Lives in Cricket No 13 - AP Lucas

The minutes do not record individual views, so we do not know exactly what Lucas thought of all this. He did not attend all the meetings that discussed the disputes, although he was present on 4 November 1903 when Mead’s demand was unanimously rejected, and on 11 May 1906 when an urgent meeting, called solely to discuss the reinstatement of Mead, agreed unanimously to do so. The curious episode of the professionals and the centre gate shows that Lucas had some sympathy with the pros, but perhaps did not feel sufficiently strongly to offer his own resignation over the treatment of Mead and Carpenter, and preferred to avoid a direct confrontation with his irascible old friend Green to support them. Lucas remained on the committee after retiring as a player, although in 1908 he missed several important meetings that discussed the club’s latest financial crisis, brought about when the bank demanded an immediate reduction of the club’s debts and threatened to foreclose on one of two mortgages on the County Ground. He therefore resigned but, as in 1893, was persuaded to reconsider. He was getting increasingly deaf and seems to have adopted the eminently sensible policy of attending committee meetings only when he had something to contribute. Before the 1910 season, Charles McGahey offered his resignation as captain. The committed discussed the matter at some length, and Lucas proposed that the post be offered to Rev Frank Gillingham, which was perhaps a case of special pleading by one churchman for another. Gillingham was a fine batsman, but had to fit his cricket round his clerical duties, and did not play often enough to be a realistic choice. Lucas’s motion was seconded by Guy Gilbey, a hunting chum of Green’s, but was defeated. 99 Eventually, McGahey was persuaded to soldier on but after another disappointing season there was general agreement that he should stand down. Lucas then had a significant role in one of the most mysterious and controversial episodes in Essex’s history. The background was the Extraordinary General Meeting of 10 November 1908, when Green reported on the bank’s threatened foreclosure and announced that ‘a gentleman who was a sportsman in the best sense of the word had agreed to take up the second mortgage – Mr. J.H.Douglas, father of one of the club’s best cricketers.’ As the result of a committee motion in 1909, seconded by Lucas, Douglas also joined the committee, which put him in a powerful position. The suspicion is that he exercised it in order to gain the captaincy for his son Johnny, but the matter may not have been as simple as that. The captaincy had usually passed to the most senior amateur, and so the obvious candidate to succeed McGahey as Essex captain was his ‘twin’, Perrin. He was still a fine batsman and a knowledgeable and thoughtful Essex committee man, 1890-1912 117 99 Gilbey was a member of the famous gin-distilling family. His father, Sir Walter, was the patron of the Rickling Green club that in 1882 famously conceded 920 runs to the Orleans Club, and his brother Arthur was in that Rickling side. Another brother, Tresham Gilbey, was founder and editor of Baily’s Hunting Directory , and joint author of The Essex Foxhounds , published in 1896 .