A Game Sustained

172 the changes to the clocks, which extended the time available on summer evenings. How much longer cricket would have carried on if the war had continued into 1919 and beyond, we will never know, but for those four summers, cricketers made the best of things if they wanted to play the game, which they did. A third important factor was the leadership role played by Yorkshire County Cricket Club, which maintained itself at a low level of operation but was closely associated with the war effort and acted as a beacon of propriety. In Lord Hawke it had a strong, opinionated and authoritative voice for a restrained and responsible approach to keeping the game alive, although he also had his critics who considered him sanctimonious and bullying. Hawke supported the presence and role of cricket now and in the future, and ensured that the club functioned and maintained contact with its members as much as possible, but always within the realm of what was considered appropriate. The club also continued to engage a small group of senior professionals to maintain the visibility of the game, at the same time as giving some pleasure to tens of thousands of people. The players’ sporting roles were always secondary to their war work but they appeared in numerous war charity and other matches across the north of England, making an important contribution to maintaining morale. The club’s stated policy was to keep players and members in touch with each other as much as possible, and not without reason, the county’s report for 1919 thanked Hirst, Rhodes, Denton and Drake ‘who, when war work permitted, ungrudgingly gave their services, and thereby rendered most useful work for the future success of the game.’ 118 Fourthly, organising war charity matches and supplying sports equipment to servicemen were particularly important ways of reconciling playing cricket with practical support for the war effort. From 1915 onwards, matches involving numerous star players were justified on the grounds that they were very effective ways of raising quite considerable sums of money. Thousands turned out to see sides often Concluding thoughts: Cricket, Yorkshire and the Great War