A Game Sustained

148 Woollen District Cup Competition also began early to ensure planned games could be completed before the celebrations, and elsewhere cricket grounds were used in a range of ways. InYork, therewas awater carnival on the cricket groundof the Yorkshire Gentlemen. Food was served from large marquees at North Marine Road, Scarborough; and in Sheffield, there was a march-past of troops which ended up at Bramall Lane. At Yeadon, local military men were entertained to tea in the cricket field, and those awarded honours had them publicly presented. Although the war brought peace, the peace was also accompanied by industrial unrest. The summer of 1919 saw a series of strikes – including within the police forces, in shipbuilding and engineering trades and among railway workers and miners – involving more than two million people. The number of days lost to strikes rose from some six million in 1918 to 35 million the following year. A direct consequence for cricket was that travel became harder for a while. The Hull Cricket Club side, for example, could not get to a match against York by train because of the possibility of a rail strike, going by motor-charabanc instead. The Hull Exchange Cricket Club managed to get back from a game in Newcastle-upon-Tyne, but some local cricket matches were called off because of travel difficulties. Hull Cricket Club, for example, received news from the chief constable of Leeds that, as no police were allowed to leave the city, the Leeds Police team could not fulfil its fixture. Withtimeontheirhands, strikingminersoccupiedthemselves in many ways. In Mexborough, younger men played cricket while older ones tended their gardens. In Thurnscoe, the mining community arranged cricket matches, sports, and carnivals for every day of the strike, and even raised money for hospital charities. Their actions were not to everyone’s taste, however, and a letter in the Yorkshire Post claimed the county was submitting to Bolshevism, asserting that ‘Yorkshire cricketers are playing their games magnificently. Why not Yorkshire railwaymen and miners?’ Some people were actively on the other side from the strikers; in the A wonderful relief: 1919