Dimming of the Day

The Mote Cricket Week at Maidstone was abandoned. It seems that here there were more early cancellations. Because of its proximity to the Channel coast Kent may have been more affected by logistical problems than most areas. In Berkshire minor cricket, the Reading & District League programme was completed, with an extra play-off match to decide the championship contested on 29 August. Some club games were called off during August, but either the newspapers are silent as to the reason, or else it is made clear it was a result of bad weather – Saturday 8 August was a particularly wet day in that part of the world. The war very nearly had a major impact on the outcome of the Reading & District League. At the start of August, Wokingham London Road were heading Division 1 of the competition and were unbeaten, and ‘it was all Lombard-street to a china orange’ [ Reading Observer , 29 August] that they would win the title. In mid-August they were in the position that they would win the championship so long as they did not lose both their last two matches, but lose them they did. The Reading Observer commented on 29 August, the calling up of Riddle and Whittingham by the military authorities proved disastrous, for the team fell to pieces, and successive defeats by Stoke Row (at home) and by Palmer Club (away) followed. Aweek earlier, in reporting the loss to Stoke Rowwhich was the Wokingham club’s first home defeat in five years, the Reading Observer had referred to the absent Riddle and Whittingham as ‘their two clever bowlers, who are away with the ‘Terriers’.’ The heavy defeat by the Palmer Club (WLR 121, PC 126-1) meant that those two teams ended the season with identical records, and a play-off was arranged to decide the championship. Wokingham London Road won this match ‘contrary to expectations’, scoring 137 and then bowling out Palmer Club for 71. So in the end the war did not affect the destination of the league title – but it had very much looked as though it would. Keith Walmsley has compared these two sides’ teams in the play-off with their sides in their league games played on 4 July (a pre-war date chosen at random). It turns out that eight of the WLR side played in both matches, as against only seven for the Palmer Club. Riddle and Whittingham apart, there is no evidence as to why particular players were missing from the later match. But, if nothing else, this extremely small sample suggests that top-level local club cricket was not hugely disrupted by the outbreak of war, even if some individuals became unavailable for selection from early August. By early September a number of clubs in Berkshire were cancelling fixtures ‘for the duration’ – or at least, until the end of the 1914 season. Thus the Reading Mercury of 5 September reports that Easthampstead and Hurst clubs had abandoned their remaining fixtures: ‘Owing to the war the Easthampstead Cricket Club have abandoned their matches for the rest of Recreational Cricket 108