Lives in Cricket No 11 - CP Lewis

Introduction English cricket historians have, quite rightly, made much of the likes of William Clarke, the Lillywhites and Charles Alcock in promoting and administering cricket and other games in the second half of the nineteenth century. Until now, little has been written about the prominent early figures in the development of sport in Wales, but similar plaudits are long overdue to Charles Prytherch Lewis who, like Alcock, was a leading figure in the development of winter and summer games. Not only was he a major force in the early development of rugby in Wales – and the earliest-born Welsh rugby international – C.P.Lewis was a key mover and shaker in the evolution of regional and county cricket in the Principality during the second half of the nineteenth century, laying the foundations upon which the Glamorgan County Cricket Club was formed in July 1888. Lewis played cricket for the South Wales Cricket Club and for Oxford University; rugby for Wales; and, as if this was not enough, he also won an athletics half-Blue. Besides being one of the people who played a leading role in the early years of the Welsh Rugby Union during the 1880s, he was perhaps the finest cricketer in the Principality during that era – a time when several key changes took place to the sporting landscape of Wales, with the development of thriving rugby and cricket clubs, a national rugby team, successful regional cricket teams, and embryonic county elevens. It was a measure of Lewis’ sporting eminence that he played a leading role in all of these developments. As far as cricket is concerned, he played at a time when important changes were taking place to the game throughout England, and he was in his prime at the time of the beginnings of the modern County Championship and the tentative, as yet unnamed, beginnings of Test cricket. Indeed he might have been one of the earliest Test cricketers if he had acted on an apparent invitation to join the 1878/79 Gentlemen’s tour of Australia, originally to be led by I.D. (‘Donny’) Walker of Southgate in Middlesex – although as the fiery fast bowler, his presence might have scotched the engagements of the professionals Emmett and Ulyett, and early 7