A Game Sustained

79 Shocks to the system: 1916 county colleague, Roy Kilner, who had been wounded in the same engagement and then repatriated to a hospital in Birmingham, followed by a transfer to a convalescent home at Squires Gate, near Blackpool. He had been struck by shrapnel on the right wrist while in an assembly trench prior to the attack at Serre. The wound was not too serious, but he had a fortunate escape as he was carrying bombs round his body when struck. He was later assigned to Preston Garrison, where he was deployed as a mechanic. There was also concern about Arthur Dolphin who was reported to have been hit in the head by shrapnel but had been saved by his tin hat. His wife reported he was fine, and Dolphin himself commented that the Germans were getting ‘whacked’ and ‘we are wearing the Hun bowlers out’. Recovering from his injury, Kilner wrote to F.C.Toone that Major Booth was ‘always the same old fellow, one of the few who never did get a ‘swelled head’. He said he had had the pleasure of being in his company on the eve of the ‘scrap’, adding that only when they met again would he be able to convey what the Saturday morning advance (on 1 July) had been like. Other letters of sympathy for Booth were sent by H.D.G.Leveson Gower of Surrey, Russell Bencraft of Hampshire and the Kent captain, H.L.Troughton, a sign of how much he was respected among the country’s cricketers. Within days there were proposals for a memorial to be created for Booth along the lines of that for Frank Milligan, who had died in the South African war in March 1900, but Yorkshire decided to leave the matter for peacetime. The tragic news of Major Booth’s death took some time to reach parts of the county and local cricket carried on that weekend, participants unaware of developments in France. The second round of the Priestley Cup was played in front of large crowds including 6,000 people at Great Horton versus Saltaire, 3,500 at Lidget Green-Keighley and 3,000 at Undercliffe-Bowling Old Lane. The Leeds Mercury called the play ‘about the most outstanding for sensation and excitement in the history of Bradford and district cricket.’ The Huddersfield area also saw a full programme of cricket