Lives in Cricket No 20 - Maurice Tompkin

matches on the smaller grounds in Leicestershire. So far as can be ascertained from the scorebooks, he made his runs at 38 an hour, almost 10 runs an hour faster than in his statistically more prolific years in the early 1950s. The season started badly, with just 13 runs in his first four innings, against the South Africans and Worcestershire. Solid batting, and effective bowling by Jackson and Walsh brought a brace of two-day victories in the next matches against neighbours Nottinghamshire and Northamptonshire. It might have been three wins in a row, had Les Berry declared earlier when the team returned to Grace Road at the end of May. The wicket for the match was a batsmen’s paradise with 1,321 runs scored for only 26 wickets. In the first innings Maurice scored 49 in just over an hour, putting on 81 in 50 minutes with George Watson. He scored even faster in the second innings, sharing an unbroken partnership of 210 for the third wicket with Frank Prentice. Once again, the Mercury reported that his driving was brilliant, and that ‘a smashing shot to the screen at Peter Smith’s expense took him past the fifty mark’: his second fifty was scored against the less than devastating bowling of Vigar, Crabtree and Essex captain Tom Pearce. Les Berry may have delayed the declaration until Maurice had completed his century, which remarkably was his first in the County Championship, almost nine years after his first innings in the competition. There was no real prospect of a result with Essex set a target of almost 300 in 165 minutes. Crowds were good: over three thousand people attended each of the first two days against Essex, and five thousand watched the first day, a Saturday, against Hampshire. Thanks to consistent batting, including Tompkin’s 47 in 87 minutes, and Jack Walsh’s bowling, another two-day victory followed. On 7 June, with three wins in five matches, Leicestershire were standing fourth in the table. That was the peak of the season; from then on it was largely downhill for the team. Leicestershire had a very small squad of players in 1947. Seven played all 26 championship matches, and three others 23 or more. The final place rested between Tommy Chapman and Jack Howard, who was also the reserve wicketkeeper, but never actually kept in a first-class match. For the match against Oxford University that followed, both played and Frank Prentice did not. It was therefore a strong team that was defeated by the University, though Maurice had shared in a partnership of 195 with Gerry Lester (still the fifth-wicket record for Leicestershire against Oxford University) that rescued them from a daunting 31 for four, losing three wickets in four balls, including both Chapman and Howard for ducks. His second century in three matches took just less than three hours, and he took 22 off one over from Philip Whitcombe, the University’s opening bowler, including a six. Oxford achieved their target comfortably enough, led by a magnificent 95 from Martin Donnelly but helped by the absence of the injured Jack Walsh from the bowling crease. War and Peace, 1940 to 1949 54