Dimming of the Day

61 Opera House. And there was cricket as well. Meanwhile at Lord’s the Players were bowled out for 256 by J.W.H.T.Douglas who took a remarkable nine for 105. The Gentlemen were 148-2 at the second attempt in a game which at this stage looked fairly even. The Times correspondent complained that modern players used heavy bats and so restricted their wristwork. Lancashire saved the game at Derby with J.T.Tyldesley making 98. Apart from Johnny Tyldesley, Lancashire included his brother Ernest and an unrelated pair William and Harry whose third brother James did not play in this match. Dick – yet another brother – would make his debut in 1919. Leicestershire beat Worcestershire by an innings at Coalville, with George Geary taking eleven wickets in the match. Geary had just turned 21 and was by this season a fixture in the XI, as he would be until 1938. At Hastings Gloucestershire, needing over 400 to win, were a dismal 12-3. A.E.Relf had made 121 in 105 minutes as Sussex raced to 368-8 before declaring in their second innings. Albert Relf was 40 but would reappear for a couple of years after the war. On 16 July the ‘foreign affairs’ summary in The Times is neat enough. France worried about military deficiencies (as opposed to Germany): a Russian reply to a Persian memorandum; skirmishes in Albania and a meeting between the Grand Vizier and Venizelos, the Greek Prime Minister. Nothing there that is the stuff of immediate crisis. That day, though, The Times had an editorial on Austria-Hungary and Servia which dismissed recent events as a panic but worried about the effects of noise being made in the press on both sides, and especially the ‘reckless and provocative’ behaviour of Serbian newspapers. The Times remained confident that the Emperor and his most sagacious advisers would continue to act with self-possession. There was just a hint of ‘a peril to European peace.’ At Lord’s heavy overnight rain had affected the pitch. The Gentlemen went on to 275 without anyone scoring heavily, and then the top of the Players’ batting collapsed utterly to 28-6 before being all out for 150 and losing by 134 runs. Douglas (13 wickets in the match) took four for 67 and Frank Foster four for 56. The Times was displeased, saying that ‘the failure of England’s best professional batsmen to play fast bowling such as that of Mr Douglas and Mr Foster would be comic if it were not pathetic.’ It blamed this on the modern style of batting, of trying to move your feet rather than lunge forwards. It seems to be the usual problem of sporting journalism of trying to derive some universal truth from a single performance. Sussex finished off Gloucestershire with ease, N.J.Holloway and J.H.Vincett bowling them out for 75 for a 364 run win. A Mr C.D.Williams wrote to the newspapers proposing the establishment of a fund to get for Harrow ‘an absolutely first-class coach’ in a slightly alarmist reaction to their having lost this year’s game to Eton: he intended to raise the money from Old Harrovians in the City. July 1914