Cricket Witness No 1 - Class Peace

88 Cricket and Class in the Inter-War Years family business funding. Some professions do not show conspicuously, among them the arts, politics, medicine and law. There are notable exceptions. Sir Charles Aubrey Smith of Cambridge University, England and Hollywood remains the most well-known actor-cricketer, while William Yardley, Cambridge University, Kent and the Gentlemen, was a colourful writer of burlesques and farces. Francis Worsley, rather better recalled as the producer of the iconic wartime radio comedy show ITMA , played a couple of times for Glamorgan. Lord Harris and Sir Stanley Jackson are probably the two who managed to combine cricketing glory with high-ranking political appointments but, given the association of cricket with imperialism, there are relatively few politically-orientated cricketers. Perhaps it was asking too much of colonial officers to excel in the domestic game. There have been cricketing M.Ps, such as the Cambridge blue Sir Hubert Ashton, one of a famous cricket family, and Peter Eckersley, who captained Lancashire, while Hon. George Lyttelton, another Cambridge blue and from another well-known cricketing clan, was chief private secretary to William Gladstone. Given the prominence of the Grace family and medicine, it is surprising to find doctors and surgeons in short supply on the first-class cricket field. Lawyers, too, are not heavily represented; A.G.Steel Q.C of Lancashire and England is possibly the most notable ‘legal’ cricketer; he illustrates the reason for the dearth of his ilk - he found it well- nigh impossible to juggle cricket and the law. Predictably enough, the army, the church and the teaching profession dominate the list. Two-fifths of the number reviewed were military men and a quarter either churchmen or teachers or in some cases both. Foremost in the long procession of soldiers on cricketing duties would be the then so-called ‘soldier-batsmen’ such as W.L.Foster, one of the Worcestershire brotherhood, and R.H.Spooner of Lancashire and England. In 1899 at Taunton against Somerset R.H.Poore, who became a Brigadier-General and Captain E.G.Wynyard put together a record sixth wicket stand of 411 for Hampshire. That was a glittering display of the army’s contribution to cricket. David Sheppard, Bishop of Liverpool, was but the last in a remarkable lineage of clergyman-cricketers. A resounding example of the combined role might be Rev. Vernon Royle, the Oxford University and Lancashire player and resplendent cover point, who became headmaster of Stanmore Park School. The Rev. Edward Lyttelton, a further representative of that well-known family, taught at Wellington and Eton and then was headmaster of Haileybury before returning to Eton as headmaster. He played for Cambridge University and Middlesex. It is apparent that these three professions of army, clergy and teaching were the most feasible callings in terms of finding time to play cricket. Hampshire benefited from the proximity of Aldershot when it came to selecting ‘soldier-batsmen’, officers who might be granted leave for cricketing purposes; school-teachers had a long summer holiday and it was not unknown for schools to give a talented teacher leave for the