Lives in Cricket No 19 - Frank Sugg

Chapter Eleven Umpire and Journalist Perhaps seeking to fill the void in his life after the decline of his business, Frank persuaded the Lancashire committee in 1925 to nominate him as an umpire for first-class matches. Counties liked to help their former players where they could and Frank’s name was put forward despite his age and the length of time he had been away from first-class cricket. 108 There was no training course or assessment process. It was up to the committee of county captains to make the final selection. ‘Tiger’ Smith described his own selection: ‘The powers that be assumed I knew the Laws and all I had to do was turn up in my white coat at the start of the 1921 season.’ 109 It was the same for Frank Sugg and his name was duly included in the list of 24 umpires for the 1926 season. He remained on the list for the following season. Frank Sugg stood in 46 first-class matches in 1926 and 1927, mainly County Championship fixtures but including two matches of the visiting Australians in 1926 and two of the visiting New Zealanders in 1927. None of the county matches involved Lancashire, Derbyshire or Yorkshire. His first match was Nottinghamshire’s game against Northamptonshire at Trent Bridge starting on 1 May 1926 and his last was Warwickshire against Surrey at Edgbaston, commencing 17 August 1927. He enjoyed umpiring and seems to have carried out his duties competently enough. 110 Frank considered himself well qualified to be a first-class umpire: he had experience of the game at the highest level, he was a 116 108 At the time Frank, then aged 64, was the oldest practitioner who had been taken on to the English first-class umpires list. Only Percy Mills, the former Gloucestershire player, has since been older: he joined the list a few days before his 68th birthday, at the start of the 1947 season. Like Sugg he was listed for just a couple of seasons. My thanks to Philip Bailey for his help on this point. 109 Tiger Smith , as told to Pat Murphy, Lutterworth Press, 1981, p 74. 110 Sir Home Gordon, admittedly not always a reliable witness, commented in Background of Cricket, published by Arthur Barker in 1939, p 146, that, as an umpire, Sugg scandalised ‘the old school’ by ‘being invariably bareheaded, setting a fashion since widely emulated.’