Lives in Cricket No 20 - Maurice Tompkin

he was scoring much more freely. In both matches, Leicestershire were setting up fourth-innings targets for their opponents, and his 51 against Kent was scored in less than an hour. Finishing second in the county averages to Les Berry, Maurice could feel satisfied with his season’s batting. His improvement from the middle of June was marked: his first 20 championship innings produced fewer than 500 runs, his last 25, nearly 800. The county overall were happy with their season. At the end of the war the prospects of even fielding a side were uncertain; to finish eleventh with seven victories was a great achievement. This should also be seen in comparison with 1939, the wooden spoon and one victory. Having an experienced professional as captain also had its advantages, one being that so many sides were captained by poor amateurs. The only negative was observed by Philip Snow who played in a charity match at Rothley whilst on holiday in England during his time in Fiji. He found the other members of the team rather unwelcoming towards an outsider, as they felt they were getting along quite nicely without amateur interference. Maybe they saw him as a potential amateur captain and they were keen to keep things as they were? Petrol rationing continued for the first four seasons after the war. For matches at Grace Road, Maurice would normally travel on the bus. Though lugging his cricket bag would have been uncomfortable, the Midland Red buses into Leicester were every half hour and the journey would take no more than 20 minutes. Though coaching advice from fellow passengers was perhaps irksome, he never showed it, and the benefit was that the locals could relate very personally with the county team. For matches in the Leicestershire ‘outgrounds’, his father would pick him up in his Morris 8, and they would then turn into the road next to his hosiery factory to pick up Tony Riddington and, on Saturdays and school holidays, Tony’s son Ian. * * * * * A drop of three places to fourteenth, with six wins and 14 defeats, made Leicestershire’s 1947 season disappointing. The weather was glorious in this ‘vintage’ summer and should have well suited Maurice’s batting. He scored 1,781 runs at 34.25, in a summer where the average for the championship was 27.63. Compare this to the 2009 average of 35.80, a figure close to the average for the past five years or so, suggests a performance about 25% ‘better than average’, or in 2010 terms, a batting average of 45. It was the summer where he scored most freely. Conditions for batting were often ideal, hampered only by playing a substantial number of War and Peace, 1940 to 1949 53