Lives in Cricket No 23 - Brief Candles

54 admitted to the Sheffield Shield competition. Yates appears to have been primarily a bowler; nothing is known, by the writer or by CricketArchive, of the other two. l Captain J.L.Quinn, Essex v Surrey, The Oval, 1924. He was named in the Essex twelve for this game, so might have been omitted from the final eleven in any case. l S.G.Wills, Gloucestershire v Kent, Bristol, 1927. There’s a bit of a mystery here. Wills is listed in the Gloucestershire eleven in Wisden , but he was not in the twelve for the same game as printed in The Times . It may be Wisden that is in error: they also included an otherwise-unknown ‘J.S.Valentine’ in the Kent side, but the probability is that this was an error for B.H.Valentine, who was in his first season for Kent. l G.Bishop, Northamptonshire v Yorkshire, Harrogate, 1930. Listed as ‘C.Bishop’ in Wisden , but local newspapers in Northampton confirm that his first name was George. He had been twelfth man for the match against Glamorgan at Peterborough on 19 to 22 July, and was promoted to the first team for the following game at Harrogate, replacing the injured Reg Partridge. Dreadful weather in Yorkshire ruled out any chance of play and Bishop was passed over for subsequent games, even though Partridge did not return until mid-August. Bishop, who may or may not have been the same cricketer as the G.A.Bishop who played a few matches for Leicestershire II in 1931, was educated at St John’s School at Tiffield, near Brackley – also the alma mater of Fred Bakewell – but attempts to find out more about him have been thwarted by the fact that St John’s was a reformatory school, whose records for the period are not yet open to the public. l A.W.Flugge, A.G.Harding, J.C.A.Pizzey, A.H.F.Rofe andH.N.M.Yeates. All five players were listed in the Victoria twelve for the Sheffield Shield match against Queensland at Brisbane in 1930/31, so at least four of them would have become first-class cricketers had the game started. Victoria were fielding, or intending to field, an under-strength side, because the Brisbane game was due to take place simultaneously with a match at Melbourne between Victoria and the visiting West Indian tourists. The relatively unimpressive performances in other matches of Jack Pizzey, Arthur Rofe and Herbert Yeates, as recorded in CricketArchive, do not allow us to deduce which were primarily batsmen, and which bowlers. The other two do not even get as far as an entry in the CA database. l N.V.Butler, L.E.Liddell, G.A.Marlow and S.J.Norcup, Minor Counties v Warwickshire, Birmingham, 1954. All four were long-serving Minor Counties players who deserved their expected first-class appearances, but it was not to be. Norman Butler (Buckinghamshire, 1950-1968) was a batsman who bowled a bit; Larry Liddell (Northumberland, 1947-1958) a hard-hitting batsman, who captained the Minor Counties in a non-first-class Never Seen