One of the most celebrated cricketers of his or any other generation, the enigmatic Wally Hammond moved to South Africa after retiring and tried to make a clean break from his past with a new family.
Luke Alfred explores the melancholic later years of Hammond’s life following a serious car crash and discovers that he kept even his own children in the dark about his previous life as a cricketing superstar.
In February 1960, while driving from his home outside of Durban to Pietermaritzburg, Wally Hammond rolled his car. The accident took place in daylight but the stretch of road was new and unfamiliar: Hammond swerved suddenly to avoid a cyclist, lost control and the car corkscrewed down an embankment. “The story Mom told us was that he always wore very wide trousers with a turn up, and the leg of the trouser was caught under one of the pedals,” says Valerie Guareschi, Hammond’s youngest daughter. “His car door flew open but he was not thrown clear due to the trouser leg being caught. His head hit the ground every time the car turned over. There was a doctor in a car behind on the road coming back from the beach who stopped and wrapped a beach towel around his head. Somehow he contacted St Anne’s Hospital in Pietermaritzburg and told them to send an ambulance but not to hurry. Dad wouldn’t make it.
“Well, make it he did, and doctors said it was due to his physique and fitness, but unfortunately he was a heavy smoker which caused problems with his recovery. The hospital had to tip his bed up to clear his lungs. I remember walking into the ward with Mom and I did not recognise Dad. He had turned white overnight and had stitches from his forehead to the back of his head. Mom said his head had split like a melon.”
Many years after Hammond’s death, from a heart attack in 1965, Sybil found work in a boutique on Durban’s Musgrave Road. Valerie had moved out of home by that stage and was living in Johannesburg. “Every month I would receive a parcel with a coat, or shoes and bag, and then to follow the outfit to go with it,” says Valerie. “Mom really was a very elegant woman and had a good eye for fashion. I loved receiving those parcels. I don’t remember at what stage she left the boutique but I do remember that all three of us chipped in every month to assist her as her pension came to nothing. She died lonely and without a cent.”
Once, in happier times before Wally’s accident, both parents combined to celebrate a special Christmas, one Roger has never forgotten. “I believed in Santa Claus until I went to Murchison Prep when I was about seven or eight,” he says. “When we were all asleep one Christmas Eve in the Hillcrest house they dug two furrows across the lawn and threw horse manure all about – that was for the horses and sleigh, of course. In the morning we heard a little bell and there were presents waiting. That was special. It was the one and only time they ever did it.”
