Lives in Cricket No 23 - Brief Candles

51 game at a late stage, to give his distant cousin his chance for glory? The answer is that it was not injury that kept J.T. out of the Philadelphians match: goodness knows how much shorter it might have been if he had been able to play. In fact, his father William Hearne had died on 17 July, two days after celebrating his 80th birthday; and it was surely this that rendered J.T. unavailable to play at Lord’s on 20 July. 79 How it came about that J.T.’s absence from the Philadelphia game was not known until the last minute; and why, when they found this out, Middlesex chose to call up a player who was unable to be at the ground for most of the scheduled first day when surely there were other no less unsuitable amateurs closer at hand, are further mysteries that are unlikely to be resolved. As a cricketer, Thomas John Hearne was principally a left-arm bowler: slow left-arm according to Wheelwrights to Wickets , medium-pace according to the Who’s Who of Cricketers . It is implied in Wheelwrights that he was a stock bowler for Berkshire for three years in his teens, but this is not borne out by other available sources: certainly he played no Minor Counties cricket for them at this time. He played the occasional game for Middlesex II between 1906 and 1909. These were, however, not Minor Counties Championship matches: Middlesex Seconds did not join that competition until 1935. His only experience of Minor Counties Championship cricket therefore came in eight games for Berkshire in 1922 and 1923. He began well, taking nine wickets in his first match, with six for 44 and three for 40 against Cornwall at Reading, but could not as much as double this tally in his remaining seven matches. 79 In other circumstances, J.T.’s older brother William, who played a couple of Second XI matches for Middlesex in 1907 and 1908, might have seemed a more natural replacement from within the Hearne family. But he, of course, was ruled out for the same reason as J.T. Never Seen The Berkshire side of 1923, with Thomas Hearne, now 36, standing at the left hand end of the back row. Percy Chapman is seated second from the left. H.M.Hinde, who appears elsewhere in this book, is standing fourth from the left.