A Game Sustained

139 Individually and collectively they go on from strength to strength.’ In part this success was put down to the break in the fine weather and the opportunity to bowl on soft wickets. The transformation of Holmes and Sutcliffe into stars had also not been expected. For the first few games, the pair did little of note but on 23 July they put on 279 for the first wicket against Northamptonshire to set up an innings victory. Sutcliffe was quickly awarded his county cap. Yorkshire arrived at Sheffield for the Roses match on the back of a defeat by Sussex. An impressive crowd of 12,000 attended. There were queues at every entrance and the crowd inside was ‘packed and eager’. With Lancashire wickets falling quickly, it was reported that the atmosphere ‘became electrical. Yorkshire were right on their toes, and the crowd was prepared for anything.’ On the second day, the crowd was even bigger, so that an estimated 35,000 saw the game. One paper commented that ‘the public interest shown therein adds another proof to others...that despite the efforts of the “reformers” and the cries of the croakers, county cricket is still the most popular of English summer games.’ Those present enjoyed the sight of Holmes and Sutcliffe putting on 253, before Yorkshire declared at lunch. Two early wickets caused spectators to roar in expectation of a collapse but Hallows and Ernest Tyldesley made the game safe for Lancashire, further fuelling complaints about the two-day game. Reflecting a few days later on the Bramall Lane crowd, a writer in the Lancashire Post commented dismissively that all the talk of ‘brighter’ cricket: was not engineered by or for cricketers, but was an attempt to make first-class cricket a game that it never was and never can be...the Sheffield crowd at least demonstrated that there is still left a community that can find pleasure in a well bowled maiden over and in any of those minor contributions to a keenly-fought game that are apt to pass unrecognised by the man who simply shouts for a smashing stroke. A wonderful relief: 1919