48 Monday December 6 2021 | the times
Register
Jimmy Carter, while the president re-
mained above the fray. “You’re going to
be the tough guy,” Ford told him.
In the event Dole was relatively re-
strained, though he caused outrage
during his vice-presidential debate
with Walter Mondale by labelling all
the major wars of the 20th centuryMrs Dole set to work softening her hus-
band’s image. Among other things he
and McGovern, his old adversary, co-
sponsored a bill promoting food stamps
for the poor.
When he was chosen as Ford’s sur-
prise running mate in 1976, his task was
to attack the Democratic challenger,allegedly had dinner together just four
times throughout the previous year.
“When I asked him why, he didn’t have
time to talk about it,” she said later.
Yet Nixon’s aides were angry that
Dole would not deliver some of
their more extreme attacks on
George McGovern, the president’s
Democratic opponent, and weeks after
Nixon’s landslide re-election Dole was
replaced as party chairman by George
HW Bush.
Worse followed. Dole continued du-
tifully to defend Nixon as the Water-
gate scandal escalated, but in August
1974 Nixon resigned. Dole faced re-
election himself three months later.
He was tainted by Watergate, his
divorce, and a perception that he had
forgotten Kansas. Trailing his Demo-
crat opponent, Bill Roy, an obstetrician
who had terminated a few pregnancies
to save women’s lives, Dole saved
himself only by mounting the ugliest
campaign Kansas had seen. “Why
do you do abortions?” he snapped at
the end of one ill-tempered debate.
Flyers showed photographs of dead
babies in rubbish bins and the words
“Vote Dole”.
Dole then met Elizabeth Hanford, a
southern belle 13 years his junior who
was working in Washington for the
Federal Trade Commission and would
go on to serve in the Reagan and Bush
Sr cabinets, as head of the American
Red Cross, and as senator for North
Carolina. They married at Washington
cathedral in 1975 and moved into Dole’s
bachelor flat in the Watergate complex.
Eileen Ash, like Geoffrey Boycott, be-
lieved in taking her cricket bat to bed
with her. She would have placed stumps
under her pillow, too, if her parents had
allowed her to do so. Only driving her
favourite Minis, which she continued to
do well after reaching her personal
century, consumed her to the same
extent all her life. She became the
world’s oldest Test cricketer, one still
prepared to take a stance over the way
in which the game was run.
The only male Test cricketer to have
reached 100 years of age is Norman
Gordon, a South African, who died
aged 103. Ash played cricket from the
age of five in Hampstead in 1916, having
been given a bat by her uncle, and
turned out for her father’s club when
she was older. She was soon represent-
ing a South of England XI and was
swiftly disabused of the notion that she
was taking part in ladies’ cricket. Mar-
jorie Pollard, founding member of the
Women’s Cricket Association, told her
that the game was for women, not la-
dies. “I did not think women played
cricket,” was her response.
She played, before the Second World
War, in an era of long white stockings
and white flannel skirts. There was little
in the way of protective clothing and
certainly no expenses. In later years she
had no truck with the notion that
women’s cricket was a superior game to
how it had been played in her day.
“I had an argument with Charlotte
Edwards, the England captain, over the
coloured pyjama clothes they played in
and I did not like modern-day players
criticising the umpires or the review
system to determine dismissals. Every-
thing is so technical. And what is the
matter with cricket balls now? They did
not become soft and awful when I
played. I don’t think the standard of top
cricketers has improved that much,”
Ash said in an interview for the library
at Lord’s. “I probably bowled at 60 or
70mph and could bowl 16-18 overs in a
spell. We were pretty fit. I was quite fast
but I could slip in a slower ball,” she said.
Nor did Ash like the attitude of Maryle-
bone Cricket Club to the women’s game
(before women were admitted as mem-
bers). “It kept preventing us from play-
ing at Lord’s, so we went to the Oval in-
stead.” She was, however, made an hon-
orary member of MCC when she
reached 100 — and the club’s secretary
allowed her to park in the driveway of
his own house behind the pavilion.
John Woodcock (obituary July 19,
2021), the distinguished cricket corre-
spondent of The Times, was only ac-
corded the groundsman’s space.
Eileen Whelan was born in Highbury,
north London in 1911, and was educated
at a convent where, she said, she was al-
most expelled when she was caught
playing cricket. “The Mother Superior isthe only person who’s ever scared me,”
she confessed. “She was so frightfully
strict.” Playing cricket was not deemed
suitable for girls, so for as long as she was
at school, she had to make do with
hockey.
She began playing cricket for a
women’s team when she joined the Civil
Service at the age of 18. She went on to
play for Middlesex and made her debut
for England against Australia at North-
ampton in 1937. Her seven Test matches,
in which she took ten wickets and scored
38 runs, were spread over 12 years — “I
lost several years of my career because of
the war,” she mused — although she did
tour Australia, making a century and
taking five wickets against Victoria in- Sir Donald Bradman, the greatest
of all cricketers, gave her a signed bat
Eileen Ash
World’s oldest Test cricketer at 110 who bowled at 70mph and played in the England women’s side that toured Australia in 1949
ECB/PADole, right, with Richard Nixon and George W Romney at the 1968 Republican
convention. Nixon would win the presidential election in November that yearEmail: [email protected]hawk for much of his life, yet his flag-
ship promise was a 15 per cent income
tax cut. Asked to list his proudest ac-
complishments on Capitol Hill, he
replied: “Just being there.”
He appeared to be running on the
strength of his biography, speaking of
“one more opportunity for service
for my generation” and offering himself
as “the bridge to an America only
the unknowing call myth”. The
relatively youthful Clinton responded:
“We do not need to build a bridge to
the past. We need to build a bridge to
the future.”
Dole took the bold step of resigning
from the Senate to campaign as “a pri-
vate citizen, a Kansan, an American,
just a man”, but never looked like win-
ning. Clinton secured re-election by a
landslide, taking 49.2 per cent of the
vote to Dole’s 40.7.
Dole was the last veteran of the
Second World War to win a presidential
nomination. His candidacy was more
of a last hurrah than a serious chal-
lenge, and he accepted defeat graceful-
ly. Three days before Clinton’s second
inauguration he was awarded the
Presidential Medal of Freedom at the
White House. He quipped: “I had a
dream that I would be here this historic
week receiving something from the
president, but I thought it would be the
front-door key.”Robert Dole, US senator and Republican
presidential candidate, was born on July
22, 1923. He died on December 5, 2021,
aged 98“Democrat wars”. Ford lost, but only
narrowly.
In 1980 Dole ran for president him-
self, but he could not match Ronald
Reagan’s charm and withdrew after re-
ceiving a derisory 658 votes in New
Hampshire’s Republican primary.
Eight years later he ran again, launch-
ing his campaign in Russell, which he
upheld as the repository of traditional
American values. He defeated Vice-
President Bush in the Iowa caucus but
lost again in New Hampshire after Bush
attacked him with a barrage of negativecommercials. Bush should “stop lying
about my record”, Dole snapped, but his
campaign never recovered.
Dole finally won the Republican
presidential nomination to stand
against Bill Clinton in 1996, the first sit-
ting Senate leader to win his party’s
nomination and, at 73, the oldest man
to become a major party’s candidate for
the first time.
With the economy booming, the
odds were stacked against him from the
outset, but he proceeded to run what
The New York Times described as “one
of the most ineffectual presidential
campaigns in recent memory”.
Despite Dole’s 35 years of congres-
sional service, ushering so much legis-
lation through the Senate, voters never
really knew what he stood for. He of-
fered no compelling rationale for his
candidacy. Dole had been a deficitIn 2016 with Clare Connor, ECB managing director of women’s cricket, and Heather Knight, the England captainwhich she kept by her bed
“in case of burglars”.
When the England
women’s team sailed for
Australia that winter, the
crew did not patronise
them. They put up prac-
tice nets on deck. The re-
quired clothing list in-
cluded ball gowns and
a cocktail dress as
well as cricket gear.
After her cricket
career ended Ash
took up golf,
playing until she
was 98. She spent
11 years working for MI6 in-
cluding during the Second
World War, a period of herlife which she was more reluctant to dis-
cuss than her driving. She never passed
a test, as she was born 23 years before
this was introduced, but was filmed in
a documentary entitled 100-Year-Old
Drivers Ride Again, which explored why
some of Britain’s oldest drivers were still
keen to get behind the wheel. She was
undeterred by having her wing mirror
bashed in when she was 105.
“I have owned four Minis. I like a small
car and it’s quite speedy, the acceleration
is good. It does stand out from the crowd.
People often say to me, ‘you’re the lady
who drives a yellow Mini’. They say it is
a beautiful little car, and that makes me
happy for the rest of the day. If I couldn’t
drive, I would have a motorbike — and
that would not be very safe.”
She married Wilfrid Ash, whom she
met when growing up and who taught
woodwork and became deputy
headmaster at one of the first com-
prehensive schools, in south
London. He died in 2004. They
had one son, Christopher, who be-
came a barrister and then a judge.
She was sustained by her
Christian faith and regular
yoga — Heather Knight,
the current England cap-
tain who once did a yoga
session with her, said
that she had “met teen-
agers with less energy”
— and celebrated her
birthdays in style, in-
cluding a ride in a Tiger
Moth on her 106th.
She also enjoyed wine into
extreme old age and her
glass was more than half full
in every sense. “I’d like to
know when I am going to be
old. Do you think it will be
when I am 105? I have to go
for my second century.”Eileen Ash, cricketer, was born
on October 30, 1911. She died on
December 4, 2021, aged 110dtd
rh c b c M Econtinued from page 47 GETTY
Bob Dole
He dutifully defended
Richard Nixon during
the Watergate scandal