Lives in Cricket No 11 - CP Lewis

magistrates were burned down. With all of this going on around them, the cricketers of Berkshire knew they were in the wrong place, and they wisely headed out of the Carmarthenshire town. 37 Soon after, although they did return to Llanelli for one last match, on 16 and 17 August, Carmarthenshire’s brief sojourn in the Minor Counties Championship came to an end, with the drama in Llanelli in early August overshadowing their lacklustre cricket. In the season as a whole they had played eight matches, and had lost seven, with Wisden commenting that ‘they fell away badly’ and were ‘a poor team all round’. They pulled out that year, and though they played a few friendly matches up to 1920, have never returned to the Minor Counties competition as an independent entity. In four seasons in the competition, they had played thirty- two games, winning three and losing 26. In three drawn games, they had first innings lead in just one; and of the 26 matches lost, 17 were by an innings. In championship matches they had scored their runs at an average of 14.30 per wicket, but had conceded them at more than twice that rate, at 30.60. 38 Numbers were against them in another way, too. With a resident population of around 140,000, smaller than almost all the other counties in the competition, it was not surprising that Carmarthenshire did not have the playing or financial resources to sustain a side capable of taking on their competitors on credible terms. So it had been a noble enterprise, and no doubt C.P. drew some pride from the fact that he played a part in all three of their winning matches. 39 The following summer, Lewis was able to smile as he remarried and wed Jane (‘Jennie’) Bentley. That year Lewis again played and oversaw the Carmarthenshire Colts against Llanelli, in addition to batting at number eight for Carmarthenshire in a friendly against Glamorgan. He reached 56 against Monmouthshire in a high-scoring draw at Llandovery, obtaining his runs ‘in a carefree manner’. As the scorebook shows – 4 4 4 4 4 4 1 1 4 2 1 4 2 4 4 2 1 1 4 1 – it was full of lusty and violent blows in what proved to be his last major innings against decent opposition. 106 County Cricket for Carmarthenshire 37 Our particular thanks to local historian John Edwards, son-in-law of Dai Davies, for this information. 38 Carmarthenshire scored 250 in an innings three times in four seasons; their opponents reached this figure 23 times. 39 He may though have been embarrassed as a retired solicitor that he could not guarantee opponents safe passage in his county!