HAROLD PINTER
All-rounder, playwright & classicist Shomit Dutta offered the following appreciation of Harold, published in The Guardian on 31 December 2008.
"Harold loved cricket as much as he loved the theatre. For him, they were the two great metaphors for life. He spent over half his life as part of Gaieties cricket club, first as a player, then captain, and finally chairman. As a player, he was a dogged but erratic batsman. I came to the club - a wandering side founded in 1937 by the music hall artist Lupino Lane - a little after Harold's playing days, but he told me he had occasionally managed to hit the ball straight for six, off the back foot. To his regret, he never made a 50; his highest score was 39 runs.
Harold's commitment to Gaieties and its cast of players (actors, bohemians, assorted mavericks, the odd first-class cricketer) was total and unqualified. He brought his own brand of intensity and unpredictability to the club, where I have been team captain since 2006. AGMs could be heated; there were occasional running races along Kensington High Street, which Harold often won. As a spectator, he was loyal to the point of being partisan, always desperately keen to win. But he was stoical in the face of defeat. This summer his side was unbeaten, a source of great happiness: he was particularly delighted at watching us dismiss Tim Rice's team, the Heartaches, for 81 runs, winning by nine wickets. He said afterwards that we'd given them "a really good drubbing".
He sometimes talked about his work. I remember him trying out the first exchange in his 2002 sketch Press Conference on us. And on my first long walk around the boundary with him, he was as pleased with my scoring runs as he was with the fact I was a fan of The Hothouse. "I'm glad you like it," he said. "I happen to think it's fairly fucking good."
Lately, he made it to fewer games than he would have liked. I would call him instead, and he'd demand every last detail: who won the toss, who got runs, who got wickets, who took catches. He loved the narrative of a game, the dramas within dramas. He had a favourite story about a Gaieties player, a former first-class cricketer from Barbados called Winston Stafford. A batsman once skied a ball bowled by Stafford miles into the air. The fielder got under it, but missed the catch; he was struck on the head and knocked out cold. While the other fielders gathered round to see if he was all right, Stafford stormed over, picked up the ball, and threatened to hurl it at the unconscious man, shouting: "You fool!" Harold said this story had reduced Samuel Beckett, who was also passionate about cricket, to fits of laughter.
Harold was inspiring, generous, loyal and in love with cricket. It was a joy to have his company and a blessing to have his patronage. We shall miss him unimaginably."
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Gaieties of yesteryear include Arthur Wellard, Ossie Gooding, Jeremy Coney
and many others.
