A Game Sustained

145 which ten county players appeared. Frank Woolley scored 109 in 78 minutes, earning a collection of £9, while the old Yorkshire player C.H.Grimshaw made 115 not out, for which he received £10. Gate receipts for the Keighley versus Bowling Old Lane game were £115 from the 6,000 people present, a record for an ordinary league match. June also saw more very good batting in front of large crowds. Wilfred Payton, the Nottinghamshire batsman who would appear for the county between 1905 and 1931, made 187 in just over two hours for Bankfoot, and B.B.Wilson hit 148 not out on his debut for Pudsey Britannia. In mid-week, there was also huge scoring in the Priestley Cup tie between Queensbury and Idle, which saw 646 runs in total, the former getting 408. The following week, a batsman for Keighley was rewarded with £20 collected from the crowd for scoring just 56. As a result of all this interest, the Yorkshire Evening Post commented enthusiastically in mid-June that those who predicted a revival in the game: have lived to see their most optimistic forecasts more than realised. The inevitable reaction after four years of toil, stress and misery, the return of the demobilised man to dear old “Blighty,” and the un-English weather...have all combined to this end. The demobilised cricketer has returned from the mud-flats of Flanders or the deserts of Mesopotamia with his keenness for the best of all games tremendously increased. 101 Helped by lovely weather, there was an enormous boom in sports. In Leeds, for example, tennis courts were crowded each night and clubs had to turn away potential new members. Returning soldiers had a new-found interest in exercise and the open-air life, and many women – starved of male attention for some time – followed them to the clubs. Swimming baths – indoor and outdoor – and rivers were also popular, and many hoped that golf links would be repaired quickly. There were other signs of the growing interest in different forms of the game which had been stimulated by wartime A wonderful relief: 1919