Lives in Cricket No 16 - Joe Hardstaff

Since the resumption of first-class cricket in 1919 there had been very little turnover in the county’s playing staff. Indeed the 1919 side was little different from that of 1914. Both Wisden and The Cricketer criticised Notts about the age of their players. In 1922 Wisden , having pointed out that the younger representatives were Carr, Richmond, Staples and Barratt, went on to say that ‘Oates … was born in 1875, John Gunn in 1876, George Gunn in 1879, Hardstaff in 1882 and Payton in 1882. Even Lee and Whysall were men of thirty-five last season. It is imperative that a team so mature should be refreshed with new blood.’ The following season, with the same team, Notts finished second. Even so Wisden repeated its strictures of the previous issue. The Cricketer agreed but in 1924 pointed out that it was very difficult for a younger player, especially a batsman, to play himself into the team. Nevertheless Notts had never finished lower than eighth and had been runners-up three times: in the 1920s probably only Lancashire and Yorkshire were more powerful. As with Lancashire and Yorkshire, Notts were able to play a more or less unchanged team throughout the season. There was never any question of professionals making way for the occasional amateur, as was the case with, say, Middlesex and Kent. By the start of the 1928 season the only post-war players to establish themselves had been Lilley (who had taken over behind the stumps from Oates), the Staples brothers, Matthews, Larwood and Voce. Of those expected to play in 1928, George Gunn was 49, Payton 46, Whysall 38, Richmond 37, Walker 36, Sam Staples 35 and Barratt 34. Carr was 33. Larwood, Voce and Arthur Staples were in their twenties. Naturally Joe addressed them all as ‘Mr’ or ‘Sir’. There was, however, a nucleus of promising young players on the groundstaff whose ranks Joe now joined. The younger members of the groundstaff included George (G.V.) Gunn junior, Frank Shipston, Walter Keeton, Arthur Wheat, Charlie Harris, Sydney Copley, Ronald Taylor, Barnes, George Robinson, Vincent Hodgkinson, Jack Reddish, S.T.Reid and Joe Knowles. The groundstaff also included the quick bowler Frank Matthews, by now 35, who had one outstanding match, against Northampton- shire in 1923, in which he took seventeen wickets. Of this group of fourteen – all born in Nottinghamshire apart from Keeton who came from Shirebrook, just across the Derbyshire border – Gunn, Keeton and Harris were, together with Joe, to remain regular members of the Notts first eleven over the next quarter-century. Groundstaff to First Eleven, 1928-1930 14