Lives in Cricket No 23 - Brief Candles

44 for Whalley, who had won the League title the previous season, for the first time since 1913. With 26 wickets at 14.11, and a best of six for 31 against Leyland in early August, Coulthurst helped Whalley to retain the title in 1930. But fitness concerns were now bringing his playing career towards its end. He played only one match for Whalley in 1931, and a single reappearance for East Lancashire, at Haslingden in July 1932, was his unhappy swansong: he pulled a leg muscle in his fifth over, and had to retire from the match and, as it happened, from top-class club cricket, at the age of 38. In all, his fourteen seasons, or part-seasons, in East Lancashire’s first eleven had brought him 377 League wickets at 12.81 (and a further 13 in Cup matches), narrowly outscored by his 421 runs at 5.26, with a highest score of 21*. This was not, however, his highest score in all top cricket. Although he chose not to make himself available for regular three-day cricket after 1919, Coulthurst was not forgotten by the county club. He later recalled that Archie MacLaren told him that he should ‘consider yourself selected for the season’ for the county’s seconds. 66 In fact he did not play in Lancashire II’s few matches of 1920. He played in only a single game when they rejoined the Minor Counties competition in 1921, and in only five of their ten games the following year. And no more after that: his relative lack of success at League level meant that his chance for glory at county level, whether seconds or, conceivably, firsts, was now gone, for ever. His bowling figures in his half-dozen second team games were nothing special, 26 wickets at 15.46 with a best of five for 65 against Northumberland in June 1922; but in these six matches he scored more runs, 74, than in any single season of Lancashire League cricket, including an unlikely score of 38 against Durham at Blackpool in August 1922, sharing a partnership of 60 for the last wicket with future England keeper Bill Farrimond. Blackburn’s fastest? Reporting on Coulthurst’s season so far in mid-July 1919, ‘Nomad’ in the Blackburn Times described his successful bowling style like this: Lately he has touched the highest plane of his craft. Instead of sending deliveries down of the same pace and flight, without any variation, in the hope that the batsmen will get themselves out, he has concentrated himself to get the opposition dismissed by the use of his wits, and he has developed a slow ball which swings and breaks a lot from the off. This on many occasions has had the desired effect. The secret of his success, however, is good length, and maintaining a terrific pace, which have made him a most deadly bowler. A few more snippets will help to improve our mental picture of Coulthurst in his heyday. 67 He gripped the ball with his fingers along the seam, 66 In an article ‘An old demon bowler looks back’ in the Blackburn Times , 4 August 1967. 67 The descriptions and quotations in the following two paragraphs are taken from articles in the Blackburn Times of 12 July 1919 and 4 August 1967; the Manchester Guardian of 29 June 1922; and the Lancashire Evening Telegraph of 8 January 1970. Never Seen