Double Headers

43 But Bank Holiday matches were potentially among the most lucrative games for all counties. There were 15 counties in the Championship in 1919, all of whom would want an August Bank Holiday fixture. In theory this meant that there was one county left over, unable to play a Championship match over the Bank Holiday, but this was not a problem as it left a space for the fifteenth county to play the touring AIF. There was thus no realistic scope for any one county to opt out of playing a Championship or tourist fixture over the Bank Holiday in order that they could play someone else, however lucrative or ‘traditional’ that alternative fixture might have been. To have done so would have left another county in the lurch and fixtureless on these important dates. We don’t know whether Warwickshire, having already arranged the Bank Holiday fixture with Worcestershire, raised any objection at the county secretaries’ meeting on 6 February to being obliged to play a Championship match on the same dates. 39 But the upshot was that at that meeting they were slated to play Derbyshire at Derby over the Bank Holiday – thus incidentally starting a tradition of August Bank Holiday matches between these two teams which lasted until 1958, apart from the two seasons of 1936 and 1937 when they reverted to the even-more-traditional Bank Holiday match against Worcestershire. 40 So Warwickshire were now more or less committed to playing both Derbyshire and Worcestershire over the August Bank Holiday of 1919. Whether they subsequently tried to rearrange either fixture to avoid the clash we don’t know: I have not found any references in the local newspapers to any moves towards such a rearrangement, but that is not conclusive proof that there were none. There was certainly enough slack in the fixture list agreed on 6 February to have allowed the Worcestershire match to be rearranged so that it did not clash with one of Warwickshire’s Championship fixtures, but for whatever reason this did not happen. Perhaps Warwickshire and Worcestershire were content with the double- header arrangement: no doubt the prospect of a good Bank Holiday crowd at Edgbaston for a match between neighbours appealed to Warwickshire (remembering that they were accustomed to a home fixture over the holiday, so playing a probably-less-lucrative Championship match at Derby broke with this pattern). No doubt too there was a general wish to resume the traditional rivalries between the counties in as close to pre-war circumstances as was possible. Thus it came about that Warwickshire were booked for a double-header on Monday and Tuesday 4-5 August 1919 (like Championship matches in 39 The minutes of the 6 February meeting – at which Worcestershire were not represented – indicate that the Secretaries indulged in a lengthy discussion about the effects on the game of the newly-introduced Entertainment Tax, but say nothing at all about the nitty-gritty of the drawing-up of the fixture list. 40 For most counties, the post-war fixture lists maintained the pre-war ‘traditional’ August Bank Holiday fixtures. But the customary pre-war Bank Holiday fixture between Derbyshire and Essex was scrapped, which is how Derbyshire came to be available to play Warwickshire from 1919 onwards. Essex were paired with Kent for 1919, but from 1920 onwards they began a tradition of playing Worcestershire – newly freed from their traditional fixture with Warwickshire – over the holiday. If Worcestershire had stayed in the Championship in 1919 it seems likely that their Bank Holiday fixture with Warwickshire would have been able to continue throughout the post-war years and beyond, leaving Derbyshire presumably back with Essex. Warwickshire in 1919