Lives in Cricket No 20 - Maurice Tompkin

second day ended with Leicestershire requiring 236 with nine wickets remaining, a possible target, especially with Dempster playing, only for the final day to be washed out. Leicestershire finished last in the Championship and the Wisden of 1940 was unsparing: ‘one of the worst years in the history of the club’. Eric Snow struggled to be kind in his history of the club published in 1949: he said of the season simply that ‘Leicestershire had a disastrous time.’ Not surprisingly, Maurice had faltered too; in the Championship his 21 appearances had produced 579 runs at 16.54, compared with 642 runs at 26.75 in 16 matches in the previous season. The significance of Maurice’s omission from the team in the latter part of the season is that he was not to miss another championship match for Leicestershire until May 1951, when he played for MCC against the South African touring team. What a different world existed then. Leicestershire debut, 1938 and 1939 33 Early return to Grace Road. Leicestershire returned to Grace Road for the first time in 40 years in August 1941. Sadly it rained so this strong team, pictured in front of the dining room at the ground, never took the field. Back row (l to r): G.S.Watson, G.O.Dawkes (wk), J.Sperry, J.M.Josephs, G.Lester. Front row: G.L.Berry, H.A.Smith, H.R.Cain (capt), M.Tompkin, G.F.Knew.