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41 Australian Services Team having been cancelled, additional County and other matches will no doubt be arranged. It is also likely that some dates will be altered to admit of more Saturday starts”. 35 The point of this background is to show the haste and uncertainties that surrounded the drawing up of fixtures for the 1919 season, and by extension the relative ill-preparedness of cricket to return to something like its pre-war structure. The position as seen at the start of the season was well summed up in the Notes by the Editor in Wisden , when he wrote that “County cricket in 1919, after a blank of four seasons, [is] bound to be a very speculative and experimental business”. Individual counties were in some confusion too. For several, the War or the war years had taken away some of their established or promising players, while the lack of cricket over the war years had done nothing to improve many counties’ finances. Among the worst hit were Warwickshire, who had lost the highly promising Percy Jeeves to the War, Frank Foster to injury, and Sep Kinneir and Sydney Santall to anno domini. For the 1919 season they were left with only five players from the regular 1914 side – and three of those were aged 44 or older. Worcestershire too had suffered particularly badly. They had not lost so many ‘big name’ players, although R.E.Foster had died at the age of only 36 early in 1914, and the promising Frank Chester would be unable to play again following the loss of an arm in the War. But they had lost too much financially for their future to be secure. In 1917 the retiring Chairman of the club suggested to his successor that it should be wound up 36 , but the subsequent generosity of members and supporters had provided enough to keep it afloat – just. Nevertheless, after the War, with a new season of county cricket just around the corner, the Worcestershire Committee felt it necessary to convene a special meeting “to consider what steps should be taken to run an eleven for the coming season”. The meeting was held at the Star Hotel, Worcester, on 4 January 1919. The Chairman, Judge Richard Amphlett, reported that the club’s reserve – a sum of £500 – was comparatively small, and put forward the view that they “could not indulge in first-class cricket on the old lines”. Instead, “he thought they might develop such cricket talent as would bring them in due course into line with some of the first-class counties again”. The club captain, Major W.H.Taylor, confirmed the view that they could not run a first-class county team on the old lines, and said that “he preferred to run an amateur team with one or two professionals when available”. He also thought that “there would be no difficulty in getting fixtures with six county teams [which turned out to be 35 The Services tour was indeed cancelled, because of the difficulty of getting a representative team together. In due course a very similar programme, but omitting three proposed ‘Test matches’, was arranged for an Australian Imperial Forces (AIF) side. 36 “When Lord Cobham persuaded [me] to succeed him as Chairman of the Committee Lord Cobham suggested that [I] should takes the steps necessary to inter the club, and that the best memorial would be the payment of 20s in the £”. Speech by Richard Amphlett at Worcestershire CCC meeting on 4 January 1919, as reported in the Worcestershire Chronicle 11 January 1919. Warwickshire in 1919