Dimming of the Day

the season’…..’The Hurst Club did not fulfil their engagement on Saturday [29 August], as owing to the present crisis it has been decided to abandon the last fixtures.’ The Reading Mercury’s brief report of the match on 29 August between Streatley and Headington Hill Hall includes this, During the interval (between innings) the two teams sat down to tea…. Mr W.S.Rawson took the opportunity of saying a few words on the present crisis, and made it known that no more matches would be played by the (Streatley) club, as it was not a time for games. He appealed strongly to those of an enlistable age to come forward at once and give their services for the defence of their country. In a long feature in the Berkshire Chronicle of 11 September, headed ‘The war and sport – Are games to continues? – What Reading people think’. The feature gives the views of half a dozen Reading ‘worthies’ (not man- in-the-street vox pops, despite the headline), almost all of whom discussed the issue solely in terms of football. There is no mention of cricket in the entire article, apart from a reference quoted from a sermon given by the Rev R. Gordon Fairbairn at the King’s Road Baptist Chapel [no date given - maybe on Sunday 6 September); ‘Upon the subject of sport, we must be careful not to select one particular branch, such as football or cricket, while we still participate in our rounds at golf and our quiet rubber at whist.’ There was a lot of cricket in Sussex. Horsham and its attendant villages have a long tradition of cricket. In 1914 virtually all of these villages had a cricket team. Coverage of the war came late to Horsham. There was virtually no mention of it at all in the West Sussex County Times prior to Saturday 8 August but then considerable column inches were devoted to it each week. Just outside the town stands Christ’s Hospital School which had only relocated there in 1901. On 6 August the school buildings were commandeered by the military authorities as a detention centre for German nationals and prisoners of war. Before long there would be 500 Germans quartered there. Within days the impact of the war was being experienced by local industry and commerce as reservists, Territorials and volunteers left civilian employment to join their units. The loss of 20 men from the local postal services resulted in deliveries being reduced from four to three per day. Up until 8 August there was little change to the volume of local cricket matches being reported, but then it virtually dropped off a cliff. The difficulty is in establishing whether, as their players began to enlist, teams stopped playing – or kept on playing in a lesser key but felt it was somehow unpatriotic to report them. Clues are slight, but the suspicion is that it was primarily (but not exclusively) the former. In the 15 August edition, there were no match reports but we know that Horsham CC drew with Pirates CC on Monday 10 and played out another draw with Mr G.N.Dickens’ XI on Thursday 13. Then there followed a Recreational Cricket 109