Dimming of the Day

scores from the Airedale and Wharfedale League, the Leeds Sunday Schools League, Bradford League, Huddersfield and District League, the Spen Valley and District League with Yorkshire Council and Leeds League clubs playing friendlies. There is still a long list of scores in September. The Ribblesdale League did not continue long: in fact it packed up early in August 1914. In May 1916 Broad Oak was reported to have withdrawn from the Huddersfield Central League as 19 out of 26 regulars had joined up. On 25 May 1916 the Yorkshire Post published a Huddersfield and District League table. The Halifax League played. The Halifax Parish Cricket League actually started (as an adjustment of existing leagues) in 1914 with ten clubs (all village sides). They played (with only seven clubs) in 1915 and 1916. Again in 1916 the Lancashire League continued (with amateurs only). Other matches on CricketArchive are school games. The Lancashire League was much restricted in 1917 – according to David Edmundson 43 the clubs agreed in February to abandon the season and the same was true in 1918 though a knockout competition was played. The Central Lancashire League shows champions all through the war. So it is hard to discern overall patterns: yes, the north was more likely to play on than the south, the working classes than the middle classes. Perhaps though those who played on were the ones who saw cricket as just a recreation or an entertainment rather than a kind of magic ritual of Englishness. Or it may have been that the upper and upper-middle classes volunteered or were recalled to their regiments while many working-class cricketers were needed to carry on in the mines and factories. Cricket was never the same after the war: and yet it was, and Eric Midwinter has argued that a longing for things to be as they had been ossified a game that needed to change to maintain its appeal. 43 David Edmundson, See The Conquering Hero, the story of the Lancashire League , Mike McLeod Litho, 1992 Will There Be Cricket in 1915? 117