Lives in Cricket No 20 - Maurice Tompkin

The return to Ashby for the next match should have brought back happy memories, but instead another defeat ensued, this time at the hands of Warwickshire. Maurice was dismissed twice by Eric Hollies, scoring just a single in each innings, though in the first he lasted for almost twenty minutes. An epic first victory of the season came at the end of July, and even that was as a result of a declaration. Behind on first innings, Jim Sperry destroyed the Hampshire second innings, taking seven wickets for 19 runs, the best bowling of his first-class career. In fact Jim’s catch to dismiss the Hampshire opener Neil McCorkell, created an evocative image of the time, for the Mercury describes the event as ‘Sperry held up his arm in Nazi fashion when catching McCorkell’. Maurice, too, held a fine catch, with the Mercury remarking that ‘Tompkin caught Arnold and brought the ball down with his right hand to complete a surprise catch’, which sounds a bit unkind, but the Tompkin of this era was not as secure a fielder as he was after the war. Hampshire declared with nine wickets down, and Leicestershire were left 110 minutes to score 116 for victory. At 61 for five, victory looked shaky, considering the past form of the team, but Maurice was joined by Norman Armstrong. Armstrong was known for his phlegmatic displays and had been held back for just such a crisis as presented itself. Together, the pair added 50 in half an hour, and although Maurice was dismissed five runs from victory, bowled by Boyes attempting another drive, his innings of 39 was the top score. As the Leicester Evening Mail reported, ‘at five minutes past six, the thick and thin supporters of Leicestershire,’ about 300 of them, were repaid for a great deal of their patience during the past few months when they saw Norman Armstrong off-drive a ball from Boyes for two runs which signalled their first victory and first points in the championship. They had therefore scored their runs in only 85 minutes. At the same time 2,000 Russian troops were engaged in a fierce practice battle, and 240 R.A.F. bombers were engaged in a training flight over France. At King’s Cross station in London, a bomb blast injured 13 people, with the I.R.A. cited as the most likely planters. Despite his good innings against Hampshire, Maurice was ‘not selected’ for the trip to Wales and the match against Glamorgan. From that high point, the season dribbled to its conclusion; four more defeats were suffered in the next four games, and that against Sussex being of the innings variety. Maurice achieved only one score of note, 53 against Hampshire. Defeat against Warwickshire included a first-innings lead for the only time during the season. This year there was no football training to report back for, but with Hitler and the inevitable war on everyone’s mind, there was the issue of the impending call-up. The county’s home programme ended with two matches at Aylestone Road, against Glamorgan and Derbyshire. In the rain-affected match against Glamorgan, he was out for a duck, and then he was dropped for the match against Derbyshire, making way for Stewie Dempster. Leicestershire’s disastrous season ended appropriately. The Leicestershire debut, 1938 and 1939 32