A Game Sustained

69 Shocks to the system: 1916 Woolley was still at the relatively early stages of a career which would see him play a remarkable 978 first-class matches between 1906 and 1938, amassing almost 60,000 runs as one of the game’s greatest ever all-rounders. His engagement in Yorkshire created considerable excitement, the Shipley Times and Express commenting, apparently with no sense of embarrassment, that ‘the coming season looks like providing play of a still more extraordinary character... followers of the game in this district are in for something sensational.’ Other Bradford League clubs followed. Lidget Green secured J.T.Newstead, who played 96 times for Yorkshire between 1903 and 1913 and had previously been a big factor in the success of Rishton in the Lancashire League. At Undercliffe, C.B.Llewellyn was contracted for the summer and Cecil Parkin (who had advertised his availability in the Yorkshire Post at the end of February) came from the Lancashire League, where he had topped the bowling averages. Llewellyn was the South African middle-order batsman and left-arm slow medium bowler who had appeared for Hampshire before the war, while Parkin had made his debut for Lancashire in 1914 and would appear for England in the 1920s. The decision of the Lancashire League not to use professionals for 1916 was a big boost to Yorkshire cricket, and the Leeds Mercury considered the Bradford League was now ‘the leading cricket organisation in the country.’ Several noted men also played in the Yorkshire Cricket Council, and the Huddersfield League had a few professionals. Not everyone was impressed by this expansion of professionalism. Some clubs stood aside from the developments. Dalton, Holmfirth, Kirkheaton and Lascelles Hall, for example, did without paid assistance and Honley retired from the Huddersfield District League rather than engage professional support. There was also a lively debate at a meeting of the Mexborough and District Cricket League, where Mexborough objected to paid players. One speaker said it was inconceivable that in the middle of the war they should be paying men to play cricket at home, although