A Game Sustained

20 Keeping going: 1914-1915 I am glad that our cricketers are still carrying out their programme, as the relaxation afforded must be useful at a time when it is essential that calm confidence should prevail amongst all classes in the land... 22 Despite such sentiments, the announcement of war began to affect the game in different ways, large and small. In Hull, a meeting of the Hull and District League was cancelled because the Secretary was called away for duty with the Territorials. The Yorkshire Evening Post advised its readers it would not be able to report local cricket matches, only county games, because of the amount of space given to war news. The Middlesex captain P.F.Warner advised Yorkshire that his side could not fulfil its fixture with them starting on 10 August, owing to the demands of the war on its members. This decision was subsequently overturned, and the game went ahead with the Yorkshire side made up entirely of professionals (‘the Yorkshire amateurs being absent through a feeling that they could not play serious cricket at such a time as this’) and with George Hirst as captain. This situation led to Yorkshire’s cricket and selection committee asking the county secretary to accompany the side to the remaining away matches, the implication presumably being to make sure the professionals behaved themselves without an amateur captain! The county’s next fixture with Surrey did take place but across the Thames at Lord’s, where Jack Hobbs was clearly just as much at home as at The Oval. The England opener scored a century in the first 75 minutes of the game but ‘Old Ebor’ recorded that ‘the general attitude was one of indifference to the result.’ A full programme of club fixtures went ahead the weekend after war broke out but there was clearly uncertainty about whatwasacceptable. AYorkshireamateursandprofessionals match at Bridlington was abandoned, and H.D.G.Leveson Gower could not get a team together for an England XI match at Harrogate. On 10 August, the Scarborough Cricket Club committee met to consider whether it could still justify holding the Festival. The Yorkshire Post picked up some of the conflicting thoughts running through the minds of