A Game Sustained

84 Shocks to the system: 1916 match, with receipts of £118 a record for one day’s takings. Undercliffe were reduced to 137 all out from 65 for one, but Parkin took his 100 th wicket of the season as they won by 35 runs. At the end of August, the winners of the four sections of the Yorkshire Cricket Council divisionswere Elland, Cleckheaton, Hunslet Nelson and Staincliffe. In the final games, Chickenley, with George Hirst and Alonzo Drake in its side, beat Cleckheaton, Hirst scoring 129. In the Bradford League, Jack Hobbs scored his first century in the competition, 131 out of 183 for Idle against Windhill, to give his club the lead at the top of the table. His wife travelled up for the game, and he finished with a record 784 runs (average 56) in the league, as well as taking 59 wickets at 6.58 each. Hobbs also made 132 in the Priestley Cup. Idle and Lidget Green met in the final of the Bradford League championship in front of a crowd of 7,000, who paid nearly £80. Jack Hobbs made 72, but the game had to be completed the following Monday. Hobbs’s military exemption then ended, and he was called up for service in the Royal Flying Corps as an air mechanic, maintaining and repairing biplanes. 60 Around the same time, there was also news from abroad of another injury to Yorkshire wicketkeeper Arthur Dolphin, although it seemed that he had escaped with nothing more serious than shell-shock. Apparently, among his colleagues at the front, the expression ‘Dolphin’s luck’ was well-known. On this latest occasion, Dolphin had been part of a relief party of six who were going up to the trenches when a shell fell among them. Three soldiers were killed, two wounded, and the sixth – Dolphin - got away only suffering from shell- shock. Back home, his county colleague Roy Kilner was now playing a little cricket after his injury in July. He had no permanent damage to the wrist and was also undertaking light military duties. In the autumn of 1916, the strains of carrying on with the game showed. Hull Cricket Club had an adverse balance for season of £54 due to the effects of the war and a lack of