A Game Sustained

40 Keeping going: 1914-1915 September 1914, it became part of the 93 rd Brigade of the 31 st Division, alongside the ‘Bradford Pals’ battalion. The presence of three well-known Yorkshire cricketers in its ranks (with local footballers such as Dickie Bond, Bradford City’s England international who had paraded in his uniform at half-time during the club’s last match a few weeks earlier) was too good an opportunity to miss for recruiting purposes, and on 22 May a match was played at Headingley between a Leeds eleven and a side from the Leeds Pals. Unsurprisingly, it attracted a large crowd which included about 500 men from the battalion home on leave for the week-end. Soldiers in uniform were admitted free. Booth, Kilner, and Dolphin were in the “Pals” team, while Drake assisted the Leeds side, which lost by four wickets. The Yorkshire Post considered the success of the match showed the public welcomed the opportunity to watch cricket, ‘even of a semi-county character’, and felt it benefited the army players for whom it was a change from camp routine. Although the money raised on the gate was only £12, this was reported to be more than the average amount taken at an ordinary Saturday club match. A second game was then played at Masham in North Yorkshire. The “Pals” were relieved of military duties for the day and several hundred men attended. Kilner, who had failed to score at Headingley, showed his best form, pulling with accuracy and driving powerfully to make 50 out of 71 in the first 45 minutes. The Leeds team – without any county players – made a disappointing effort with the bat, being all out for 73. Major Booth had to shorten his usual bowling run owing to the length of the grass in the outfield, but he made the ball move so quickly that no one played him with any confidence. Interestingly, wartime was no barrier to consideration of changes to brighten the game, a subject of some debate in the years before the war. Following experiments by cricket associations in Australia, Yorkshire agreed to trial stumps two inches larger than usual and employ eight-ball overs. Matches at Leeds, Sheffield, Wakefield and elsewhere were