The Summer Field

53 Who Was A Cricketer? motoring before repair garages, a driver had to be ‘an amateur mechanic’, because the first cars broke down so easily. Rich owners of cars – unless they were so rich they paid for a chauffeur-mechanic – had to get their hands dirty doing work they might have liked to pay someone to do. Some believed sport as work set a bad example – it did not create food or goods, and took you away from useful and good things in life: study, your home, the church. John Shields, the 1900s Leicestershire captain, recalled in old age that he had two sporting ambitions: ‘One was to play football for Derby County, and the other to play for the county of my adoption, Leicestershire.’ Shields’ father liked cricket, but forbade him to play for Derby, when picked to play at Bolton, ‘so I gave up football altogether’. In his 1937 book A Cricket Pro’s Lot , Fred Root recalled he needed testimonials from a schoolmaster, magistrate, ‘and the Vicar’ who handed the teenage Root a letter; but when Root said he was sending the reference to the Leicestershire county club, the vicar asked for it back. This begs the question: why did a club ask for a vicar’s reference? Maybe because usually vicars did give references – at least one applicant for the Durham City job in 1920 enclosed one – and clubs wanted only youths of good character, who knuckled down at school and in church and did not break the law. Anxious employers and disapproving clergymen had a point. Writing in The Windsor Magazine in 1912 Sir Home Gordon noted a gap between that day’s pro’ and the ‘older school’: ‘It used to be said of some of the older professionals that their flannels really were washed during the winter, whilst several of the very cleverest professionals were their own worst enemies.’ The Leicester-born amateur Charles Stone (1865-1951) recalled in a 1948 letter to the Leicestershire historian Eric Snow that the ‘pro’ of 60 years ago did not speak the King’s English very well’. Stone singled out an older professional from Shepshed, William Bottomore: ‘He got out and as I passed him I said, “What sort of wicket is it?” “Middling, keeps a trifle ockard at times.”’ By contrast, at least some pros’ had the bearing of – as Frank Sugg said of Dick Daft – ‘a gentleman from the tip of his boots to the crown of his head’. Sugg recalled in a May 1926 column: ‘Richard was a man who could take his place in any company.’ Merely that he went by more than one first name suggests different men saw him differently. Sugg told a story of Daft at Newmarket races ‘on the day of the Cambridgeshire’. Sugg pointed out to Daft the strolling Lord Marcus Beresford. Daft replied that he had once met him. Sugg made Daft go up to Beresford. Daft said, ‘Good morning, Lord Marcus,’ who said, ‘Hello, Daft, what are you doing here?’ The two chatted, ‘and what is more, Lord Marcus put us on to the winner … I knew we drew a good sum and we had a tip-top supper.’ While the different ways men of lower and higher rank addressed each other – accepted by all – may be hard to follow, and swallow, Sugg showed that Daft was at home, on merit, among aristocrats. Cricketers could take this confidence in public into business after their playing days, as Daft did; and seek better pay and conditions while playing. A county with several pros’ could play one off against another;