Chapter Twenty-Two Woolly Backs and Cobblers It was business as usual for the Leicestershire-Northamptonshire holiday fixture, which had enjoyed a more or less unbroken run since 1905. Like many counties, Leicestershire found themselves with a mixture of ageing veterans – the captain Cecil Wood, King, Whitehead, Coe and Benskin were all on the wrong side of 40 – and untried youngsters when the Championship resumed in 1919. In time, a useful side developed. George Geary became a fast medium bowler of Test match quality with a devastating leg cutter and Ewart Astill, the county’s first professional captain in 1935, a tireless off spinner. Alec Skelding provided pace and character and Shipman, Snary, Bale and Haydon Smith were among other post-war bowlers. Tommy Sidwell, Paddy Corrall and George Dawkes kept wicket, Shipman, Eddie Dawson and Leslie Berry were the leading runmakers, with Geary and Astill more than useful with the bat. In the Championship their highest placing was sixth in 1935 and they finished last in 1933 and 1939. For Northamptonshire, the inter-war period was one of almost unqualified failure. They never got higher than 12th and that was in 1919, when only 15 counties competed, and they finished bottom of the table on eight occasions. Yet at times they possessed some fine individual players: Ben Bellamy, long-serving wicket-keeper and middle order batsman, Vallance Jupp, a colourful and convivial captain and off spinning all -rounder, batsmen such as Fanny Walden, Jack Timms and Fred Bakewell, Bill Merritt, the New Zealand leg spinner and Nobby Clark, the fast left-arm bowler who played for England. For both sets of supporters the Bank Holiday fixtures alternating at Northampton and Aylestone Road were eagerly awaited. Brian Chapman told of boyhood memories of Leicestershire: “…the well-loved Aylestone Road pavilion, seen through the sunny haze of youth, with sandwiches and tea in a medicine bottle, the whole washed down with “giant” cherry ciders.” But to others the adjacent power station was an unpopular and dominant factor, with clouds of fine ash descending on the ground, creeping into buildings, clothes and sandwiches. Dudley Carew wrote: “On one side it is bordered by broad, squat monstrosities which look like overgrown oast-houses and belong in spirit to the set of some futurist, nightmare film of industrialism.” Carew said that those people who approached cricket in the hey-nonny-no, village greensward spirit should have been compelled to spend a week at Leicester as a corrective to their idealism. At least there may have been some respite from the ash and dust during the holidays. By contrast, the County Ground at Northampton, with its relative ease of access from the town centre, attracted no such complaints. It had been used by the county since 1886 and was shared with Northampton Town Football Club – the Cobblers, relating to the town’s association with shoemaking - from the 1897-98 season until the end of October 1994, when the soccer club left for the Sixfields Stadium two miles away. Cricket had been restricted at the beginning and end of the football seasons when matches clashed but neither usage had much effect on the other since the overlap was only about 20 yards. In 1923 a prominent local 101