Lives in Cricket No 23 - Brief Candles

42 Never Seen are essential against first-rate batsmen’. Nevertheless, Coulthurst had done enough, and was continuing to do enough in the League, to justify selection for a second trial match on 18 August. This time he opened the bowling; he began with a bang, dismissing three batsmen before a run was scored. His final figures were four for 26 off 11 overs, with three of his victims out bowled. It was this performance above all that secured his place in the county side to play Northamptonshire a week later. A merit selection surely, especially as since mid-May he had been consistently outbowling Norbury in League matches, not by much, but consistently; and Norbury himself was having an unhappy time for Lancashire, with five single-figure scores in his last eight innings, and a bowling return over his last five innings of only two for 140. What happened next, as far as Coulthurst’s first-class career is concerned, has already been described. At League level, however, he and his club were achieving new heights. On 6 September, in the needle match with fellow title-chasers Nelson, Coulthurst reached his 100 wickets for the League season; apart from the exceptional case of the ‘amateur’ Jonathan Brooks in 1916, he was the first amateur ever to achieve this landmark for East Lancashire, and only the sixth amateur to do so in the League’s history. (Again, this excludes instances in the exceptional season of 1916.) 60 And when, a week later, East Lancashire beat Colne while Nelson were losing at Ramsbottom, the Blackburn club had won the Lancashire League for the first time in their history 61 to great local rejoicing. Their tally of 19 wins in 26 matches remained a League record until 1975. The lion’s share of the club’s success was down to the bowling of Coulthurst, who ended with 101 wickets at 9.78, and Norbury, with 98 wickets at 10.98. Coulthurst himself later recalled that ‘Vic Norbury and I bowled almost unchanged that season,’ and he was not far off the mark: between them they accounted for over three-quarters of the overs bowled for the club, and took over 80 per cent of the wickets. Norbury and Arthur Dawson, both with 870-odd runs at around 40, were the only batsmen to shine, although even non-batsman Coulthurst 62 had his moment of glory when, with a straight-batted 13*, he helped to add 27 for the last wicket to secure a vital one-wicket win over Accrington as the season approached its climax late in August. Cricket after Old Trafford If Coulthurst could repeat and build on his 1919 successes, and if he wanted it, a longer first-class career was surely there for the taking. But sadly he couldn’t, and he didn’t. 60 To this day, and again excluding 1916, it has only been done eleven times. 61 East Lancashire also won the championship of the North-East Lancashire Cricket League, forerunner of the Lancashire League, in 1891; some sources regard this as akin to winning the Lancashire League. But certainly, at the time the 1919 success was regarded as a ‘first’ for the club. 62 He admitted to such a description himself. So little is known of his batting that it is unclear whether he batted right- or left-handed. It probably made little difference either way.