Lives in Cricket No 23 - Brief Candles

31 game: ten shillings for playing in the trial match early in May; £1 10s 0d for representing the county at Northampton, 48 plus a further £1 10s 0d expenses; £7 for the Notts match, and 12s 8d for the match at Newport, plus 12s 8d expenses, giving a grand total of £11 15s 4d (£11.77). 49 Not bad for eight days’ work, especially when six of them were spent doing virtually nothing at Northampton and Nottingham. So there was no county engagement for him for the rest of 1924, despite ending the season once again as Ringwood’s leading wicket-taker, with 45 wickets at 7.13. In Ringwood, for the first time we have evidence of Hyland working on his own account, as a fruiterer, florist and landscape gardener with his brother-in-law Robert Flucke in a firm unambitiously named Hyland and Flucke. Their partnership was dissolved in March 1924, though Robert continued to trade as a fruiterer in Ringwood for some years after that; maybe Fred, from his previous experience, had been purely the landscape- gardening component of the partnership? 1924 was to be Hyland’s last season with Ringwood, for by the following season he was on the move again. Perhaps if he’d stayed in Hampshire the club would have kept him in mind if they were once again briefly short of available players. But his peripatetic nature meant that he had now given up, for ever, any chance of a fuller first-class career. According to his obituary in the Northwich Guardian , between 1925 and 1928 Hyland played for Norfolk and for Broughty Ferry, in Scotland. I have been unable to corroborate the latter: he is certainly not referred to in the official handbook for Forfarshire CC, the principal club based in Broughty Ferry, for 1926. But by the end of that year he had indeed moved to Norfolk, for in early August 1926 he is reported by the Eastern Daily Press (EDP) as fielding ‘very well indeed’ as substitute for the county in a Minor Counties Championship game against Kent II at Lakenham. 50 From 1927 he played regularly for East Dereham, generally taking a fair few wickets for them, including five for 25 against Norwich School in July, and five for 28 against CEYMS in August. 51 If he had moved to Norfolk directly from Ringwood in 1924 or 1925, he 48 The usual match fee for a capped professional player was £8, but for such an abbreviated game an uncapped player could hardly expect such riches. 49 Details from the Hampshire C.C.C. Match Expenses Account Book, held at the County Record Office, ref 10M89/65. 50 His first known game in Norfolk was on 17 July 1926 when he played for East Dereham against Norfolk Wanderers in a match advertised as for Hyland’s benefit. 51 As well as playing for East Dereham, Hyland also played one match in September 1926 for the South Norfolk club, an appearance which suggests he was close to being selected for the Norfolk side. Of the Late Frederick J.Hyland, again Fred Hyland in his forties, unidentifiably capped.