Lives in Cricket No 16 - Joe Hardstaff

persuaded that the Army was perhaps a safer alternative. So, Joe joined the Army 44 at its Nottingham recruiting office on 6 September 1939, just three days after the War began and was posted to the 112th Battery which was part of No.26 Light Anti-Aircraft (LAA) Regiment at nearby Hucknall. Eventually he spent the entire war in the Royal Artillery, rising quickly to the rank of Warrant Officer II as a battery Sergeant-Major. Thanks to the enterprise and initiative of the secretary, Captain H.A.Brown, Notts arranged a series of matches at Trent Bridge in every summer of the war. This was far more than any of the other sixteen counties managed. In 1940 there were six matches at Trent Bridge. Joe appeared five times. On 15 June he appeared in a Services eleven against Notts and scored 103. His best performance, however, was his 183 for an RAF side against Notts amongst whose ranks was to be found one Major G.O.Allen who took two for 92 in 13 overs. 45 Just before Christmas that year, Joe’s wife presented him with a second son, Roger. In 1941 twelve matches were arranged at Trent Bridge. Joe made five appearances, scoring 110 against Leicestershire. In this match he added 168 for the third wicket with the 21-year-old Reg Simpson who had made a very promising debut the previous season. Educated at Nottingham High School, Simpson had received a lot of coaching from Joe. Joe’s last matches in England were in September when he appeared in two matches for the Army against Jack Appleyard’s XI at Headingley and Wakefield. On 6 January 1942, Joe was posted to India and spent the rest of the war, apart from some periods of leave in India, with the Fourteenth Army, a multi-national force conducting operations in Assam and Burma, under the command of Lt-Gen William Slim. Going through the entire Burma campaign, Joe did not return home until the end of October 1945. He was offered a commission, but declined because officer training would have meant leaving the men in his Battery. 84 Second World War, 1939-1945 44 Butler, Giles, Jepson, Knowles, Harris, Voce, Yates and Watkin also joined the Army. Meads, Simpson and Woodhead served in the RAF and Keeton was in the police. 45 One well-researched book on wartime cricket, The Datasport Book of Wartime Cricket: 1940-1945 , by Gordon Andrews, published in 1990, records his 183 as the highest score by an English batsman in ‘Class A’ (top-grade) matches in England during the war. It also gives his wartime batting average in these matches, 953 runs at 52.94 (he played only in 1940 and 1941), as fourth in a listing behind only Hammond, Fishlock and Compton. Much depends on whether you agree with the author’s classification of matches, of course, but it certainly indicates what might have been.