Lives in Cricket No 20 - Maurice Tompkin

short of beating Tom Hayward’s record aggregate of 3,518 runs scored in 1906. Starting his second innings 35 runs short, he was made to fight hard for the runs, surviving only a chance in the gully when he had scored 22. As eleven counties were playing at the same time as the Harrogate match, the team selectors were quite handicapped, but this was not so for the game at Hastings, which had fewer clashes. At one stage this fixture was billed as MCC West Indian touring side v South of England, so maybe there is some indication that it was more than just a festival game. Sir Pelham Warner was held in high esteem, so selection for his team ‘meant something’, and he had a high opinion of Maurice’s batting. In the end, only Jack Robertson, Jim Laker, Maurice Tremlett and Billy Griffith selected for the Caribbean team played in the game. Maurice himself added 39 runs in two innings, bringing his season’s tally to 1,781 in thirty first-class matches, though he was barely in the first sixty when the end-of-season batting averages were published. Maurice eventually played in eleven end-of-season festival matches, spread over ten post-war seasons. Though he never reached Test status, he was in many respects an ideal festival cricketer. On the field his stylish, aggressive batting and dynamic outfielding entertained spectators, and off the field his easy-going affability appealed to his fellow players, match organisers and the game’s various classes of camp follower. There was no suggestion now that he should finish playing cricket early and start training with Huddersfield Town, even though they were a club of considerable prestige – they were in the top division of the Football League and had been so since 1920. His football career was now very much of secondary importance and would not start again until the cricket season was over. * * * * * The highlight of Leicestershire’s early 1948 season was the match against the Australians. If anything convinced the general public that the war was really over and austerity was starting to be a thing of the past, then the visit of the Australian touring team and the London Olympic Games convinced them that good times were around the corner. Maurice had not long to recover from the football season, just one day in fact, with Kettering winning the Birmingham League on Saturday, 24 April, and Monday evening finding him playing on Victoria Park for a county cricket team against the City League XI. Several hundred people turned up for this match, where park cricketers got the chance to play against the county team. Later on in the week there were practice games at Trent Bridge and against the students at Loughborough. His father had died during the winter, so the season would be tinged with sadness that the War and Peace, 1940 to 1949 58