Lives in Cricket No 19 - Frank Sugg

these fixtures primarily as trials for promising young players though for Sugg it must have seemed a demotion, even if he had initially been engaged for just five matches. Again Frank failed with the bat. He scored only 14 runs in his three innings. Some years later, Frank recalled keeping wicket for Yorkshire in one of his eight first-class matches for the county – with gloves that cost 2s 6d and pads 3s 6d. 32 Although on each occasion Yorkshire’s regular keeper, Joseph Hunter, was in the side, Frank Sugg did take over the gloves in the Middlesex second innings at Lord’s and then achieved a stumping off the bowling of William Bates. In another match, against Leicestershire at Grace Road, Hunter was absent and Frank may also have had the chance in that match to keep wicket, though if he did, he did not secure any victims. Whatever Frank Sugg’s competence behind the stumps and the enjoyment he evidently took from the role, had he remained with Yorkshire he would have had no chance of supplanting Joseph Hunter. 33 As a very occasional wicketkeeper, his first-class record was to show just the one stumping. In contrast to his modest performances for the Yorkshire county side, Frank was very successful in 1883 in club cricket. He turned out for various club sides and made a total of over 2,000 runs, averaging over 40 per innings. His highest score was 191 for Durham against Scarborough. Durham had engaged Walter Sugg for the season and were so keen to beat their Yorkshire rivals that they arranged, through Walter, to add Frank to their team just for the one match. His big century more than justified their initiative. A second century was his 109 not out for Eccleshill, a suburb of Bradford, against St Stephen’s. His experiences would have indicated to Frank how large was the gap between club and first-class cricket. Success in the one is no guarantee of success in the other. Eight matches is a decent run of first-class games for a newcomer to show what he is made of, and Frank Sugg failed to grasp the opportunity presented to him by the Yorkshire committee. He was not prepared to accept that he had had a fair chance, however: ‘I was generally put in very late and never given a chance of going in early, even when I had played a not out innings.’ This is Playing for Yorkshire and Derbyshire 33 32 Sporting Chronicle , 25 July 1916. 33 When the time came for Joseph Hunter to give way, it was his brother David who took over the position in 1888, soon establishing himself as one in a line of distinguished Yorkshire wicketkeepers.