The Summer Field

73 The Myth of the ‘Golden Age’ Hawke tried to blame the press, for reporting county matches too well (‘thousands do not take the trouble to go even a couple of miles to watch a game’). That all would be well, if only the players put the game or spectators ahead of themselves, was a long-running theme, one Cardus took up after the 1914/18 war; and like Hawke, he would find many willing to listen. In the outside world meanwhile, some appreciated that cricket, like anything else, had to market itself. The Torquay Times in July 1894 was surprised that the Devon-Cornwall game at Torquay only drew at most 150 around the ground and 20 in the pavilion; the newspaper said that organisers should have put notices in the newspapers (including the Torquay Times ?!) and bills around the county. In fairness, the very nature of an outdoor game that needed dry weather brought financial risk, as the Yorkshire county club yearbook kept reminding members. In 1914, for instance, it reported the weather in 1913 had been ‘a great improvement on the last few summers with the result that the home matches were witnessed by larger numbers of spectators’. Every county club relied on a few home crowds on Saturdays and bank holidays, and Australian tourist games, easily spoiled by rain; ‘special appeals’ to members to fork out more; and the goodwill of patrons and ground owners. J.A.Dunkerley, for instance, owner of Beverley Town’s ground, was happy for the club not to pay rent Jack Hobbs in 1915 swapped Surrey county for a Bradford League Club, Idle. Like working men generally, far from every professional cricketer answered the call for volunteers to fight in 1914.