Lives in Cricket No 11 - CP Lewis

regularly played in his best country-house matches. Platt was also well connected within M.C.C. and I Zingari, and he had many good friends in South Wales, including the Bancrofts of Swansea. William Bancroft (junior), who had coached C.P. when he was at Norton Lodge School, was later employed by Platt to play and coach at Bryn-y-neuadd in the 1880s. Despite his enthusiasm for the game, Platt had not been impressed by the casual attitude to cricket in north Wales. ‘This year my patience is at an end,’ he said in 1880, ‘owing to an unpardonable piece of carelessness on the part of [the Conwy] secretary, my eleven were kept waiting on the ground for more than two hours; nor did the match commence until some time after the arrival of the Conwy eleven, owing to a fight which took place between two of the club.’ In an attempt to rectify matters, Platt raised a Caernarvonshire eleven in 1882 for matches against sides representing Flintshire and Anglesey, whilst he also paid for three professionals to turn out for his so-called county eleven, as well as for the Bryn-y-neuadd team in country-house matches. There were complaints from local clubs about the way Platt called his side Caernarvonshire, especially as only two of Platt’s team played for teams in the area. As a result, a group of representatives from these clubs followed Platt’s lead and inaugurated a ‘proper’ county club, with a committee populated by local representatives – an outcome which pleased Platt as it significantly improved the organisation of the game in Caernarvonshire. Bryn-y-neuadd had been built as a fake castle-cum-abbey for Platt’s father. It later became a mental hospital, before being demolished in 1970 to make way for a new hospital. Through Platt’s involvement it became something of a cricketing mecca in the late nineteenth century with the length of the Bryn-y-neuadd fixture list for 1883 showing Platt’s immense enthusiasm for the game, and his wide range of contacts. In fact, their match with the South Wales Club was one of twelve two-day matches at Bryn-y-neuadd that summer, with the Somerset Rovers, Manchester Club and Ground (the then name for Lancashire’s second eleven) and the Gentlemen of Leicestershire amongst the other visitors. The visit by the South Wales Club began with a twelve-a-side contest against Platt’s country-house side, styled Bryn-y-neuadd, A Gentleman of South Wales 71