Cricket Witness No 1 - Class Peace

105 had vacuum cleaners – and possibly even domestic servants to operate them. Apparently Herbert Sutcliffe, Bill Bowes, Hedley Verity and Len Hutton became Freemasons, very far removed from the friendly societies associated with the working classes. 12 Of course, only a handful of paid cricketers had the self-confidence and the high ability to enjoy such self-improvement while some, more in the wake of Jack Hobbs, might have preferred a less stressful social battle. Herbert Sutcliffe is said to have been disappointed when his close friend Jack Hobbs resisted essays to engage in captaincy at the top level. Perhaps someone like George Duckworth, who had an eminently worthy post- playing career without losing or seeking to lose his formative roots and values, is an example of a professional cricketer who was at ease in his own skin, never seeking to exalt himself. Nevertheless, this upmarketing of professional cricket, with Walter Hammond and Herbert Sutcliffe the indisputable pioneers, may be judged in hindsight as the most salient alteration in the mainly changeless construct of cricket between the two wars. Taking a lateral glance at other sports, they were in the good company of sporting heroes such as Henry Cotton, Gordon Richards and Fred Perry who, in very differing fashions in the same era, were putting a similar imprint on their sport, as they struggled to come to terms with the class-ridden nature of golf, of racing and of lawn tennis. 1. Sissons op.cit where these issues are exhaustively discussed, especially chap. 9 ‘A Sense of Security’ pp.193/221. 2. John Arlott Jack Hobbs (1981) for this and other details of Jack Hobbs’s quite handsome living. 3. Flanders op, cit. 4. G.M.Trevelyan English Social History (1944). 5. Jeffrey Richards Films and British National Identity; from Dickens to Dad’s Army (1997) is one of a number of this author’s references to the ‘respectable’ and ‘rough’ phenomenon. 6. Sissons op.cit. pp.242/52 for much of the foregoing paragraphs. 7. Eric Midwinter George Duckworth; Warrington’s Ambassador at Large (2007). 8. Bill Bowes Express Deliveries (1949). 9. Alan Hill Herbert Sutcliffe; Cricket Maestro (1991) for probably the best account of the Yorkshire star’s life. 10. Gerald Howat Walter Hammond (1984) – this is one of the finest of cricket biographies. 11. Christopher Brookes Neville Cardus; His Own Man (1985) for the most succinct account of his varied life and substantial influence. 12. Mark Rowe ‘ Swearing in Brian Sellers’ Time at Yorkshire County Cricket Club 1932-71’ The Cricket Statistician issue no 176 winter 2016, itself an interesting discourse on the cross-class nature of masculine foul language. The Shadow Of Embourgeoisement