John Snow was England’s main strike weapon in their 1970/71 Ashes triumph in Australia. His role in retaining the trophy in 1972 earned him a Wisden Cricketer of the Year award.
John Snow played in 49 Tests for England, concluding in 1976. He took 202 wickets at 26.66
Man is born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards and John Augustine Snow, poet, thinker, introvert would surely be one of the last to disagree with the Old Arab proverb. Assaulted on the boundary edge of a great Test arena, dropped by his county for lack of effort, stood in a corner by England’s selectors for barging over an Indian Test batsman at Lord’s and while all this was swirling around him, writing and getting published a volume of poems – controversy, thy name was Snow, in the early 1970s.
Popular imagination likes its fast bowlers to be ale-swilling extroverts, but this enigmatic cricketer refuses to be typed. He owes his inclusion in one of the most coveted sections of this Almanack to none of these things. He is here on naked merit, which first played a major part in bringing the Ashes back home to England after an absence of 12 years and then helped keep them here last summer. A haul of 55 wickets in two series against Australia is his passport to cricket immortality.
It was perhaps inevitable that he should be regarded as difficult and have his brushes with the establishment, for Snow demands more of life than the game he has adorned with distinction at the highest level. At the England team’s Harrogate hotel during the fourth Test at Leeds last July, Basil D’Oliveira in an animated dinner-table conversation said to him “The ultimate thing in life is to play for England.” Snow replied quietly “The ultimate thing in life is death.”
He admits to being an inward-looking person but says: “I do not withdraw from other players off the field or regard myself as a loner.” Reading, music, painting, poetry are as necessary to him as food and fresh air. When it was put to him that he had a reputation of being a man of moods and that he projected an air of quiet menace to those who sit around the boundary edge and watch, he replied, “A man of moods? Yes, I suppose to a certain extent I am. The menacing bit surprises me though. I get fed up and down in the mouth some days, but if I give the impression of being in a bad temper it is more often than not with myself.”
His father, William Snow, entered the Church at the age of 24, before which he had been associated with the Scottish Football League club, Queen of the South, as a goalkeeper. He also played cricket in the Border League of Scotland. His ordination to a Scottish parish was followed by moves to Worcestershire and Sussex.
He quickly gave the lie to the whisperers who wanted to write him off as a sulky playboy and has been doing so off and on ever since. Under coaches like James Langridge, George Cox and Harry Parks he became in four years a capped player first for Sussex and then for England.
Of himself in his role of fast bowler, the teacher, writer, dilettante of the arts says “I’ve a streak of hardness but I wouldn’t call it meanness. The bouncer in my book is legitimate intimidation. If a batsman carpets me for four or hits me out of the ground he’s got to expect retribution and he should be able to handle it if he knows his technique. If he does not he’s no business to be there. A fast bowler who doesn’t get results has no future.”
