Lives in Cricket No 20 - Maurice Tompkin

goalkeeper, Alf Oldershaw, because his family were bakers in the village and had provided them. The team went on to play a team from Norwich in the next round but, by this stage, Maurice was off ‘cricketing with his dad, so hardly surprising we lost,’ remembers Alf. The Foston Road school was at the corner of Leicester and Foston Roads. The boys and girls at the school had separate playgrounds. For the boys, this was an advantage, as skipping and other girlish games did not hamper football and cricket. The boys’ playground, which was entered from Foston Road, was rectangular, surrounded by walls or high netting. There were few windows to break, and if when playing cricket you batted at the village end, a good straight drive would simply end up in the road or perhaps the field beyond rather than the gardens of the houses on Leicester Road. Is it perhaps not too fanciful to suggest that Maurice’s penchant for the straight drive was learnt in these surroundings? The school took sport seriously; the boys played football and cricket, and the girls netball. Harry Gilliver was greatly respected, very keen on sport and was most encouraging. Maurice was not the only professional sportsman to emerge from the school. William Arthur Cobley played professional football for Aston Villa, and his sister Ena Clarke was a national bowls champion. On one occasion Cobley gave his former headmaster Harry tickets for a game at Villa; an otherwise memorable day was rather spoiled by the former pupil being sent off! In 1930, Maurice passed his eleven-plus exam and went to Alderman Newton’s Grammar School in Leicester. Conditions at the Board school were so cramped and facilities so poor that those who did not move onto one of the Leicester grammar schools, tended to switch to the larger Church School on Main Street. Some, such as fellow county cricketer Tony Riddington, went to Bassett Street School, just a couple of miles away in South Wigston, where facilities were also better. Family history and background 12