Cricket Witness No 1 - Class Peace

92 Cricket and Class in the Inter-War Years In 1937 MCC and the County Advisory Committee set up the Findlay Commission to examine these matters but the outcome was less than revolutionary. Any thought of two day or divisional cricket was dismissed out of hand and Sunday cricket was not even raised as a fit subject for discussion. One of the wry curiosities of the age was the cricket authorities’ constant complaint about having to pay Entertainment Tax. Their plea was a virtual admission that cricket did not fall under that heading. Picking an average mid-wars season by way of exemplification, there were 296 first-class matches played in the British Isles in 1936, half as many again as were played in 1900. A rough estimate would suggest that 1.4m attended these matches, comprised of 1.2m paying customer at all the county games, another 200,000 spectators either at other first-class fixtures or, with a wild guess, that phantom figure of subscribing members. The total number of county members at this time was around 50,000, ranging from 2000 or so at Derbyshire or Essex to 6500 at Yorkshire but evidence as to their actual pavilion appearances is almost non-existent. Although many more games were played and the national population was bigger in 1936 than 1900 when 1.5m, as described in chapter seven, watched first-class cricket, it appears that cricket gates fell slightly in these years, perhaps the more so in the 1930s than the 1920s. Indeed, one of the drivers of the Findlay Commission was, of course, the perceived fall in attendances that led to financial woes. This might partially be explained by the dire economic conditions of the depression years, although the effects were patchy in incidence as to region and type of industry. For instance some light industrial businesses did well while the 1930s slump damaged what was a low wage, low price economy; the differential between working and being on the dole in monetary terms was much narrower than, say, in any of the major post-1945 recessions. It must be emphasised that the almost unconscious and certainly unplanned upper tier of cricket, not least with its unusual compromises of class distinction at player and spectator level, had never been less than precarious. It had never been self-financing and had always been in need of patronage or other additional fund raising. In the inter-wars decades it was the same, possibly a little worse, and with little hint of any development. Conversely, league cricket prospered. Jack Williams has astutely demonstrated the strength of league support at this time, arguing that overall it rivalled and often surpassed county spectatorship. The fourteen clubs of the Lancashire League attracted as many as 350,000 and never less than 172,000 paying adherents in these years; the Central Lancashire League gates have been estimated at 330,000 over a season, an average of 2000 a match; the Bradford League returned figures of well over 200,000, and the Yorkshire Council League numbers have been estimated to be double that. Large and active memberships then added to these figures. 6 The presence of Learie Constantine as Nelson’s professional is the prime example of how the league clubs sought to thrive. In 1934 when Nelson