Lives in Cricket No 19 - Frank Sugg

Chapter Nine Away From Old Trafford The most fascinating aspect of the life of Frank Sugg is the way he combined his thirteen seasons with Lancashire as a professional cricketer with the founding and development, with his brother Walter, of a successful sports business. The interconnection of his two interests is nicely illustrated by Frank’s remark that he took up golf in order to be better able to procure and sell golf equipment and clothing in his shops (and, typically of the man, he made himself into an excellent golfer). The next chapter of this book will give a detailed account of the sports business from its inception in 1888 to its rather messy demise in the late 1920s. In this chapter we will deal with a number of other aspects of Frank Sugg’s life after he retired from first-class cricket at the end of the 1899 season up to the end of his business career, sketching in an account of his involvement in sports other than cricket and football. Of course, Frank did not completely pack away his cricket gear after his final first-class game, for Lancashire against Yorkshire at Bramall Lane, Sheffield, the town in which he learned the rudiments of the game. From his young days through his years in first-class cricket, Frank Sugg had enjoyed club cricket and had played as much of it as his commitments would allow. After his spell with Burnley and during his years with Lancashire, Frank appeared for the Blackburn, Wavertree, Birkdale , Southport and East Lancashire cricket clubs among others, often as a ‘match professional’. It was in this capacity that a Blackburn resident, reminiscing about his boyhood in the town, records that he saw Frank Sugg, then first-wicket down for Lancashire, give ‘many fine exhibitions’ for Blackburn on the town’s Alexandra Meadows ground. 86 Frank also played several times for the prestigious Liverpool and District side between 1893 and 1897, including the 89 86 Charles H.Stirrup, Blackburn When I Was A Boy, Blackburn Times , 28 July 1933.