Lives in Cricket No 11 - CP Lewis

one of these ‘bright young things’, and during the mid-1870s, he enjoyed a rich diet of cricket, playing during term time for Jesus College and briefly for the University, before appearing during his vacations for Breconshire and the South Wales club. On 24 June 1874, just after the end of his second year at Oxford, C.P. played his first match for Breconshire in their two-day game against Glamorganshire at Brecon. He batted at number three and ended up as top-scorer in the contest with 31 as Breconshire made 130, and dismissed the visitors for 43 and 44, with Lewis taking nine wickets in the game whilst his opening partner and friend from Jesus College, T.B.Jones, claimed eight as Glamorganshire lost by an innings. His friendship with Jones may well explain why C.P., with his roots in Carmarthenshire, was invited to play for Breconshire for whom he had no apparent qualification. 14 Llandovery, though, looks towards Brecon, fifteen miles to its east, rather than anywhere else in Wales, and it is perhaps an anomaly that they are in separate counties. In many respects they were twin towns – an analogy that is still relevant today – but it applies very readily in an era of poorer transport and mass communication. The emergence of Jones and Lewis was one of the main reasons for the South Wales club being resuscitated in 1874, under the leadership of Glamorgan’s founding father, J.T.D. Llewelyn. John Talbot Dillwyn Llewelyn was the son of a wealthy industrialist and former Mayor of Swansea, who lived to the north-west of the town at Penllergaer. Educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, J.T.D. graduated in law and entered the Inner Temple in 1859. However, he opted against a legal career, and returned to south Wales where he went into business and politics, and in the course of the next fifty years or so, was a kindly benefactor to all kinds of sporting and social activity across the region. 15 J.T.D. was a very useful cricketer himself, and as a lively round-arm bowler had once dismissed a young W.G.Grace whilst guesting in a Cricket for Breconshire and South Wales 39 14 A year earlier, on 9 June 1873, seven English first-class counties, meeting at The Oval, had decided, among other things, that players were qualified to play only for counties where they were born or where they had lived for the previous two years. It is not clear, nor can it have been clear to Lewis and his fellow players, that they had intended the rules to apply to Welsh counties playing two-day friendly matches against one another. 15 He was later appointed High Sheriff of Glamorgan (in 1878) and followed his father as mayor of Swansea in 1891. After various unsuccessful attempts to enter Parliament, he was elected Conservative MP for Swansea, 1895-1900; he was created a baronet in 1890. He took great interest in secondary and higher education and was an active supporter of St. David’s College, Lampeter, and of University College, Cardiff. He was a member of the Royal Commission which in 1896 examined the land question in Wales.