Double Headers

42 Warwickshire in 1919 the minimum number required to compete in the Championship in 1919]”, but “the first thing they had to find out was what players were available”. At the end of the meeting, Major Taylor’s proposals were carried unanimously; and by so doing Worcestershire took the decision to withdraw from the County Championship for 1919. 37 So it was that the fixture list agreed (provisionally, and on an incomplete basis) at the county secretaries’ meeting on 6 February 1919 did not include any Worcestershire matches. Neither did the slightly different fixture list subsequently published in Wisden . If Worcestershire were going to play any county matches, they would have to fit their fixtures around the Championship dates of other counties. Except that it wasn’t quite as simple as that. Complications, and resolution In every year between 1900 (the year after Worcestershire joined the County Championship) and 1914, Warwickshire and Worcestershire had met in a Championship match over the August Bank Holiday, which at this time was on the first Monday in August. This was one of a series of ‘traditional’ Bank Holiday fixtures, usually between neighbours: Yorkshire v Lancashire, Gloucestershire v Somerset, Northants v Leicestershire; sometimes between counties with no special geographical links – Derbyshire v Essex, Surrey v Notts; and also between Kent, Sussex, Hampshire and Middlesex, in pairings which varied from year to year. When county cricket was being mooted for 1919, Warwickshire were quickly off the mark in seeking to resume their Bank Holiday rivalry with Worcestershire. Although the primary source records have not survived, we know that this was so because of a reference in reports of the Worcestershire CCC meeting on 4 January 1919: “Mr [W.G.] Spreckley asked if county teams would accept matches with Worcestershire, and Major Taylor said Warwickshire had already offered them Bank Holiday dates. He had no doubt that Somerset and Gloucester would [also] play them.” 38 So a fixture between Warwickshire and Worcestershire over the August Bank Holiday (which was on Monday August 4th in 1919) was already pencilled in, if not confirmed (we unfortunately can’t say for certain which), in advance of the county secretaries’ meeting on 6 February which produced the first ‘official’ fixture list for the season. No doubt the August fixture was proposed for Edgbaston, as Warwickshire had hosted all the August Bank Holiday fixtures between the counties since 1909, and all but three of these fixtures since they were inaugurated in 1900. 37 The details of the 4 January meeting are taken from the report in the Worcestershire Chronicle of 11 January 1919. There is no express reference in that report to Worcestershire withdrawing from the County Championship, but that was the clear consequence of the views expressed and decisions taken at the meeting. 38 Worcestershire Chronicle 11 January 1919. In the event, and despite the expectation at the 4 January meeting that Worcestershire would be able to get fixtures with six other counties, these three were the only counties to play Worcestershire in 1919.