Lives in Cricket No 11 - CP Lewis

Chapter Seven A Gentleman of South Wales By the 1880s, there were more people playing cricket in Wales than at any other previous time in the Principality, and anyone strolling around a town or village on a balmy Saturday afternoon in the summer would have seen a plethora of matches taking place. Yet it was during this decade, when the game was arguably in its most healthy-ever state, that the South Wales club folded. Despite their success in securing a fixture with the Australian touring side of 1878 – they didn’t visit Wales in 1880 – and overseeing the operation of the South Wales Challenge Cup, many people viewed the Club as a cosy, gentlemen’s side, characterized by parochial and elitist attitudes, and one that did not truly represent the cricketing talent in the region. It must have greatly hurt C.P.Lewis and the other stalwarts of the club to read articles and letters with critical comments, including the following, in The South Wales Daily News : When, oh when, shall we be able to put in the field an eleven sufficiently strong to oppose, with some prospect of success, a really first-class team? Not I fancy until the miserable cliqueism that at present marks the management of some of our leading clubs in swept away, and men are played simply because they know how to play and not because their names are Jones, Brown, Robinson and so on. The criticism was mirrored on the rugby field, and it is noticeable that once Llanelli, for example, dropped its elitist attitudes and encouraged sporting workmen from the mills and mines to join, within a year Owen Badger and Ben Davies had gone from playing for a small local club to being half-backs for Wales. On the cricket field clubs like Swansea Working Men, Llanelli Working Men, and Morriston, with a core of metal workers, were becoming forces in the Challenge Cup by the mid 1880s. There had also been accusations that the Challenge Cup had encouraged bad behaviour by the participants, with the cut and 66