A Game Sustained

98 Running out of steam: 1917 what was described as ‘the opportunity of seeing something approaching the calibre of county cricket.’ The following weekend, a two-day match was played between Yorkshire and a Bradford League side at Bradford during the Bowling Tide holiday. The league side batted poorly and were all out for 36, Haigh finishing with figures of eight for 18. Yorkshire, with many of the same players who had appeared at Leeds, made only 68 but the county side won by 11 wickets in a 12-a-side match. Over 4,000 people attended the first day and in all Bradford cricket followers were able to enjoy cricket at Park Avenue four days out of six that week. Frank Woolley was unable to get leave and Jack Hobbs had returned to London for attention to an injured knee. A game took place at Accrington in the middle of August between an England XI and a combined Lancashire and Yorkshire XI, which was drawn. A further fixture was then played at Harrogate between Yorkshire and the Yorkshire Council in early September, a match notable for the appearance of Maurice Leyland, the 17-year-old son of the former Harrogate professional now at the front. Leyland opened for Yorkshire but made a duck. The area most disappointed by developments over the summer was Sheffield, where the Star Green’un again lamented that ‘there seems to be something lacking in cricket enterprise in this city.’ The state of cricket grounds Despite their limited resources, maintaining their grounds continued to be seen as a patriotic duty for cricket clubs regardless of the challenges. In the summer of 1917, the Yorkshire Post hoped that when cricketers returned for good, they would find the facilities available for taking up the game again. Whatever the ambitions, however, many grounds were inevitably neglected and a ‘serious amount of repair’ was needed at Headingley. Bradford Park Avenue was in no better state and in places the seating was so rotten that ‘Old Ebor’ feared there might be a tragedy if someone leant on the railings of the pavilion balcony, being in places ‘so