Lives in Cricket No 19 - Frank Sugg

4 That, should any question arise as to the residential qualification, the same shall be left to the decision of the Marylebone Club. The nine counties that competed in 1873 were Derbyshire, Gloucestershire, Kent, Lancashire, Middlesex, Nottinghamshire, Surrey, Sussex and Yorkshire. However, they did not all play the same number of matches and there was no agreed or consistent method of determining the winner of the Championship, by means of points, for instance. Instead, the decision was left to the judgement of the cricket press. In certain years, the accolade had been awarded to different counties by different authorities – hardly a satisfactory situation. Derbyshire dropped out of the competition in 1887, a significant event in the Frank Sugg story, as we shall see. Further steps to regularise the County Championship were taken in meetings in December 1889 of the secretaries of the eight first-class county clubs which arranged the fixtures for the 1890 season. They determined the method by which the Championship should in future be decided, though it was to be changed as soon as 1895 – and many times thereafter. Wisden referred to the outcome for 1890 as ‘the now officially recognised competition for the championship.’ In May 1894 it was agreed that Derbyshire could re-enter the Championship in 1895 and Essex, Hampshire, Leicestershire and Warwickshire were also admitted for that season. By 1895 the structure of the competition was firmly established and, in the final step towards official recognition, MCC became responsible for awarding the Championship in that year. Frank Sugg had resided in Yorkshire from a very young age and clearly was qualified on that count to play for Yorkshire. However, as he was born in Ilkeston, Derbyshire, his selection would appear to have infringed the Yorkshire club’s own convention that only cricketers born in Yorkshire were qualified to play for the county. Exceptions had been made before, however, most notably for the Honourable Martin Bladen Hawke, later Lord Hawke, born in Willingham, Lincolnshire, whose first appearance in a long career with Yorkshire was in 1881. In fact, Frank Sugg was the fifteenth cricketer to play for Yorkshire since the county club was established in 1863 who had not been born in the county. 29 While never formally a rule of the club, the convention became so central Playing for Yorkshire and Derbyshire 29 29 For the list, see Yorkshire County Cricket Club Yearbook , 1994, p 44.