History of Bucks CCC

Another to be brought back after a long interval in these same desperate years was Herbert ‘Laddie’ Page, the professional at High Wycombe and a bowler who had made a promising debut in 1896 and played fairly regularly in the early 1900s. A total of 56 matches for Bucks brought him 143 wickets, a tally that might have been higher had others achieved the high standards he himself set in the field. Commenting on his misfortunes the handbook review of the 1904 season said: ‘Page bowled fairly well but he was handicapped by not having an artist like CE Cobb at the wicket. The fielding of the team was at times fairly good, and at other times execrable. The catching was generally feeble.’ There was a single season, 1907, and three more matches in 1908, in which Bucks enjoyed the services of George Wilson, who had just retired from first-class cricket after a career of 160 matches for Worcestershire, in which he had taken 181 wickets and averaged nearly 27 with the bat. Though his batting for Bucks was disappointing he claimed 55 wickets, in a year when Mat Wright managed only 34, at a cost of 14.09. In 1904 there had been a single appearance for the county by Alec Watson, one the foremost bowlers ever to have played for Lancashire, who stands even today at number five in their list of all-time wicket takers. It was said that he never played for England in part because he was a Scot but also because his action, like those of Crossland and Nash, was questionable. Watson had begun his career as a fast bowler, later becoming an off-spinner. His figures in his one match for Bucks were an unremarkable 2 for 104 in 35 overs. More notable was his age - he had passed his 59 th birthday! For six seasons from 1905 Archie Vickerstaff played in every county match. He had been hired to replace George Nash at Aylesbury and, like Nash, he was available to clubs as a net bowler. He enjoyed days of success but 154 wickets at 23.01 was an expensive return for those days, especially when compared to the parsimony of Nash and Wright, and with the bat Vickerstaff was a fixture at number eleven. In the summer of 1910, with uncertainty surrounding the County Ground and the county’s finances still haemorrhaging, there were concerns about Vickerstaff’s future. It was hoped that a way of keeping him might be found, but he had received an offer from a club in the Lancashire League, and by the time the 1911 season came round he had gone. One player who could be relied upon to stand by the captain in these difficult times was his younger brother, PL Frith, his vice-captain at Chesham. First appearing in 1909, Frith hardly missed a match thereafter and, though his early figures were modest, he improved to record one century and five fifties. His pace bowling but was rather expensive, coming into its own when there was no-one else to turn an arm, whilst on at least one occasion, when there was no proper wicket-keeper, he seems to have taken the gloves. There are only the sparsest of reports on the Welsh tour of 1911, but there was certainly an abundance of byes in the three matches, where no specialist keeper appears to have been taken and Frith was one of those sharing the wicket-keeping duties. Against Glamorgan he opened the bowling and later made a stumping. The years of struggle 36 George Wilson