{"id":2174,"date":"2025-12-01T13:55:53","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T13:55:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/rajnidamboor.com\/?p=2174"},"modified":"2025-12-03T01:42:22","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T01:42:22","slug":"les-ames-mr-twinkletoes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rajnidamboor.com\/index.php\/2025\/12\/01\/les-ames-mr-twinkletoes\/","title":{"rendered":"Les Ames: Mr Twinkletoes"},"content":{"rendered":"

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Character is, indeed, the psychological muscle that moral conduct requires. Its bedrock? Self-discipline, as Aristotle observed, not to speak of self-control. A related keynote of character is being able to motivate and guide oneself, whatever your occupation, including the ability to defer gratification, and control and channel one\u2019s urges to act.<\/p>\n

Les Ames\u2019 cricket was related to character, its particular, and the familiar, derived from experience. In other words, cricketing excellence to Ames meant more than conviction, where art had nothing to do with philosophic wisdom.<\/p>\n

An outstanding wicket-keeper\/batsman of all time, Ames\u2019 theme song was simple, and direct. \u201cTaking on the bowlers,\u201d he once said, \u201cwas my idea of cricket, not worrying about dropping a catch.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a \u2019keeper, Ames was peerless; and, as a batsman, there was no denying his class \u2014 a beautiful striker of the ball \u2014 a man who played further down the wicket than anyone else. As England\u2019s legendary wicket-keeper, Godfrey Evans, eulogised, \u201cHe [Ames] used to go yards to get to the pitch of the ball. He\u2019d love to play a low skimmer over cover-point, like a three-iron golf shot. I called him \u2018twinkletoes,\u2019 and I have never seen a major batsman play so far out of his crease.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ames made 102 centuries in first-class cricket \u2014 the only \u2019keeper-batsman to score a 100 hundreds in the sport. He was also one of just three batsmen to hit Harold \u2018Bodyline\u2019 Larwood for a six. He was a damn good player of pace and spin bowling alike.<\/p>\n

Witness, Kingston Test, 1935. England lost the Test, but not her face, thanks to Ames\u2019 courageous 126. On an extremely pacy wicket, Ames stood firm against some fearsome fast bowling of Sir Learie Constantine, Manny Martindale, and Leslie Hylton \u2014 the trio that laid the terra firma <\/em>for a West Indian pace dynasty to emerge a la <\/em>Darwin\u2019s \u2018Origin Of The [Fast] Species,\u2019 the naturalist would have been proud of. Oops! We\u2019re mixing up time frames. Darwin foresaw the possibility of Artificial Intelligence [AI], all right, not Caribbean pace bowlers\u2019 assembly line.<\/p>\n

Ames\u2019 batting methodology was profound. In a career spanning 25 years, Ames scored over 37,000 runs, over 2,000 of them in 47 Tests \u2014 at an impressive average of 43.57 \u2014 the best-ever percentage, perforce, for a wicket-keeper\/batsman, long before Adam Gilchrist etched his name on the sands of time.<\/p>\n

As a wicket-keeper, his career-record of 418 stumpings was fabulous. Think of it: the Kent scorebook shows 259 occasions of: \u2018stumped Ames bowled…\u2019 Would you believe it \u2014 that Ames became a wicket-keeper by accident? Maybe, you will… if you know that Ames was a fabulous soccer player too. Small wonder why he often stood up to the wicket, and displayed the mercurial, silver-footed skills of both the winger and swashbuckling batsman.<\/p>\n

Pity, he did not see the dawn of instant cricket. Had one-day cricket existed in his time, Ames would have surely excelled \u2014 a run-chase was what he relished most, like a kid colliding their bumper car, with another, in Disneyland, or Mumbai\u2019s EsselWorld.<\/p>\n

This was his greatness.<\/p>\n

\u2014 First published in Observer<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

RAJGOPAL NIDAMBOOR Character is, indeed, the psychological muscle that moral conduct requires. Its bedrock? Self-discipline, as Aristotle observed, not to speak of self-control. A related keynote of character is being able to motivate and guide oneself, whatever your occupation, including the ability to defer gratification, and control and channel one\u2019s urges to act. Les Ames\u2019 […]\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2174","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-compass"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rajnidamboor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2174","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rajnidamboor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rajnidamboor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rajnidamboor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rajnidamboor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2174"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/rajnidamboor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2174\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2180,"href":"https:\/\/rajnidamboor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2174\/revisions\/2180"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rajnidamboor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rajnidamboor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2174"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rajnidamboor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2174"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rajnidamboor.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2174"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}