Dimming of the Day

35 Opening Moves score in Tests. On Tuesday 19 May The Times reported that that Warwickshire were looking to acquire the freehold of the Edgbaston ground from Lord Calthorpe for £7,000, paying for it by the issue of debentures. This never happened, though Lord Calthorpe’s son Freddie was to become the county captain after the war. The Times was also very unhappy about the Bill passed for the disestablishment of the Welsh Church, suggesting that whatever the Welsh gained by it, they would fritter it away. In a further Cambridge trial, Mr L.C.Leggatt, who had already dominated the Freshmen’s Trial, made 160*. An Old Etonian, he was to play only game for the University that year, and was to die in action at Pilckem Ridge on 31 July 1917, the opening day of the third battle of Ypres. On 20 May Sidney Bowkitt, playwright and author of The Superior Miss Pellender and Lucky Miss Dean, was in court for damaging newspapers belonging to W.H.Smith and assaulting a newsboy. He was bound over for twelve months, having recompensed the boy and vowed to give up his drug habit. The main cause for real worry was Ulster, where armed opposition to Home Rule from the unionists seemed increasingly likely. The Times , like the Tory Party, was inclined to place all the blame on the government. It was also gloomily contemplating the decline of county cricket with attendances falling despite good weather. At Lord’s on 20 May, Sussex were all out for 50 against Tarrant and J.W.Hearne. Tarrant and Hearne were to be two of the names that would recur all season, doing nearly enough with bat and ball to take the title for Middlesex. Frank Tarrant had played for Middlesex since 1904, and for Victoria, his birthplace before and after that. He later played in India and ended up by touring India with an Australian team in 1935/36, by which time he was 55. Though arguably the best all-rounder in the world, he never played Test cricket for Australia because he was based in England. He played for England against The Rest in a Test trial in 1911 and was to take nine for 35 and seven for 34 for “England” against “India” at Bombay in 1915. “Young Jack” Hearne was not closely related to the numerous other Hearnes (he shared a great-grandfather with the Kentish tribe). His Test record was to be strangely modest for a man who in first-class cricket scored 37,252 runs and took 1,839 wickets. Neither Tarrant nor Hearne would make Wisden’s five this year because they had both been there before: Tarrant in 1908 and Hearne in 1912. At Cambridge Logie Leggatt followed his unbeaten 160 with 67, but it was not enough to get him into the team against Sussex. If Ulster was the real worry, the suffragettes were ever present. It was reported that the WSPU – the miltant suffragettes – proposed to send