History of Bucks CCC

The mysterious world of the code-breakers would have been far from the minds of those who gathered in the more peaceful times of the early 20 th century. There was always a party atmosphere at Bletchley Park with Sir Herbert greeting his friends at the matches. On one occasion, after Wiltshire had won with time to spare, the carnival spirit spilled over and the afternoon was taken up with boisterous challenges as the players competed in races with sprinters handicapped against others riding piggy back. A Wiltshire player weighed in at 18 stone but he was still carried to victory on the back of his captain. The earliest surviving handbook is for1905. This lists the vice-presidents and officers, reports on the previous season with potted summaries of the matches and full averages, provides a note on the playing record of each of the principal clubs, lists the forthcoming season’s fixtures and shows the financial statement for the year. It is a more substantial booklet than the County Club felt able to produce in succeeding years, and it provides a timely reminder of how many matches were staged in addition to the championship. As well as a fixture with MCC, regarded as a full county match, there were 18 ‘Club and Ground’ matches. These involved playing many of the principal local clubs, meeting a team of clergymen, taking on Eton College A team, assembling at Ascott Park to play a team raised by Leopold de Rothschild and entertaining wandering sides such as Free Foresters and Butterflies. Later handbooks from this period seldom carried a written report, but they continued to list all the members’ names. Another consistent feature was the inclusion of the accounts, and from these it is easy to see how the County Club found itself struggling. A press report showed that as far back as 1895 the sum of £22 11s 3d had been taken at the gate for a single match at Wolverton, where the thriving railway works would have ensured a good attendance. However, by 1904 admissions from five matches could bring in no more than £25 6s 0d, with Wolverton still attracting the most revenue. Two matches that both ran their full course on the County Ground at Aylesbury yielded a beggarly £5 2s 6d, and the next year takings were down again. Even with play on a Saturday gate receipts for a two-day match at Aylesbury were just 16s 6d (82p). At successive annual meetings the treasurer had been obliged to report that the County Club was sliding ever deeper into debt, and it was carrying a deficit of £210 when the matter was addressed at a specially convened meeting in the Red Room at Wycombe Town Hall on Tuesday, 17 December 1907. The president of the County Club, Lord Desborough, shortly to become president of MCC, was in the chair and he told a well-attended gathering that he had been asked to propose ‘that this meeting considers that it would be a great discredit to the County of Bucks if the County Cricket Club were to be discontinued’. The problem of the shape of the county was acknowledged, and attention was drawn to the lack of members from the town of High Wycombe, where the local team was strong but did little to support the County Club. Speakers then fell over themselves to agree that it would be tragic if the county team were to be withdrawn from the Championship. The motion was carried unanimously as was a second, ‘with acclamation’, when Sir Coningsby Disraeli, a nephew of the former prime minister, proposed ‘that this meeting pledges itself to support the Bucks County Cricket Club, by endeavouring to raise sufficient funds to enable it to pay off its debts and by securing enough new members to place the Club on a sound financial footing.’ The treasurer was soon able to announce donations exceeding £144, including £25 from Lord Rothschild, and securing more annual subscriptions brought in a further £43. But the good intentions of the meeting never really translated into effective long-term action. Only the short-term crisis had been addressed, and the accounts for 1908 still recorded an excess of expenditure over income of £69 3s 3d, a figure that rose to £99 2s 2d the next year, by which time liabilities were standing at close to £250. 30 Financial crises