Lives in Cricket No 24 - Edgar Willsher

91 day. Baily’s magazine concurred with Lubbock in its post-match verdict: … while it is likely to be an unrivalled ground for the players, it is anything but agreeable to the spectators. The light, especially in the afternoon, is bad; the wickets are so far off that it is impossible to observe the minutiae of the game and there is not adequate accommodation for such crowds as visit Lord’s for the Oxford and Cambridge and Eton and Harrow matches. Nevertheless, Middlesex decided to adopt Prince’s as its home ground, an arrangement that lasted four years until the lack of practice facilities and poor spectator accommodation led to a re- location to Lord’s that has lasted to the present day. The Princes had lost a major client due to their joint myopia, and there were to be only five more first-class matches played there after the county left. Inthewinterof1874,thegroundwasre-turfedunderthesupervision of Willsher and Thomas Box, the old Sussex wicketkeeper who was now head groundsman. The Sporting Gazette of 25 March 1874 reported that the Eton boys wanted to play football on the new ground in the midst of a bout of ice and snow. Eventually, ‘they had the good sense to recognise the wisdom of Mr Prince’s action, under the advice of Willsher’. Although no harm was done, it was typical of the type of problems Edgar was facing on a daily basis, and it could not have helped Box’s chronic heart condition. Sadly, while changing the scoreboard during Middlesex’s last match on the ground, against Nottinghamshire in 1876, he collapsed with a heart attack and died three hours later, the match being abandoned as a mark of respect. Unfortunately for Willsher, it was all too symbolic of what was happening to Prince’s as a whole, and, after he had umpired the final first-class match on the ground – the Players against the Australians in September 1878, at the end of a wet summer – developers gradually ate away at the site, completely covering it by the end of 1883. By the beginning of 1879, with his professional playing days four years behind him, it was clear that it was time for the veteran to make his own foray into the world of business. Winding Down