A Game Sustained

7 Introduction grew and more cricket fields were taken over for food production. Despite this, the summer of 1918 saw growing optimism, reflected in an increased number of ‘county’ matches. Once the war was over, there was a rush to make arrangements for the 1919 season. That summer proved a welcome staging-post on the road back to old ways, but it was only in 1920 when most Yorkshire leagues and clubs were back in action. By then, Yorkshire County Cricket Club had already won the first post-war County Championship and soon afterwards most of the players who would win a sequence of four successive titles between 1922 and 1925 had appeared at least once for the side. The immediate post- war period also saw an explosion of interest in sport and considerable efforts were put into reviving cricket at local level. This is the often ignored story 3 of how the game was sustained in Yorkshire during the First World War, despite – and because of – the ethical choices that were made by many people, and how it was restored in peacetime through a huge collective effort. It is published on the 100 th anniversary of the resumption of the county cricket championship in May 1919.