Lives in Cricket No 13 - AP Lucas

Cricket … gives expression to a well-marked trait in the English character, the tendency to value ‘form’ or ‘style’ more highly than success. In the eyes of any true cricket-lover it is possible for an innings of ten runs to be ‘better’ ( i.e. more elegant) than an innings of a hundred runs … . Despite constant newspaper reports of his stylish batting, Lucas had a career first-class average of only 26.38, and perhaps exemplified Orwell’s comment. Hornung killed off his anti-hero in the Boer War but later experienced a real-life war tragedy. He wrote Lord’s Leave 1915 , a poem in similar vein to Henry Newbolt’s Vitaï Lampada 24 : No Lord’s this year: no silken lawns on which A dignified and dainty throng meanders The Schools take guard upon a fierier pitch Somewhere in Flanders … His only son Oscar, captain of games at Eton, compared life in the trenches to ‘putting your left leg to the ball at cricket’. He wrote to his uncle, Conan Doyle, declaring: ‘It is the one good thing the war has done – to give public school fellows a chance – they are the one class who are enjoying themselves in this war.’ On 6 July 1915, Oscar Hornung, a second lieutenant in the Essex Regiment, was killed leading his platoon at Ypres in Flanders. 25 The Great War had a devastating effect on Uppingham, where no fewer than 447 names appear on the Roll of Honour. They include Edward Brittain, Roland Leighton and Victor Richardson, respectively brother, fiancé and friend of Vera Brittain, who wrote so movingly about their deaths in Testament of Youth . Lucas was far too old to serve, but when he revisited his old school he must have played against some of the young men who were later killed, so would have been deeply affected by the losses. Uppingham School, 1870-1874 21 24 See Mangan, op cit. , p 193. 25 See Birley, op cit. , p 206.