Dimming of the Day

Chapter Eight Minor Counties Minor County cricket had been hit hard and earlier than the first-class game. Although the clubs needed organisation like the first-class game and were organised as members’ clubs in the same way, the players were nearly all amateurs and teams would have been early affected by players and indeed administrators joining up (or simply unable to arrange their affairs to play). The Sports Argus carried an article about Staffordshire’s season which had ended with an average of 86%, but the county had to cancel their last two matches, against Norfolk and Surrey II, because of the war. 21 Minor County matches altogether had been cancelled. Staffordshire had 12 fixtures but of the ten which they played they won eight and lost only one, so they clearly topped the table but were not immediately declared champions, the title only being formally awarded when Hertfordshire decided not to seek a challenge match. Staffordshire had, of course, the advantage of the incomparable Sydney Barnes. Despite missing a number of matches through injury or league commitments, Barnes took 48 wickets at an average of 6.18 (and 85 at 5.10 in his league engagement with Porthill); and he was the dominant bowler for the Players against the Gentlemen in his only first-class match of the summer. Berkshire played Dorset at Reading on 3 and 4 August and started another against Cornwall on 7 August, also at Reading. This was left unfinished on 7 August, but that was purely because of weather. The newspaper reports of these two matches make no reference whatsoever to any disruption to the teams, or to the matches themselves, arising specifically from the outbreak of war but the Berkshire Chronicle report of 7 August included this statement: ‘both sides were unable to place their best teams in the field, there being a number of notable absentees on the Berkshire side.’ Unfortunately no names are given of these absentees, nor – more significantly for the present project – were any explanations given as to the reasons for their absence. They could have been war-related or it could have been that the players concerned preferred to spend their August Bank Holiday elsewhere, or were injured, or …. The next scheduled Minor Counties matches were both in Reading – against Buckinghamshire on 10 August, and two days later against Devon. Both of these matches were casualties of the war, as were Berkshire’s two remaining fixtures against Dorset at Sherborne on 21 August and Buckinghamshire at Slough on 24 August. The circumstances of the abandonment of the county’s fixtures, and 101