Double Headers

63 Warwickshire in 1919 George Tyler played no [other] first-class cricket, but played on for the Moseley club into the 1930s. He died at Edgbaston on 24 February 1976 - not at the cricket ground, but at the nearby Queen Elizabeth Hospital. Harry Venn scored 151 on his first-class debut, and 58 in the return fixture at Worcester three weeks later. But in a career of 34 matches and 60 innings lasting until 1925 he made only one other first-class score of 50 or more – an innings of 115 against Kent at Catford in 1920. As for the Worcestershire players - New Zealand-born Frederick Abbott still had a full season in the Malvern XI ahead of him when he made his first-class debut at Edgbaston. The second of his three first-class appearances was also against Warwickshire at Edgbaston, in August 1920; his last was at Sheffield later in the same week, and then no more is heard of him. His performances for Malvern in 1919 were described in Wisden as “well up to public school standard”, but the following year his school had no more to say about him than that he was “a useful performer”. For a while before the First World War, Ernest Bale was regarded the country’s second-best wicket-keeper, behind only Herbert Strudwick: it was because his career path was blocked by Strudwick that he had left Surrey for Worcestershire. But like Strudwick, he was no batsman, passing a score of 15 no more than a dozen times in 233 first-class innings. His best score was as high as 43 (v South Africans in 1912), but his preceding 18 first-class innings, and the 11 that followed it, all ended in single figures. He lost his place in the Worcestershire side during 1920, and played no first-class cricket after that season. Dick Burrows had made his first-class debut in Worcestershire’s first- ever first-class match (1899), and was the only professional from the Worcestershire side in that game to be still playing in 1919 - though this was to be his final season. His two first-class centuries (112 in 1907, and 107* in 1914) were both made when batting at number 10, and both against Gloucestershire. His most enduring claim to fame, as contained in the record-books, had come at Old Trafford in 1911 when, in clean- bowling Bill Huddleston, he sent a bail 67 yards and six inches - still the longest recorded flight for a bail in such circumstances. It beat by three yards the previous record, which - remarkably - Burrows himself had set, also at Old Trafford, ten years previously. He was a first-class umpire from 1924 to 1931, standing in a single Test match - the rain-ruined game at Trent Bridge in 1926, which lasted only 17.2 overs, making Burrows the Test umpire with the shortest-ever on-field career at that level. Rupert Cave-Rogers was another of the 1919 Malvern XI described in Wisden as “well up to public school standard”, but he disappeared from sight, as a cricketer at least, after the match at Edgbaston in 1919. He was the only member of the Worcestershire XI in this game who played no other first-class cricket. Alfred Cliff played for Worcestershire in 39 matches between 1912 and 1920, but was a regular first-choice only in 1914 and 1919. Principally a batsman, he occasionally bowled slow left arm, and took eight wickets in