Cricket Witness No 1 - Class Peace

50 Manchester had learned a rueful lesson in the variations in cricketing habits and practices that still abounded in the 1840s. The club suffered another humiliation in 1846 when XVIII of Manchester were beaten on their then home ground in Hulme by an innings and 31 runs by William Clarke’s AEE XI. The tale is told of the man losing his way en route to a Hallé orchestra concert in Manchester, A down-at-heel busker was stood in the gutter, cap at his feet awaiting the dropping in of coins, and playing the violin. ‘How do you get to the Free Trade Hall?’ asked the would-be concert-goer. ‘Practice, son, just practice’ answered the indigent fiddler. The Manchester club took the violinist’s sage counsel to heart and practised ardently. It began to use professionals – talented ones like Fuller Pilch, John Wisden and Fred Lillywhite – to strengthen the squad. Like other clubs, it was chiefly an internal operation, with members turning up to practice and play pick-up games and without a regular fixture list. Professionals were employed as bowlers and, by that token, coaches, while, a straw in the wind, members of neighbouring clubs were sometimes invited to join the revels under the heading of ‘Manchester and District’. Results improved and incipient spectators attended. Re-housed in a handsome new home and thriving, Manchester CC called a meeting at, typically, a hostelry, the Queen’s Hotel in the centre of the town. It was scheduled for 12 January 1864 – slap-bang in the middle of the socio-economic crisis caused by the American Civil War and the dearth of cotton. Half a million textile workers were unemployed in the region and ‘famine fever’, as the Typhus that raged among starving families was called, had reached epidemic proportions. Some of the 34 gentlemen who attended the meeting must have walked past busy soup kitchens to reach their destination. Eleven were from the Manchester club and ten others from three other Manchester based clubs, plus four from the bustling Liverpool club. Thirteen clubs were represented but there was no one from the north of the county. A county club was founded and a county team, often eked out with two or three professionals was fielded. Liverpool CC was inclined to take some part in the leadership but baulked at meeting the costs and underwriting the expenditure which was usually £120 a year. He who pays the piper... the quid pro quo of financing the operation was that all games were played at Old Trafford, where crowds of 300 or 400 were initially attracted, and that the Manchester committee should select the teams. Shrugging off the rivalry and envy that was a consequence, Manchester Men became the Gentlemen of Lancashire. In 1872, for example, Lancashire played six and Manchester 32 games, both with reasonable success. The team-sheets were virtually indistinguishable. The reason the Manchester example is a neat one is because of the overt nature of the take-over. In 1880 the decision was taken to amalgamate the two clubs as ‘the Lancashire County and Manchester Cricket Club’. It remained thus until well in the modern era. For some time until after World War II prestigious local clubs had home and away fixtures with ‘Manchester Club and Ground’ (‘ground’ as in ground staff) which was Clubs And County Clubs