Lives in Cricket No 18 - FR Foster

throwing. Plus ça change. In fact Field found it impossible to throw overarm at all. Foster himself, in unpublished writings, described what happened in one 1911 match: Field was bowling poorly and in obvious agony. ‘What’s the matter with him?’ I asked ‘Tiger’ Smith. ‘Take him off,’ he replied. ‘Want a rest?’ I asked Field at the end of an over. ‘Don’t be a fool, skipper. If you take me off there will be no-one to bowl,’ he replied. ‘Put your sweater on and clear off the field,’ I replied. To my surprise he did leave the field and the twelfth man stayed on until luncheon. After my usual rub-down I went round to see Frank during lunchtime, but couldn’t find him in the dressing rooms and asked where he was. ‘Tiger’ replied, ‘Having a bath somewhere I think.’ He wasn’t. My hero was holding his elbow under a cold-water tap trying to ease the pain a terrible blow had caused years before. Elsewhere, in 1933, when asked the reasons for Warwicks’ success, Foster wrote: In the words of a contemporary Yorkshire professional who expressed his pleasure playing again them ‘Warwickshire are a happy family’. Now isn’t that lovely. If you don’t think so you don’t know the meaning of sportsmanship. From 1911 until war broke out Warwickshire were the happiest family of cricketers the world will ever see. We played the game as it should be played; our motto was ‘Get on or get out’. I can honestly say that both on the field and off the Warwickshire team were as true to each other as a son should be to his father. We were more than great pals, we were ‘great scouts’ to each other. We blended together in a truly remarkable way, and that, to my mind, was the secret of our phenomenal rise. Perhaps the following may cause the reader to sit up and take notice: a) hot summer with dry, fast wickets prepared by one of the best groundsmen in England, John Bates, whose son has made many a hundred for Warwickshire; b) the wicket-keeping of ‘Tiger’ Smith; c) the magnificent bowling of Frank Field; d) the advice of Warwickshire’s secretary, R.V.Ryder; e) the friendliness of those thousands of spectators keen enough to patronise Warwickshire; f) fate, in the shape of a new cricket ball, and a lady’s name I cannot mention because the lady is the main cause of Warwickshire beating Northamptonshire for their thirteenth win of the season. Sorry friends, cannot spin out that yarn; 46 Tell Kent from me she hath lost