Lives in Cricket No 16 - Joe Hardstaff

to be hoped that the MCC will not consider it necessary to take any action designed to prevent such participation in future.’ This caused some surprise in New Zealand as over the years a number of English professionals had appeared in the Plunket Shield. Ted Bowley, James Langridge, Leslie Townsend and Bert Wensley had all appeared for Auckland, while Lawrie Eastman and Jack Newman had played for Otago and Canterbury respectively. Wensley had appeared against the 1929/30 MCC team and Joe would have remembered playing against Townsend in 1935/36. Nevertheless Rule 3 of the Rules of County Cricket stated that: ‘A Cricketer may not play for more than one County … within the Calendar Year. The penalty for an infringement of this rule shall be disqualification for two years. A British Dominion or State shall, for the purpose of this rule, be regarded as a County’. The situation was complicated by the fact that, unlike Australia’s states, New Zealand consisted of ‘provinces’ which is presumably why the question had not been raised before. The immediate result was that Joe did not appear for Auckland again and awaited the outcome. The MCC Advisory Cricket Committee met on 14 March 1950 and unanimously agreed that Joe had erred inadvertently by playing for Auckland, but exonerated him from blame and decided that he should not be penalised. Clearly the situation was unsatisfactory and MCC agreed to contact all overseas bodies about the question of using English cricketers in their domestic tournaments. It also agreed to suspend this particular rule for a year which enabled Tom Dollery to play for Wellington the following winter. The matter was finally resolved in March 1951 when the rule was changed, MCC agreeing that there was ‘no objection to an England cricketer appearing for a State, Dominion or Province providing their rules accept’. Thus, Joe helped to strike a blow for the professional cricketer in his campaign against restraint of trade. In 1950 Notts fell to fifteenth place in the Championship – the lowest in the county’s history. Indeed at the end of August it looked as though they would finish last. All depended on who obtained the four points for first-innings lead in the match against Essex at Trent Bridge. Notts just managed to secure the points, with five minutes to spare in a rain-reduced match and Essex finished last, with Leicestershire in sixteenth place. Joe was missing from this match. Recurrence of a shoulder injury County Cricketer, 1949-1955 109