Dimming of the Day

Chapter Nine Recreational Cricket In 1914 cricket was played at some level by a large part of the male population, and the interruption of that was as melancholy as any of the war’s privations. In Memoirs of a Fox-hunting Man Siegfried Sassoon recalled the end of the season, ‘I thought of that last cricket match, on August Bank Holiday, when I was at Hoadley Rectory playing for the Rector’s XI against the village …. Parson Colwood had three sons in the service, and his face showed it.’ Long before that, however, (and by August it must have seemed a very long time before) the season started normally enough. It will have started a little earlier than the first-class season: the Chelmsford Chronicle (a weekly) was reporting local scores by its 1 May issue. First-class cricketers were likely to be newspaper readers because they had the time, especially when playing away from home and staying in hotels or bed and breakfast accommodation. Until almost the end of July what most local cricketers knew or wanted to know about the rest of the world would have depended on what they did for a living. There are a number of factors which might have brought local cricket to a halt some time in August. Men had enlisted, and the captain or the effective sponsor or the secretary might have been recalled to his regiment. Cricket fields might have become unavailable, wanted by the military or ultimately going under the plough. Transport to matches at any distance could have become difficult as motor vehicles and horses were requisitioned for the war effort. Local opinion might be unfavourable (the local vicar might preach against you carrying on). Against that was a feeling in many circles that the real offence was spectators enjoying themselves, and that did not really apply at the local level. In many cases the local papers do not give an unambiguous answer. Reported matches peter out in late August or early September but it is hard to say whether that was because games were not played (and if so whether because of the war or the weather) or because the papers had no space to report them because they were full of war news or publishing smaller editions (as the county reports were truncated by The Times ). The Harrow Observer , too, had an editorial at the beginning of September suggesting that young men who play football, cricket and other games (or watch or read about them) should realise that they now had better things to do. It was, of course, the case that a fair few regular cricketers were not 104