Cricket Witness No 1 - Class Peace

97 The Shadow Of Embourgeoisement 350 professionals. The uncapped players, who may have been, needless to say, much younger men putting their toe gingerly into the water of a hoped for career, enjoyed no improvement in their pre-war conditions. Their all-round pay would have been £70 on £100 annually, close to that of an unskilled labourer or farm worker. It wasn’t all bowling to members; there were all sorts of chores that might be heaped on the uncapped player between whom and the capped cricketer the gap had widened. Although one or two struggled on for some years in this capacity, it is probably more comprehensible to consider this group as and compared with apprentices, many of whom would soon fail to make the grade and drop out of the running. At the opposite end of the cricketing trade another gap was opening. While, relatively, the unlucky non-capped ground staff members were falling behind, the stars were forging ahead. There were two reasons for this. On the one hand, their pay was enhanced and, on the other, celebrity brought them added income streams. Test match fees started at £20 for the less popular series up to £40 for the Australians, plus bonuses. Rail travel was also covered. Those who played in all five Tests of the Australian rubber of 1930 received £250, the equivalent of the average professional’s yearly pay. Moreover, Australian tours were most profitable. £400 was the going rate per player, with travel and accommodation excluded, unlike on the county circuit, and with high bonuses for successful trips approaching that same amount. However, there was, as usual, some ruefulness expressed over the fact that the amateur Australian tourists of 1930 received £600 for their cricketing pains. Subscription lists for high performing English tourists and advertising opportunities for famous names also figured. There had been performer endorsement of cricket equipment in the past but now it expanded rapidly, with the fruitful addition of putting one’s name to a non-cricketing product, such as Maurice Tate advertising Hovis bread and shredded wheat. Top players like Jack Hobbs or Ted McDonald had special contracts and, obviously enough, they tended to have more lucrative benefit matches. Jack Hobbs invested the £1671 from his delayed 1919 benefit in a sports business down Fleet Street which proved so profitable that he was a successful businessman while still playing. His annual earnings may well have been approaching £1500 at a time when the average income of a general practitioner was not much above £1000. 2 It was also easier for the stars to obtain winter work of a pleasant and undemanding sort such as sales of some kind, leaning heavily on their sporting reputation. A regular England professional could earn £800 in the year of an ‘Australian’ summer, something rather less in other seasons. The benefit continued to play its part both in ensuring regular players had a little nest-egg at the termination of their employment with the counties while at the same time acting as an unspoken disciplinary goad against misconduct or undue complaining. The weather was but one of the variables which affected this end of career settlement yet it did ensure