Almanac Cricket: Favelland

When Les Favell was inducted into the South Australian Sport Hall of Fame last Friday it was a posthumous acknowledgement of his wonderful career and a spirit that influenced a generation.

 

It was Alan Favell (named after Les’s roommate from the 1959-1960 Indian tour, Alan Davidson), who tugged the cord and unveiled his father’s photo in front of a large and high-spirited crowd at the Adelaide Oval. Les was part of a stellar intake alongside softballer Nancy Whittingham, Socceroo defender Milan Ivanovic, Olympic Gold Medallist Sarah Ryan, Waikerie’s own Mark Ricciuto and the SA Netball dynasty of 1979-1983.

 

In the moments afterwards, decorum was under threat as the netballers surged forward en masse for photos, swamping Sarah and Roo and forecasting that the night was going to be celebrated thoroughly. Alan said his father would have loved it all and been humbled by it.

 

 

 

Ashley Mallett referred to Favell as cricket’s d’Artagnan, due to his cavalier attitude to batting and it was Richie Benaud who best explained it by recounting bowling to Favell in a Sydney club match.

 

‘We started our run-ups at the same time.’

 

Favell seemed to play cricket with a permanent smile creasing his sunburnt face. He was a 1950s/’60s cricketer – a baggy cap, sleeves rolled up over leg-of-mutton forearms and strides hitched up high. But unlike many batters of his time, there seemed no time to waste at the crease or in the field. He drove the ball as straight and hard as the outfield throws that he launched at the stumps, his arm honed by seasons of winter baseball.

 

Favell helped himself to 12,379 first-class runs in 202 matches including 19 Tests for Australia – the high point coming in the steaming heat of South India in January 1960 when he made 101 at Madras (Chennai). In the tied Test in Brisbane against the West Indies later that year, Favell came in as nightwatchman ahead of Ken ‘Slasher’ Mackay. Far from shutting up shop, he typically got stuck in, hitting Alf Valentine out of the ground on successive balls – the only sixes of the match.

 

‘Just as we were still thrilling in the excitement of it,’ wrote Jack Fingleton in The Greatest Test of All, ‘Favell pushed one to the on-side, called [Norm] O’Neill for a single, got no response and then scrambled to get back. Favell thought he had made his ground, the umpire did not.’

 

Runouts aside, his approach drew admiration from the highest authority.  ‘The most frequent criticism heard of Les during his career was that his batting was too risky,’ wrote Don Bradman in the foreword to Favell’s biography By Hook or By Cut. “What a pity all players didn’t have the same fault.’

 

What players of the time recall most about his batting was the chirpiness that accompanied it.

 

‘Happy Birthday,’ was his full-throated cry as he launched NSW leggie Hugh Marjoribanks back over his head for six at Adelaide in February 1959. At Glenelg Oval once, he commentated his innings shouting, ‘That is six,’ before pulling a short one from Barry Walton over the pickets. When Wes Hall bounced him and the ball ricocheted off his noggin to the fence, Favell is reported to have told his partner Neil ‘Nodder’ Dansie to get in for his chop because ‘this bloke won’t be on for much longer’.

 

There was more than braggadocio at play here though. Favell came to Adelaide from Sydney to find a place in first-class cricket at a time when New South Wales dominated the Sheffield Shield in the same way that South Australia didn’t. In his first decade in Adelaide, Favell saw his old state win the title nine times on end. South Australia collected the wooden spoon during seven of those seasons.

 

When he took over the captaincy in 1958, there was no immediate boilover, but the pot started to simmer. Favell urged the team to play as he did and puffed up their self-belief. New cricketers went through a solemn ritual prior to their first game when their captain would show them the oval and remind them that the spectators had paid for entertainment. He warned them not to get bogged down and anything less than 300 in a day was unacceptable. ‘Never let the game just roll along,’ he counselled. In the field, he asked for ideas and tossed the ball to new bowlers to ‘try something and see what happens.’

 

There were disasters along the way. Some believed that Favell’s captaincy could have done with a few more judicious defensive moments but over five years South Australia crept steadily up the table before winning the Shield in 1963-1964 with ten cricketers and Garry Sobers. The West Indian enjoyed the free rein Favell gave him and in turn added to the joyous approach. Ian Chappell has said that the pair created a difference in attitude – a feeling that they were not inferior to the larger states.

 

There is a selection statistic that says something. In the decade before Favell became captain, South Australia had five Test players who collectively played 54 times for Australia. Under Favell, it was eleven men who played 274 matches, including three captains – Barry Jarman, Ian and Greg Chappell. There are many reasons for this, but I suspect Favell’s leadership was one of them. In the years after playing, he coached school clinics all over the state, commentated and was on the verge of becoming an Australian selector when cancer struck him down at the age of 57.

 

It was John Harms in his evocative essay about visiting a Test match in Adelaide (Australia: Story of a Cricket Country) who condensed it all down in his title Favelland. His description is of a place that has a different sensibility.

 

‘It’s a Test made in the image of the land and its people,’ he wrote.

 

So, a final illustration of life in Favelland.

 

In the last match of the 1968-1969 season in Sydney, South Australia was on the edge of winning the Sheffield Shield when it took a 225-run first-innings lead and had NSW five down in the second dig. The home side was still 30 runs short when John Wilson was hit by a short one from Kevin McCarthy and fell back onto his stumps for a duck. As he was receiving treatment, Favell went to the umpires and withdrew the appeal, saying if Wilson was fit enough to return he could. The New South Welshman came back and played the innings of his life, top scoring with 114 – the only century of his first-class career. South Australia went from the verge of an innings victory to needing an awkward 138. The total was made on the final day with the Chappell brothers unbeaten at the crease.

 

The Chappells are both already in the South Australian Sport Hall of Fame and now have been joined by their captain, who loved cricket and gave us all more reasons to love it with him.

 

 

 

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Our writers are independent contributors. The opinions expressed in their articles are their own. They are not the views, nor do they reflect the views, of Malarkey Publications.

 

 

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