Almanac Cricket: Goodbye Mr Happy

 

 

Ken ‘Charlie’ Horsnell died this week and with his passing goes a pure streak of happiness that shone out every day of his ninety years.

 

His sporting record was modest – a few league games for Norwood and 16 matches for South Australia during which he took 44 wickets with his inventive medium-pacers in the late 1950s. His best was on the MCG against Victoria in January 1954 when he collected 6/80 and 6/112 – Colin McDonald (twice), Jeff Hallebone, Neil Harvey and Len Maddocks were among the dismissals.

 

His most celebrated moment came in the 1961-62 season. He was playing for Kensington, and they drew Prospect in the first game. Prospect had just signed Garry Sobers and an impromptu team meeting was held to consider a plan to get the great all-rounder out. Horsnell watched a replay of Sobers hitting Alan Davidson all around the Gabba in the tied Test and knew he was only a pale version of Davo, so nothing would work. Instead with his opening delivery he held back and floated one down the track. The pace tricked Sobers who knocked it back to Horsnell for a golden duck. The Sunday Mail front page had the photo under the headline ‘O, Garfield!’

 

 

 

 

In the rooms afterwards, Sobers sought him out and asked when they played again and Horsnell roared back ‘The good news for me Garry is that we don’t.’ They became firm friends. At times, Charlie was asked by the SACA to try to reign in the West Indians’ hectic night life. It helped that he wasn’t a drinker. Early on he had realised he was someone who only wanted it all and so he swore off the grog, especially after a serious car accident badly damaged his spine and effectively ended his sporting career.

 

Paradoxically, in his sobriety, he had a long career in wine and spirits distribution and his gathering and sharing of lore was infectious. When the Adelaide Oval was close to being finished, he rang and asked if I wanted a tour. When I arrived, it was clear that it was a secure site. Didn’t bother Charlie. He was giggling like a kid as we weaved through some temporary fencing and walked through the new stands, smelling the fresh paint and staring up at the new creation.

 

‘Isn’t it the most incredible thing you have ever seen?’ he gushed before grabbing my arm to hurry me toward the committee room. He forced the door open to find Neil Dansie and Barry Jarman having a cup of tea looking through the glass at the perfect green oval.

 

‘I feel like we are in a sacred place,’ laughed Charlie.

 

‘You are,’ growled BJ. ‘Now get out.’

 

All of them are gone now.

 

Once when walking the dog, the phone rang with Charlie asking if I wanted to hear a story about Keith Miller … another time it was about West Adelaide Football Club steaming the labels off dozens of commemorate port bottles that no one bought and rebadging them as vintage … then a yarn about watching two Hungarian table tennis players at the Adelaide Town Hall who were so good they played a match against the local champions using their shoes rather than bats … once it was a reminder that Bradman was his seconder when he was nominated for membership at Kensington and that he did the dishes afterward with Lady Jessie and Sir Donald.

 

Denis Brien played against Charlie in District cricket and says he never heard him sledge another player. ‘As a master bowler he always showed respect towards the novice or the player with a much lesser ability such as myself,’ Denis recalls. “Once as I went to leg glance him, the ball ducked towards the slips at the last minute. It seemed to have momentarily stopped and whispered ‘Charlie decided I should go the other way'”.

 

When I wanted to write a book about Sobers’ three seasons in South Australia, he gave me the opening it needed. It was so beautifully told that I had to re-write it again and again and still felt on paper it missed his cadence and laughter. When the book came out, I visited him with Denis to give him a copy. Charlie was in poor shape but his face split with a grin.

 

‘Sir Garfield St Auburn Sobers,’ he said with an emphasis on each name. ‘What a lad he was.’ He signed a copy for me in his scratchy hand. Denis visited Charlie one final time at Mt Carmel Residential Care where he says they reminisced on cricket, football, the pubs of Port Adelaide, the wine business, and even the occasional dash of theology, while constantly laughing and occasionally saying ‘Well I didn’t know that’. Denis called him a very dear friend, a font of information, a very erudite man, and a knock-about scholar.

 

Goodbye, Mr Happy.

 

 

More from Michael Sexton can be read Here.

 

 

 

 

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