Lives in Cricket No 18 - FR Foster

781908 165022 ISBN 978-1-908165-02-2 9 > LIVES IN CRICKET F.R.Foster The Fields Were Sudden Bare ROBERT BROOKE ACS PUBLICATIONS Aged only 22, Frank Foster reluctantly took on the captaincy of Warwickshire in 1911. In his first season in the job, employing enthusiasm and unorthodoxy, he led his side to the County Championship, breaking the cosy cartel of the ‘Big Six’ counties. The following winter he went to Australia where, sharing the new ball with Sydney Barnes, he took 32 wickets in five Tests, enabling England to win The Ashes. He never reached these heights again, but remained a formidable allrounder through to 1914. Sadly his life fell apart. In 1915 he was badly injured in a road accident in Worcester and never played big cricket again. He was a failure in the family menswear business; he separated from his wife and children; took to hanging around Soho; went bankrupt and committed fraud. Despite his playing achievements he was banned from the Edgbaston ground: he died in a psychiatric hospital. Robert Brooke tells of a cricketing life whose peaks were surely higher and troughs were surely deeper than those of any other Test player. £12.00