Lives in Cricket No 11 - CP Lewis

appearances at Llandovery College started to decline. New opportunities came his way in the Home Counties, including playing rugby for Rosslyn Park and London Welsh, alongside other Welshmen who worked up in town. Whilst in London, he was also able to develop further his already impressive list of contacts in the social and political world, and a number of acquaintances who were to stand him in good stead in the course of the next few decades as he started to wind down his sporting activities. Despite his new commitments in the legal world, Lewis continued to find plenty of time to play cricket, and he still led the South Wales C.C. in their fixtures in 1884, besides chairing the club’s annual general meeting on 10 April at the Mackworth Hotel in Swansea. The season began in June with the annual trial match, but there were signs that the trainee solicitor had slightly lost some of his speed and agility running between the wickets as he was run out, albeit for 31 and 41, in each innings. Nevertheless, he was still an explosive bowler, completing a match haul of twelve wickets in the trial game. Later in the summer, Lewis, together with his good friend and club teammate Douglas Jones, travelled up to London for the annual tour. Jones was the other class player of the Llandovery side. In his early days he played a lot of country-house cricket in Wales and the Marches but his cricket became less as his local government career advanced. By this time Jones was Deputy Clerk – we’d say Deputy Chief Executive these days – to the first Carmarthenshire County Council, a post he held until 1900. From then, he was a Registrar – or a minor judge – at Llandovery County Court, dealing with small civil cases, before becoming clerk to Llandovery’s Poor Law Guardians and to the Rural District Council, which ran the town and its rural surrounds. In fact, it may well have been Jones who first suggested to Lewis that he move into the legal world and train as a solicitor. On the 1884 London tour, Lewis scored 75 and took two wickets against M.C.C. at Lord’s, besides appearing at The Oval and also at Wormwood Scrubs against the local club, Kensington Park, who had been added to the tour itinerary. By including professionals in their number for the first time – Johnny Donovan of Cardiff took eleven wickets at Lord’s, for example – South Wales became more convincing opponents. They forced M.C.C. to follow on at Lord’s and ran up a total of 348 against Kensington Park. South Wales Cricket Club: A Dream Dies 87