A Game Sustained

42 Keeping going: 1914-1915 was a rush of applicants and the authorities ran out of attestation forms before all those signing up were taken to Pudsey Town Hall for their medicals. Booth later addressed an enthusiastic audience. In the summer, a cricket match between Huddersfield Volunteer Corps and the local district at Fartown was also used as a ‘magnet’ for likely recruits, with Hirst, Rhodes, Haigh, Denton, Drake, Oldroyd and Holmes providing star quality. The ball used in the first innings was sold in aid of the Mayor’s ‘Cigarettes for Tommies Fund’, realising £15, which was then sent to soldiers at the front. The season of 1915 – Part 2 Perhaps the most significant development in wartime cricket in Yorkshire came on 8 May 1915 with the announcement that Saltaire Cricket Club had engaged the great S.F.Barnes. Barnes had played briefly for Warwickshire and then for Lancashire between 1899 and 1903, but he remained outside first-class county cricket for much of his career, appearing between 1904 and 1935 for Staffordshire. Despite this, he played in 27 Test matches between 1901/2 and 1913/14. With limited cricket opportunities now available, Barnes answered an advertisement placed by Saltaire in Athletic News, famously responding with the simple reply ‘Will I do?’. The reply was equally terse, ‘Come to Bowling Old Lane Saturday. Terms will be arranged!’ 36 A big crowd welcomed Barnes on his debut and he did not disappoint, taking eight for eight in five overs, and bowling in ‘masterly fashion’ as Bowling Old Lane made just 31. Later Barnes took all ten wickets against Baildon Green, including five in successive balls, and 18 wickets for 22 runs in two successive games. 37 At the end of the month, in an even bigger coup, Jack Hobbs joined Idle in the Bradford League and made his debut against Eccleshill. Hobbs, now aged 32, was at the height of his powers and had scored nearly 2,700 runs in first-class cricket in the last season before the war, dazzling in a free- scoring manner he would never repeat again. He did not join up in 1914, admitting in his 1935 autobiography that he had not appreciated the full seriousness of the war situation and