Double Headers

59 Gloucestershire, began two days after the double-header. None of the players from the Edgbaston game was selected, but after their victory at Derby it was no surprise that the Championship side was unchanged. Had it not been for a delayed declaration, they might have repeated the result: the game ended with the visitors struggling at 51-5, chasing 194. However, their three remaining Championship matches proved less successful, with defeats in all of them. In their final Championship match, at home to Leicestershire, Warwickshire gave a Championship debut to the most successful of their players from the Edgbaston match with Worcestershire, Harry Venn, who thus became the only one of those making their debuts in that match to play Championship cricket in 1919. Opening the innings with Len Bates, Venn’s introduction to the game at this level was brief: he was out for 3 in his first innings and, before the first day was over, out for 25 in his second. Warwickshire’s Championship season thus ended with a record of one win, seven defeats and six draws from 14 matches. For this season, places in the table were decided by the ratio between the number of wins and the number of matches played, and Warwickshire’s ratio of 7.14% (one win from 14 matches) left them firmly in 15th and last place in the table. Warwickshire had one remaining first-class match before their season was over – the return match with Worcestershire at Worcester on 25-26 August. Since their game at Edgbaston, Worcestershire had played out draws with H.K.Foster’s XI and with Gloucestershire, with one centurion in each game - Edgbaston absentees Arthur Jewell and Frederick Bowley respectively - while against Foster’s XI James Turner had returns of 5-56 and 3-27. The home match with Warwickshire, the first-class status of which has never been seriously disputed, was part of a ‘Worcester Cricket Festival’ held at New Road in the last week of August. With no competing Championship match, Warwickshire could in theory have put out their full First XI for the game at Worcester, but they did not do so. Instead they selected “a mixed team of regular players and juniors who are expected to find a place in the eleven as their powers develop” ( Birmingham Post ). Of the Warwickshire XI at Worcester, four were first- team first-choices (Len Bates, Tiger Smith, Mick Waddy and Harry Howell); another four had played in the Edgbaston game with Worcester (Harry Venn, Reggie Santall, Edward Hewetson and Albert Howell); one had played a single Championship match earlier in the season (Albert Gittins); and two were making their first-class debuts (H.C.A. ‘Tom’ Gaunt and Archibald Harris - the latter was the younger brother of the Warwickshire captain from the Edgbaston game). The Worcestershire side was, on paper at least, significantly stronger than their team at Edgbaston, with some of the less successful players from Edgbaston being replaced by, among others, regular opener Frederick Bowley and the Jewell brothers – Maurice a batsman and useful slow left-armer, and Arthur a wicket-keeper-batsman. The match was unfortunately spoiled by rain and ended in a tame draw. Worcestershire batted first and made 187 (Harry Howell 6-69), but that was as far as play got on Day 1. On the second day, Warwickshire replied with 145 (Venn scoring 58, the only half-century of the game, and Maurice Warwickshire in 1919