Lives in Cricket No 22 - Jack Mercer

58 Northamptonshire at Pontypridd and Lancashire at Blackpool – washed out without a ball bowled. It must have been very frustrating to Jack, knowing that the England selectors were monitoring his performances, only to spend so much time off the field watching the rains fall. One crumb of comfort was that when he did get onto the field, his decent performances continued to earn favourable comment from journalists. In the match at his old stamping ground at Hove, he was described as ‘almost unplayable’, as he took four for 11 in a seven-over spell. 63 Then, on the second day of the match at Kidderminster, he cut through Worcestershire’s top order, taking six for 63 as the home side were forced to follow on. But bad light brought a premature end to the day’s proceedings before torrential rain washed out the final day. It was a similar story at Bath where, after exploiting damp conditions to claim six for 25, Jack found little help from the conditions in the rest of the match as, under clear blue skies, the Somerset batsmen found batting a far easier proposition and saved the match. The match with New Zealand over the August Bank Holiday at Cardiff gave Jack another chance to showcase his talents, and after going wicketless on the first day, he was in fine form on the second morning. Keeping a perfect length and swinging the ball both ways, he took five for 23 in fourteen overs as the tourists lost their last six wickets for 77 runs in the space of eighty minutes. His spirited efforts though were to no avail as the Glamor- gan batsmen were dismissed twice by the Kiwi bowlers with the tourists winning by 206 runs. The unsettled weather had limited the time that Glamorgan batsmen had spent both in the middle and in the nets, but there were other factors behind their collective lack of runs. For much of the 1927 season, the county’s selectors were unable to call on either Maurice Turnbull or Cyril Walters. Turnbull was handicapped by a knee injury, whilst Walters was considering a future outside the game, making himself unavailable while he mulled over a career as an architect and surveyor. The potential loss of Walters’ service became one of the chief topics of conversation as the Glamorgan players and supporters sheltered from the rains which played havoc with the county schedule during July and August. A few people suggested that if the gifted amateur was thinking about earning his living, he should be offered a decent contract by Glamorgan and persuaded to turn professional. But after many hours of informal discussion, nothing was forthcoming from the county’s officials. Walters was persuaded to re-appear briefly in 1928, but just as it looked as though the situation had been resolved, he announced that he was leaving Glamorgan and joining Worcestershire as assistant secretary. After all their bad luck with the weather during the 1927 season, the loss of Walters’ services summed up Glamorgan’s fortunes. The loss of the talented young batsman became even more apparent in 1933, when he won the first of his eleven caps as England’s opening batsman. In 1934 Rain and rumours 63 Western Mail, 1 July 1927.