Lives in Cricket No 18 - FR Foster

brought eight for 135 in 47.2 overs. Another extraordinary, match-winning performance. The Gloucestershire win was meritorious but the Yorkshire return, at Harrogate, was more memorable, yet tinged with sadness. Warwicks had bested the Tykes only once in 35 matches but a win here, however unlikely, would put them among the championship leaders. The team arrived about 10 am on the first morning and a Yorkshire committee man asked Foster if he would object to a new wicket being cut, the original one being off-centre. Lilley said that Yorkshire had no bowler as quick as Field and as the new wicket was dry and hard, ‘win the toss and you’ve won the match’. He also said that a new wicket was hardly likely to last three days. Foster did win the toss and gratefully elected to bat, much to the disappointment of Sir Archibald White, another of the aristocratic skippers preferred by Yorkshire. Charlesworth, with 93, was the main contributor to the Warwicks total of 341, but the fireworks were supplied by Foster, whose 60 in a fourth-wicket stand of 75 with Quaife took only 40 minutes. Foster and Field took early Yorkshire wickets but fine batting by Drake, with 99, and Hirst resulted in a recovery that took Yorks to within 31 of the visitors. Warwicks soon lost three wickets in their second innings but then Foster played another captain’s innings. According to F.G.Stephens’ memoirs it was his best ever. His 101 in 105 minutes took his match total to 161 in 145 minutes, with four sixes. He had now hit five successive half-centuries, a Warwicks record until beaten by Fred Gardner in 1950, and all Foster’s innings had come at a run a minute or more. Requiring 257 the home side made the ‘best’ of the worn wicket and surrendered themselves abjectly for 56 all out. Field was brilliant, achieving an analysis of seven for 20. This was a fourth successive victory; Warwicks were now third with Notts, and leaders Kent firmly in their sights. As for Foster, there was surely no more devastating an allrounder in world cricket. It was not yet the end of July but he had already passed 1,000 runs and was approaching the ‘double’. This match was full of incident apart from the win. Repeatedly hit on the thigh by Foster, George Hirst threatened to throw his bat at the bowler, while on the second night, with Yorks already one for 14, Foster requested the wicket be guarded against overnight ‘watering’ by over-protective home supporters. It was later reckoned it had been doctored, but some good it did Yorkshire. Foster had then gone for a ‘hectic’ night out with friends, and maybe relations, from Huddersfield and only tumbled into bed about an hour before Field woke him at 7 am, with the news that he was about to have a cold bath and massage. Despite protests Field picked him up and carried him to the bathroom where the trainer ran the tap and Foster reckoned that for an hour he was ‘thumped and bumped, bounced and bashed, rubbed and dubbed’ and then given a steak and a can of beer. Play then started and Field immediately had Rhodes caught – by Foster. ‘How do you feel, skip?’ asked the ‘kindly’ Field. ‘Go to the devil’ was the friendly reply. Tell Kent from me she hath lost 40