Lives in Cricket No 11 - CP Lewis

213. Lewis took six wickets, three in each innings and five bowled. Against Brecon he scored 50 at number five, and took four wickets – again every one bowled. By this time, there were other things which mattered to him, as in June 1892 he got married – at the ripe old age of 39 – to a locally-born lady called Elizabeth Walters. After their wedding, the happy couple went up to London and spent some of their honeymoon watching play at Lord’s and socialising with many of C.P.’s friends and acquaintances. Lizzie herself was 47 at the time of their marriage, and for several years before, she had been living quite near him at Llandingat Cottage with her older sister Anne. She came from a well-to-do family, and with C.P. destined to be Mayor of Llandovery, Mrs Lewis may have been partly an apprentice mayoress. No doubt Lewis knew he was due to inherit the chairmanship of Llandovery Council in another couple of years, and a woman of quite mature years certainly fitted the bill as Mayoress. It is fashionable nowadays to write of the great influence of the women of great men in pre-equality times, but in truth we know very little of Elizabeth. It is unlikely she would have been a twentieth-century style cricket wife, coming down to the ground to make the teas. We suspect that would have been thought beneath the wives of the solid professional men of the Llandovery club, especially when maids were employed for that kind of thing! After returning from his honeymoon, Lewis continued to play club cricket with some effect. In another match with Swansea he made 23 out of just 67, and also took two wickets. He gets a mention in the red Lillywhite , for hitting the stumps and sending a bail 41 yards in a match at Brecon. Freakish it may have been, but it is a feat achievable only by a bowler of some speed. In September 1892 he took six for 41 at Llanelli who were bowled out for 83. But Llanelli then dismissed their opponents for just 33, much to the delight of Spectator , a cricket reporter with literary pretensions in the Llanelli Mercury , who wrote: ‘This is no mean achievement. Llandovery has always been a thorn in the flesh and some of the oldest of the Llanelli XI who have mourned in sackcloth and ashes when defeated by Llandovery – crack Llandovery – so many times in the past, could hardly realise the fact and the Llandoveryites – well, they would they were “dreaming again”.’ He added: ‘Llanelli had a professional called Briddon and facing the thunderbolts of C.P.Lewis, he made a very fine display.’ Sporting Solicitor 95