Cricket Witness No 3 - The Daffodil Blooms

12 Fairytale or nightmare? duly made a number of enquiries and, to everyone’s delight, a substantive offer of help came from Sir Sidney Byass, the owner of the Margam Steelworks. Sir Sidney lived in Llandough Castle, a castellated manor house on the outskirts of Cowbridge, whose previous owners – Frank Stacey and Harry Ebsworth – had been generous patrons to cricket in Cardiff and Cowbridge respectively, He duly continued the benevolence by giving Glamorgan a £1,000 loan over a ten-year period from 1920 in order to seed-fund their campaign for achieving first-class status and, in particular, to meet any guarantees requested by English counties for fixtures in 1921. Sir Sidney was also hoping that his 25-year old son Geoffrey might have shaped up into a regular Glamorgan cricketer, and possibly a captain. But after a modest appearance against Carmarthenshire and a game of little substance for the MCC against Glamorgan during 1920, it was apparent that the former pupil of Winchester College was more cut out for a military than cricketing career. Fortunately, there were no strings attached to Sir Sidney’s generosity, so with his nest egg safely in the Club’s coffers, the Glamorgan committee instructed Whittington to secure home and away fixtures with at least eight first-class counties, thereby meeting the MCC’s requirements for elevation into the County Championship. Somerset quickly agreed, followed by Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, Derbyshire, Leicestershire, Northamptonshire and Sussex although, in a couple of cases where sizeable concerns existed about the viability of a fixture with the Welsh county, Tom was forced to agree to a guarantee of £200 towards the games. The enthusiastic Secretary duly reported back to the committee in November 1920 that he had secured home and away fixtures with seven first-class counties. Jubilant at the news, the committee told him to “obtain the eighth at any cost whatsoever.” 5 As it turned out strong persuasion was not needed, as both Lancashire and Hampshire readily agreed to Tom’s approach, and during the Spring of 1921 the MCC endorsed Glamorgan’s application and formally elevated them to first-class status. Messages of good luck flooded into the club’s small offices in rented premises on the first floor of a building in High Street in the centre of Cardiff, and there were tears in the eyes of JTD when the news was formally announced at the Club’s AGM ahead of their ground-breaking summer for Welsh cricket.