Double Headers

48 aim behind its selection. True, the side was to a degree experimental – but that was true of several county sides in this difficult 1919 season. In the circumstances in which Warwickshire found themselves this year, it was an entirely reasonable and rational selection, given that the players for the Championship match had to be excluded. Players: Worcestershire In accordance with the decision taken at the Star Hotel on 4 January 1919, Worcestershire announced late in April that none of the old professionals of the county team had been engaged for 1919, considering instead that “it is thought to be possible to build up an entirely new side”. 47 Nevertheless, team selection for their major matches in 1919 was no easier than for their neighbours. In the last season before the War, the county had used 25 players in their 22 Championship matches, of whom nine had played in 18 matches or more, five played between seven and ten matches, and the remaining 11 played between one and three matches, as many as seven playing only once. Of the nine ‘regulars’, only six were in a position to resume cricket for the county in 1919: Ernest Bale (the wicket-keeper), Frederick Bowley, Dick Burrows, Alfred Cliff, Frederick Pearson andWilliamTaylor. Unsurprisingly, these were not young men. The first four named were already in their 40s, with Pearson not far behind, and Taylor the junior of the group at 35. Of the other ‘regulars’, M.K.Foster was not available to play in 1919, John Cuffe had retired, and the very promising Frank Chester had lost an arm in the war and could not return to the first-class game as a player. The five middle-rankers from 1914 had also suffered significant losses, with Christopher Collier killed in the War, Spinney Lane transferring his allegiances to Warwickshire, G.N.Foster out of county cricket until he returned for Kent in 1921, and Bertie Stevens having retired. 34-year-old Arthur Conway was the only one of the five still available to Worcestershire in 1919. So with only a small number of established players available to them in 1919, and several of them ageing, the county was obliged to give chances to several inexperienced players in their first-class matches. By the end of July they had used 18 players in their five first-class matches so far, six of whom (Thomas Allchurch, Robert Berkeley, John Coventry, Edward Nesfield, Capt. Geoffrey Sheppard and Benjamin Tipper) made their first- class debuts in one or another of these games, and two others of whom (Frank Harry and Arthur Jewell) made their debuts for Worcestershire after brief pre-war careers elsewhere. The rest of their teams was made up from the seven pre-war survivors just mentioned. Bale, Cliff and Taylor had played in all five matches so far, Bowley and Conway in three, Burrows in two, and Pearson in just one. 47 Worcestershire Chronicle 26 April 1919. In the event, six of the 25 cricketers who played for the county in their nine first-class matches of 1919 were professionals, all of whom had represented the county in 1914 or earlier. As many as four professionals played together in five of the matches, and three in three of the others. Warwickshire in 1919