Dimming of the Day

63 July 1914 £300 a year on professional bowlers. There was a long report on the amateur epee championship, referring to France as a county where ‘swordplay is still the national game’. Central Europe went unmentioned. On 20 July the main item of news was that the King had called the various parties together to try to solve the Irish situation – he had cancelled his visit to the Fleet. The Scottish miners had asked the Miners’ Federation of Great Britain to ballot at its conference on the question of a general stoppage in their support. The Scottish miners were on strike because the employers were proposing a reduction in wages. J.H.Thomas (Jimmy Thomas, then Labour MP for Derby), speaking in Darlington, suggested that if army officers were prepared to plead conscience to rebel (over the Irish question) then the working class should be permitted to say that troops should not interfere in industrial disputes. It was being proposed to hold a conference of clergymen’s wives and women church workers to discuss the ordination of women as priests in the Church of England. The Times felt (correctly) that it would get no support from the Church in general. The rhetoric was being wound up here and there in Austria and Serbia, with the notion of ‘greater Servia’ being floated. The real political activity was not noticed. President Poincare of France had arrived in Kronstadt on a visit to Russia – the thought of France and Russia being able to communicate easily was making Austria and Germany nervous. At Chesterfield Yorkshire demolished Derbyshire by an innings. Derbyshire’s second innings score was 68 of which Arthur Morton made 50. At one time Derbyshire were 64-2 but Alonzo Drake took five for 6 in three overs, including four wickets in four balls (four amateurs of no great merit, to be sure). It was Drake’s last year of first-class cricket, though he played a few games in the Bradford League during the war. He was not a well man, declared unfit for military service, and he died early in 1919. Kent failed to reach their target at Tunbridge Wells as Nottinghamshire won by 32 runs with Joe Iremonger taking six for 39 to follow his seven for 61 in the first innings. 1914 was Iremonger’s last season in first-class cricket. He remained in the game after the war, being Nottinghamshire coach from 1921 to 1938. At Northampton the game was drawn, but Walter Buswell, the Northamptonshire wicketkeeper, who had batted at No.11 in the first innings, was sent up the order and made 101*, his only first-class hundred. Middlesex concluded a fairly easy victory against Essex, so staying at the top of the Championship table. Surrey and Lancashire had started on Saturday, Surrey scoring 401, which included Hobbs’ sixth century of the season (he made 142). The Times remarked on the absence of Parkin. In the first–class averages, unusually enough, the first five in the batting were professionals (Hearne, Mead, Tarrant, Hardstaff and Hobbs) while