull). In the meantime (he was past 55, one must remember) he continued to remain the supreme womaniser. The hut, presumably, was seldom deprived of at least one representative of the fair sex.

He was there for a year. Then came cancer. The doctors said it was incurable, so he decided to take a year-long walk around Crete. He contributed to Sunday Express while on the move, selling his experiences. It is rumoured that the walk cured his cancer, though it sounds unlikely. When he was bored with his Cretan travels, he tried to row back to Greece but the boat sank. He survived.

Bull theorised that the Greek doctors prescribed Crisp an experimental drug. It was supposed to be applied to the body, but Crisp mixed it in a bottle of retsina and drank it, and was cured near-miraculously. In fact, it was a recovery so surprising that he was flown to England and USA, and became a matter of research for oncologists.

He was there, grey-haired and spotting a goatee, at Randburg in 1989, when, to celebrate a hundred years of South Africa’s advent in Test cricket, the first ever match between black and white schoolboys was played.

Crisp passed away in his sleep at Colchester, Essex on March 3, 1994, two months short of his 83rd birthday. They found a copy of Sporting Life on his lap. He had placed a £20 bet on a horse, and had lost. But then, Crisp could not have been bothered…

(Abhishek Mukherjee is the Chief Editor and Cricket Historian at CricketCountry. He blogs here and can be followed on Twitter here.)