A Game Sustained

108 Struggling through to the end: 1918 League cricket will be shorn of some of its interest, owing to war exigencies.’ Bingley had seen the last of William Huddleston, the Lancashire bowler who played between 1899 and 1914, and Idle would soon lose the services of Robson, who had received his call-up papers. Some localities seemed to be particularly badly hit. In Barnsley, for example, while bowls continued to be played by those over military age, there was no regular programme of cricket as there were simply no cricketers around. On a positive note, however, this meant that those people worried about the propriety of carrying on with sport could now see the game was being played under more transparent call-up arrangements. As ‘Old Ebor’ put it: That the public are as appreciative of cricket as played by first-class exponents as ever they were has been demonstrated repeatedly, especially in the last two years, when through the Military Service Act players have been placed on a proper footing....Fortunately players and public have now no need of apologists, in so far as they take part in sport on recreative lines and for worthy causes. 70 Another direct impact of the conflict was the increased cultivation of cricket fields during 1918. In the first two years of the war, the authorities had relied on the market to provide sufficient food for the population. However, under the Defence of the Realm Act, the Ministry of Agriculture now gave local authorities the power to take over unused land for allotments and by 1918, there were around 1.5 million such plots, almost two and half times the number in 1914. Because of their size, cricket fields inevitably came under scrutiny in the search for suitable land. In February 1918, the Allotments Committee in Hull applied to the Parks Committee for a portion of the playing fields at Salt Ings Lane, although the Parks Committee did not want it cut up because the pitches were very good and true. Others were more enthusiastic. In April, the reporter from the Hull Daily Mail’s regular ‘Allotment Notes’ column visited plots which