Double Headers

47 match for Kings Heath in 1918, and performed “some remarkable feats with both the bat and the ball for the Central Secondary School” ( Birmingham Post , 21 May 1919). In May 1919 - still only 15 years old - he had scored 61 in 35 minutes for Warwickshire C&G against a strong Moseley side, in his first-ever match at Edgbaston. In his last match of the 1919 school season, on 19 July, he had scored 111* out of 130-6 against Camp Hill, and then taken 6-20 in the Camp Hill innings. There may or may not have been an element of nepotism in his selection for the Worcestershire match 46 , but he was clearly a player of great promise, and his selection could not be criticised as in any way irrational. Two others of the final selection were emerging or established players at Warwickshire clubs who had presumably made a good impression on Sydney Santall in C&G matches earlier in 1919: 19-year-old Reginald Burton when scoring 55* for a combined Coventry and Rugby XI against the C&G on 25 June, and Horace ‘Harry’ Venn – who had turned out for the county Second XI before the war - when making 60 for the C&G against a combined Griff Colliery and Chilvers Coton XI on 24 July. As noted, Albert Howell - younger brother of Warwickshire’s future Test cricketer Harry Howell - had been recommended by the county to Uppingham School at the start of the season “for engagement as a net bowler, under Humphreys (Kent)” ( Birmingham Post , 26 April 1919); evidently the county saw some potential in him at an early stage, but felt this would be best realised through the day-to-day rigours of school coaching rather than in less frequent club or C&G games nearer home. Jack Smart was another whose selection seems to have been based more on promise than on actual performances: in the only C&G game in which he played of which I have traced details, against Pickwick at the end of June, he scored only 11 while his younger brother Cyril made 65 (and an otherwise unheralded bowler named Purshouse took 8-50 in a single innings, never to be heard of again). Finally Edward Hewetson had only just turned 17 when selected, and still had two full years at school remaining to him. A genuinely fast bowler and aggressive batsman, he made 410 runs (topping the batting averages) and took 32 wickets for Shrewsbury School in 1919, although the only reference to him in Wisden ’s public schools review says no more than that he “bowled fairly well on occasions”. Thus the players selected to play Worcestershire over the Bank Holiday at the start of August could all be seen as merit selections, in the context of Warwickshire’s search that season for promising players who might have a future in cricket. Whether this was the very best ‘second team’ that could have been assembled may be open to question, but that was not the only 46 The same article as referred to in the previous footnote also suggests that Santall showed favouritism in selecting his son Reggie in the side, ahead of possible claims by Ted Hampton (later the Warwickshire statistician ) , and by the 18-year-old Bob Wyatt. Warwickshire in 1919 A youthful Reggie Santall.