Dimming of the Day

was published. This was done by team, even splitting out the 1 st XI players from 2 nd XI ones to demonstrate how many of each XI had gone to war. The suggestion was also made to clubs that their end of season awards for batting and bowling should not be given and that money should be sent to one of the local war funds instead. Of course by August the public schools and the universities had finished their fixtures for the season (the schools were to carry on throughout the war). Country-house parties – if there still were any – after the ‘glorious twelfth’ and the start of grouse-shooting would, by this time in the year, be shooting rather than playing cricket. The structure of the game was well established. Local cricket leagues were established throughout the country and if you had a league going you had an extra motive to finish the season. Stephen Baldwin has researched the story of Leamington Cricket Club as an example. This was the sort of club that did not play league cricket. There were barracks at nearby Budbrooke, and the club had large numbers of officers among its membership. Stephen writes, Membership records for the late nineteenth century list Generals Dandridge, Raft and Thorneycroft, Lieutenant-Generals Keir and Prinsep and Brigadier Generals Collins and Wiggen. Following them in rank were three colonels, three majors and three captains. There is little evidence of most of these officers having played much cricket, but their presence as social members would have done much for the prestige of the nascent club. No doubt they were, on occasions, useful in adjusting the duties of other ranks to make them available to play, especially those who were able to ‘help with the bowling’. From the middle of August the 1914 season shuddered to a halt. Leamington CC would not play again until 1920, although the Club remained open ‘administratively’. But the bad news was quick to arrive. In October Sir Francis Waller was killed in action. Not only had Sir Francis been the club’s President for many years but he was, through the Woodcote estate, its landlord: his loss would have serious consequences for the Club. Because the Club was ‘administratively open’ it held an AGM in 1915, at which the temporary honorary secretary, W.J.P.Whitsed, proudly reported that 35 members of the Club had joined His Majesty’s Forces. In the record of the meeting he wrote, This is a record of which the club has every right to be proud and the Committee confidently appeal to all the Members at home to do their best to keep the club going, so that when those at present doing their bit for King and Country return they will be able to enjoy their cricket as before The meeting also reports a deficit of £42 3s 7d, a portent of difficulties ahead. Whitsed was temporary honorary secretary because the substantive post holder was in France. Samuel Sandford Forsyth had been the hard- Recreational Cricket 106