Cricket Witness No 1 - Class Peace

96 Chapter Ten The Shadow Of Embourgeoisement It was inevitable that, with top-class cricket more or less atrophied in the post-1918 years in a usually struggling economy, the professional cricketer’s lot was not much happier in these decades than before 1914. The counties made some early effort to compensate for the rising prices of 1914-1918 but little more was done before the onset of the second war. This was understandable in so far as prices steadied and then dropped in the 1930s. The composition of wages remained the same; a ground staff wage, match fees and possible talent money and a winter retainer, that last element a source of much debate among the county authorities. One sound development was the decision of the richer counties to declare a minimum annual guarantee of income for capped players, usually beginning at £200 but Surrey, often the most benevolent of the county employers, made £400 the bar and Lancashire £375. A more typical county norm was a seasonal weekly wage of £3, home and away match fees of £8 and £10 respectively and a winter retainer of £2 a week, plus talent money of £1 for a fifty or a ‘fifer’. In effect this meant that capped players received average annual earnings of £250 or £300. The usual qualification must be entered. They still had to provide their own flannels, boots and other equipment as well as travel and accommodation costs. Conversely, if they were lucky enough to find employment, they had seven clear months in which to earn extra money. Fitness and form were the key worries. A week out could mean the loss of £20 or thereabouts. Much is made today of the pressure on sportspersons of fabulous wealth. That would have sounded grimly comedic to the old- time cricket professional faced with not being able to make ends meet because he had a broken bone or a loss of form. 1 The capped player’s income of a weekly average of £5 or £6 did compare favourably with the upper tiers of the working classes, where a miner might earn £3or £3.50 and an engine driver £5, and with the lower tiers of the middle classes, where clerks might be paid £2.10 to £7. In brief, a fifth of the work-force in the 1930s earned less than £2 a week, three- fifths between £2 and £5 and a fifth between £5 and £10, with a minority of that group on salaries higher than £10. To offer some perspective on those numbers, an average private or council rent or moderate mortgage payment would have been 5s to 8s a week. Thus the mature pro retained his place among the proletarian elite. This only applied, of course, to the capped players, who made up approximately a third of the combined county ground staffs, something like 150 out of