Lives in Cricket No 20 - Maurice Tompkin

For his festival cricket this year, Maurice travelled to Torquay. The Torquay Festival lasted just five years, and lost money. This year the Commonwealth team that played in the second match was of international standard, with Vinoo Mankad, Frank Worrell and Sonny Ramadhin, as well as the cream of Australians playing county cricket plus Roy Marshall, but still the crowds failed to support the matches. Though ‘only’ a festival match, his innings of 68 for an England XI was a high-quality innings. In the first match of the festival, this time playing for the North, he put on 99 in 35 minutes with Jock Livingston, hitting three sixes, including two off successive balls from the Glamorgan slow left-arm bowler, Willie Jones. We should, perhaps, see the three seasons 1953 to 1955 as the peak numeric years of Maurice’s career. In the County Championship – that is excluding Festival and University matches – he was Leicestershire’s leading run-scorer and headed the county’s averages in all three seasons. In 81 matches he had obtained 5,083 runs at an average of 36.56; Leicestershire in those years scored their runs in the competition at 23.33 – they played on uncovered pitches, remember – so his wicket was worth 56 per cent more than the Leicester average. Leicestershire have scored their runs at 31.13 per dismissal in the last three seasons (2008 to 2010), so Maurice scored his runs at a modern-day equivalent of close to 49, a figure which would certainly attract the attention of selectors looking for England- qualified batsmen prospering in the county game. Senior Professional 108