Lives in Cricket No 23 - Brief Candles

27 a return of five for 25 against Lymington on 2 July no doubt helped to seal his place in the side. His younger brother Ernest played alongside him in some of these matches; indeed, a number of members of both Fred’s and Ada’s families made their homes in this part of Hampshire around this time, one of them being Fred’s mother who lived locally until her death at Ernest’s house in nearby New Milton in 1936. By no means all local matches were reported in detail in the local press at the time, and even when they are, reports and scorecards tend to concentrate more on the performances of the batsmen than of the bowlers. Fred Hyland, despite his description in the Who’s Who , definitely came into the latter category. In the matches for which scores are reported in either the Hampshire Advertiser or the Bournemouth Echo , he almost always batted with the tail-enders and rarely scored more than a handful. But wickets he took in numbers. By far his most memorable performance came in a twelve-a-side match against Lyndhurst on Whit Monday, 21 May 1923. On their home ground at The Carver, Ringwood scored 107, Hyland contributing eight, and then bowled out their opponents for 23, Hyland taking nine wickets for eight runs, including a hat-trick and six wickets in seven balls. The report and scorecard in the Bournemouth Echo only give the details of the dismissals of eleven Lyndhurst batsmen, so we don’t have full information, but at least five of Hyland’s wickets were ‘bowled’. Such was the Lyndhurst collapse that batsmen numbers five to twelve managed just one run between them. On its own, such a performance was unlikely to get Hyland noticed at higher levels. But over the 1923 season as a whole his figures were consistently impressive. He topped the club’s averages with 91 wickets at 6.99 apiece, off 375.5 overs with 61 maidens, taking almost as many wickets as the next three wicket-takers put together. The die was cast when, at the end of the season, Hampshire C.C.C. decided they needed to look more closely at their local talent. The club’s minute book for 14 September 1923 records that, ‘at Sir Godfrey Baring’s suggestion it was decided that all recognised cricket clubs in the county should be asked to advise the Secretary of any very promising talent among the players, especially of any promising bowler’. 41 This surely was how Hyland came to the attention of the county club. With his fine record in 1923, and by now an undoubted residential qualification for Hampshire despite his Sussex origins, he was asked to play in a trial match at Northlands Road at the start of the 1924 season. At this point, things get a little murky. The match was played on 3 May 1924, but the report of it in the Southern Daily Echo makes no mention of Fred – which makes it a little surprising to read in the same paper a 41 From the Hampshire CCC Minute Book for 1921-1931, now held at the County Record Office in Winchester, under reference 10M89/92. Baring was a vice- president of the club. Of the Late Frederick J.Hyland, again