Lives in Cricket No 18 - FR Foster

Chapter One Warwick, thou art worthy Punch magazine dated 6 September 1911 printed a cartoon by F.H.Townsend showing Foster being congratulated by William Shakespeare, a Warwickshire qualified playwright, and whose speed in pursuit of Thomas Lucy’s deer suggested a natural outfielder. Foster addresses the Bard, ‘Tell Kent from me she hath lost.’ (Kent were the only challengers at the end.) Shakespeare replies, ‘Warwick, thou art worthy.’ The quotations are taken, out of context of course, from Parts II and III of Henry VI and are delightfully apt. Though he could pen a lively sentence or two, and was also Warwicks qualified, Frank Foster was not a littérateur of Shakespearian standard. Indeed in the 1930s he could not find a publisher for his second set of memoirs. Some of this material is still extant 2 and record his thoughts on Warwicks winning the County Championship in 1911 and various related matters. This is what he wrote: ‘Frank, art thou sitting around all morning?’ ‘Tha’ sounds real Yorkshire, and yes I am.’ Thus, Mel Valley, Moseley, 3 25 August 1911, 11.00 am and the start of the most memorable hundred hours of my life. I am in my dressing room, still in dressing-gown and starting a second pipeful. Later I will be catching the LNWR to Northampton to lead my Warwickshire team to its first-ever cricket title. Presently though, there is no hurry; I can relax and here is father mythering on. He’ll have me exercising the horses next. Little wonder I annoy him by mentioning his now almost undetectable Yorkshire accent. 4 He is really a lovely gentleman to whom I owe everything. He has a great sense of humour and is remarkably patient and tolerant – as he needs to be having four wild sons with whom to contend. I shortly wash and dress, and join father, mother and sister Florence for luncheon. I can eat little and it is with relief that I pile my luggage onto father’s carriage 11 2 At one time, the library at the Edgbaston ground held a copy. 3 Mel Valley was the name of the Foster family home, incorporating a Hackney pony stud run by our subject’s father. See Chapter Two. 4 It is slightly surprising that Frank Foster referred to Yorkshire since although William Foster had lived and been in business in the Pontefract area, he was from a Lincolnshire family. Maybe a slight ‘Northern’ accent may have been an appropriate description.