A Game Sustained

54 Keeping going: 1914-1915 Captured soldiers also turned to the game to keep up morale. British prisoners held near Groningen in Holland were photographed in cricket flannels, having been supplied with equipment from England. An official report on an inspection visit to Ingolstadt prisoner of war camp in Bavaria found poor conditions and many prisoners in need of clothes, although this did not prevent them requesting cricket and football kit despite the circumstances. And the following summer, a ‘Yorkshire v Lancashire’ match was played at Ruhleben internment camp in Germany where Yorkshire scored 178 and Lancashire 125. A number of good cricketers were held there, as was Steve Bloomer, the famous Derby County, Middlesbrough and England international footballer. Thus cricket featured as a distraction for men in all parts of the conflict and supplying their need for equipment was just one way in which those at home could make a small contribution to their well-being. Throughout the war, letters from soldiers abroad appeared in Yorkshire newspapers asking for cricket equipment. Sailors also requested nets for deck cricket. Men from the Hallamshires, for example, wrote back to old club mates asking for ‘cricket outfits’ and the sympathetic Sheffield Independent wondered why something more formalised could not be arranged to meet their needs. Many organisations responded promptly to such requests with cricket bats, balls, footballs and a range of other equipment, and the editor of the Hull Daily Mail promised to forward on anything that it received. Some private individuals also took it upon themselves to help. The Rev. Richard Brook of Merton College Oxford wrote to the Yorkshire Post appealing for more material for soldiers. In 1915, he arranged for cricket equipment for the use of the troops in one of the large base camps in France, although the following year he noted that even the best bats did not last for ever and therefore asked for more gifts, with the chief need being bats, practice nets and – because of the mud – matting. The Yorkshire county club also put out appeals for cricket material for the ‘Tommies’ abroad and F.C.Toone sent out