Lives in Cricket No 20 - Maurice Tompkin

Postscript After Maurice’s death, the family moved in with Maurice’s mother, Flo, just around the corner in Cosby Road. She had been widowed seven years before, so they offered mutual support. The boys had attended, like their father, the village school on Foston Road which still had Harry Gilliver as headmaster. The bulk of the appeal fund was used to provide private education to Maurice’s two sons, Chris and Nick, through the trust fund administered by Edward Fortune, the then editor of the Leicester Mercury . They both went to Woodbank Preparatory School in Leicester and then to Trent College near Nottingham. The County Cricket Club made them both honorary life members. It is clear that the cricket world maintained an affection for Maurice as his sons grew up, and Colin Cowdrey wrote a particularly enthusiastic piece about them in The Cricketer in 1964: As my schoolboy summer holidays were spent on a Leicestershire farm, it is not surprising that my schoolboy hero was the late Maurice Tompkin. I was intrigued to note the surname of two Tompkins in the Trent College XI playing MCC last week. I was thrilled to discover, on enquiry, that they were, in fact, the sons of Maurice. Some of the detail of the boys’ cricket activities at Trent College can now be found in the small print of the ‘Public School Cricket’ sections of the Wisden almanacks of 1964 to 1967. Chris also played for Leicestershire in the Second Eleven Championships of 1966 and 1967, without making a substantive claim for a first-team place. Chris became a teacher, initially specializing in physical education, and is married with two grown-up children and four grandchildren. His son showed outstanding football talent and had trials for Aston Villa, but a bad leg injury brought that to a halt, so he concentrated on golf. His daughter Briony played county-level hockey. It is her son, Callum, who is the keenest cricketer so far, progressing through the junior teams at Old Swinford Cricket Club in Worcestershire. Nick is a garage proprietor, recently retired, and is also married with two grown-up children and three grandchildren. His family, brought up in rural East Yorkshire, perhaps with fewer opportunities for team sports, have all developed a passion for golf. 123