Lives in Cricket No 11 - CP Lewis

Chapter Ten Sporting Solicitor Within eighteen months of the South Wales C.C. being wound up, Glamorgan County Cricket Club was formed, to become the flag-bearer of county cricket in the Principality. A few years later Monmouthshire followed suit, but despite occasional matches by Breconshire, Radnorshire and Pembrokeshire, the ideal of a series of Welsh county clubs stalled. Many of the leading representatives from the old organisation were instrumental in the creation of the new Glamorgan county club. J.T.D.Llewelyn was the instigator behind the meeting convened at the Angel Hotel in early July 1888, at which Glamorgan were formed following several weeks of canvassing by the two leading officials from the South Wales club – J.P. Jones of Cardiff C.C. and C.C.Chambers of Swansea C.C. – to secure the support of the leading clubs in the West and East. Indeed, the attendance list at that meeting in the plush Cardiff hotel, opposite the Arms Park, read like a Who’s Who of Welsh cricket, with the exception of C.P.Lewis, who did not attend and played no role in the Glamorgan club. His absence was rather surprising, given the fact that he was still in decent form as a cricketer, and was only in his mid-thirties. His massive involvement with the South Wales Club for many years also meant that he had a plethora of contacts both inside and outside Wales which could have only been beneficial to the fledgling county club. But it would appear that Lewis did not exactly see eye-to-eye with J.P.Jones, after so many years as Llewelyn’s right-hand man with the South Wales Club. When South Wales played their final match against M.C.C. at Swansea, as we have seen, Lewis didn’t play, but perhaps we shouldn’t read too much into this as C.P. was starting to play less cricket. As we have said, he had been elected to Llandovery Town Council, and he was clearly taking his legal work and civic affairs seriously, and putting his energies to community use. As to his activities as a lawyer, there are no dramatic court cases on record involving Lewis, and he appears to have been a jobbing 92