Lives in Cricket No 23 - Brief Candles

87 their second innings (bowled), but the batsmen seemed to have more of his measure this time, and it was left to Frank Edwards and A.G.Doggart to bowl the Counties to victory in a thrilling finish by just two runs. After this, the wet 1924 season was an anti-climax for Hinde. He took only nine wickets in five matches in the Minor Counties competition – the Berkshire club’s annual report said that he never had a wicket to suit him – and now military duties took him off to Egypt. He returned to the Berkshire side for two matches in 1926, almost a full season in 1930, and a final hurrah in the Challenge match of 1932, a rain-ruined game that left Bucks as the competition winners. But as much as anything because of his long periods of absence from Britain, he was never again a contender for a place in a first-class side. 148 He was still playing cricket, though. Army sides in Egypt between the wars played to a good standard, notably against visiting sides such as the Free Foresters and the teams led by H.M.Martineau who toured annually between 1929 and 1939. Hinde played in four matches against the Free Foresters in 1927, taking 18 wickets in the six innings in which he bowled, including 12 in the two matches for ‘All-Egypt’ against the tourists. In one of these matches he surprised probably even himself by scoring a hard-hit 27*, at his proper place at eleven, the highest of only five double-figure scores in the 58 innings recorded for him in CricketArchive. 149 According to The Cricketer , during this tour ‘Hinde bowled well and his fielding at mid-off was also excellent’, something that no doubt would have surprised his erstwhile coaches at Blundell’s. He also played against Martineau’s XI in Egypt in 1930 in three matches, taking nine wickets, before returning home for his last nearly-full season for Berkshire. During that 1930 season he also turned out for The Quails, described in The Cricketer as ‘the I Zingari of Egypt’, against the Free Foresters on Martineau’s own ground at Holyport near Maidenhead and took six for 39 in the Foresters’ first innings. After his brief return for the big match of the 1932 Minor Counties season, other duties seem to have kept Hinde away from serious cricket. As far as Berkshire were concerned, however, it was a case of ‘gone but not forgotten’. In an article entitled Berkshire Cricket Memories by Major Guy Bennett in the mid-1950s – and reprinted in the yearbook for 1999 – we read that ‘Among other between-war cricketers who played for the county with much success … was also Captain H.M.Hinde, known as “Satan” …’. Quite a nickname for a soldier to bear, for it seems he wasn’t just known as Satan in cricketing circles. The name is included in the family notice of his death in The Times , alongside an apparent second nickname of Mike, 148 A representative Minor Counties XI played seven further first-class matches between 1924 and Hinde’s last Berkshire match in 1932; meanwhile the Army were playing between two and four first-class matches each season. But Hinde did not find a place in any of these sides. 149 His batting performances for Berkshire deserve a little elaboration. He made double-figures only three times in 41 innings with scores of 11 and 20 in 1923, and 14 in 1930. He was scoreless in 21 of those innings with ten ducks and 11 scores of 0*. He did not score a run in his seven innings in 1922, and including the last match of 1921 he went eight matches, and eight innings, without a run. In the Wickets