A Game Sustained

127 While many clubs had carried on during the war, in other places the game had to be revived afresh. In the Sheffield area, Whitley Hall Cricket Club, which had been idle for two seasons, decided to play in the Chapeltown and District League. Kirbymoorside and Selby Londesborough cricket clubs decided to start again and gathered equipment and new players. In East Yorkshire, Withernwick Cricket Club was reformed after four years, and Goole Town Cricket Club restarted and moved after its ground share with a football club had destroyed its playing surface. Fund raising was also initiated in many clubs; the Ellerman-Wilson Line Cricket and Athletic Club in Hull held a successful dance, and 300 members of staff and friends attended the first such event since the return of many from military service. Lots of other clubs got ready for the new season in varied states. At Hickleton Main Cricket Club all the old players were available apart from Alban Turner, the former Yorkshire batsman who appeared nine times in 1910 and 1911 and who was still serving in Egypt. 76 Leeds Cricket Club announced that owing to the prompt demobilisation of its players it had vacant dates on every Saturday in May, June and July. Hull Cricket Club decided to use only amateurs during the coming season. Repairs were undertaken on its ground, the main work being the re-concreting of the front of the pavilion to rectify the damage done by the four-year military occupation. In Brough, a preliminary meeting of some pre-war members included men who had served in France, Salonika and Palestine. They decided unanimously to run the club again on pre-war lines. Inevitably the spectre of war was present in club and league meetings, given that so many men had not returned at all or had sustained life-changing injuries which brought an end to their cricket. In February 1919, the Norton and District League decided to raise money for a memorial to local cricketers who had fallen in the war. It also altered the rules of the League so that each side could set aside a home fixture in mid-summer as a charity match. In Sheffield, the Hallam Cricket Club also considered plans for a memorial, mourning Getting cricket back on its feet: winter 1918/19