Lives in Cricket No 11 - CP Lewis

eyed up the coming talent and made a few recommendations about who seemed good enough to play in the Minor County games. In August he gave a glimpse of the past with a quixotic 46 against Monmouthshire at Abergavenny whilst batting at number nine. Together with Ernie Gee, a schoolmaster from Gowerton, he helped Carmarthenshire recover from 52 for seven, adding 73 with Gee and hitting out with glee, striking three 6s, two 4s and a 5, with all the sixes coming off the bowling of Arthur Silverlock, one of the great stalwarts of Minor Counties cricket. His swash- buckling innings however could not prevent Monmouthshire from inflicting a 133-run defeat. He played against Buckinghamshire at Slough, opening the batting with little success when Carmarthenshire followed on and also in the return match at Llanelli, when ‘the veteran suffered an injury to the leg’, though he scored 30 at number ten with four 4s and two 3s. Against Berkshire he played in a most dramatic contest at the Stradey Park ground when his shooting skills were nearly required as the Berkshire team had to be escorted to the town’s railway station in their horse-drawn brakes by riflemen. In fact, they got the last train out of Llanelli before the great 1911 Railway Strike saw trains grind to a halt. The match, played on 4 and 5 August, is down in the scorebook as ‘abandoned owing to rain’, but that may be a fiction or a hasty misspelling of ‘train’. E.H.D.Sewell, the Essex amateur who became a prolific cricket journalist, was with the team and described events in the town known as ‘Tinopolis’ as ‘too hot’. Llanelli was seething with unrest as strikers and their supporters blocked the level crossings either side of the town’s station. The Home Secretary (Winston Churchill) and the Government sent in troops, the Riot Act was read, the Army opened fire and killed two, after which the rolling-stock containing their kit and ammunition was set on fire, whilst shops and offices associated with the local County Cricket for Carmarthenshire 105 C.P. in his last season with Carmarthenshire.