Lives in Cricket No 19 - Frank Sugg

Thursday, half-day closing for shops in Sheffield. It is believed that the League was the first midweek league in Yorkshire. Walter Sugg was its first president and Frank Sugg a committee member. The Sugg Leagues proved very popular and in their heyday attracted enough teams to require a league of several divisions, five in the case of the Sheffield League, including a Saturday section. In the Sheffield League, matches commenced at 3.30 pm and consisted of 40 overs per side with a thirty-minute interval. They were keenly contested. A number of first-class cricketers played in the Sugg Leagues in their early days, the most notable being Fred Trueman who played for Maltby in the Saturday section of the Sugg Thursday League. The league was well enough regarded for top players such as Wilfred Rhodes, Herbert Sutcliffe and Norman Yardley to accept invitations to the Sugg Club and League’s annual dinners in Sheffield. It was not until the 1980s that interest began to wane with fewer cricketers able to play on Thursday afternoons and with falling membership of local cricket clubs generally in the face of the widening range of leisure and other attractions available to young people. The Sugg Thursday Cricket Club and League was finally disbanded in 1989, its last president being Timothy Sugg, the third generation of the family after Walter Sugg to hold the post. At the final dinner of the Club, the Suggs’ contribution was handsomely recognised: ‘We must pay tribute to the Sugg family who have played such a great role in not only the Club but the League bearing their name. Their generosity and support over the years (often unsung and known only to a few) helped both the Club and the League to survive many a crisis.’ There were no succeeding generations to take on Frank’s mantle in Liverpool and when the end came to the Sugg Cricket League in that city there were, as far as is known, none of the eulogies expressed in Sheffield. Nevertheless, Frank Sugg could be very proud of the contribution he had made to the furtherance of cricket in Liverpool as well as in Sheffield. It might be far-fetched to say that the Sugg brothers had a mission to promote the game of cricket among the young for there was certainly a commercial side to their commitment to the Sugg cricket leagues; no doubt it encouraged many clubs and individual members to purchase equipment from Sugg shops. The league helped to make Sugg a household name in each of the towns. Similar motives lay behind one of the more interesting Sugg joint ventures, the Frank Sugg Pocket Cricket Annual . Away From Old Trafford 93