Lives in Cricket No 26 - HV Hesketh-Prichard

14 Fettes College makes much of its cricket today, with its website claiming seven teams and three cricket squares, but seems to have no great history of producing cricketers. Sir William K.McClure remembered that when he came to Fettes in 1891, ‘there was room for improvement in organisation in cricket, for the lower games were in a rather chaotic and lethargic state.’ However in 1893 Charles Fleming was appointed as the first games master, and organisation improved, though rugby was far and away the most important sport at Fettes. Although winter was the time for shooting, Hex played some rugby at ‘centre half’ – by this time the two football codes had diverged, but clearly the language was still developing. He does refer to ‘footer’ in his early letters home, and in 1889 was in the House second fifteen: in November 1890 he was in a team that played against Merchiston Castle School. In February 1892 he wrote that ‘I play footer nearly every day’ and in the same term was ‘very interested in hockey’. Earlier, in 1888, he won the high jump at the school sports. McClure also remembers the wind: ‘There is in my memory an afternoon in May, when the wind came straight out of the east and chilled us almost to helplessness as we tried to play cricket.’ However, this was probably the period in his life when Hex played cricket most regularly. In the summer of 1888 Kate took them to Aldeburgh in Suffolk, still a small fishing village rather than Islington-on-Sea, and he ‘got up quite a good team for cricket, and played other boys’ teams.’ She tells us that deputations of small boys would arrive at the house at breakfast time to ask if ‘Mr Prichard’ would come out to captain them. The following summer she took him to Oxford to see Malcolm Jardine, Fettes’ most distinguished former cricketer, playing for Balliol College. Hex was at Fettes in the 1891 census as one of a list of boys aged between 13 and 17, but the first time he made it into the College cricket eleven was in 1892, when he was still only 15. However, he made only the odd appearance that year – there is one score on CricketArchive , for a game against Blair Lodge School in which he took two for 38. Parker says he played three games that season, getting eight wickets for 88 in the first three matches, but his name does not appear in the College’s summary for the year. In May he had written to Kate to say he had taken four for 16 in a Second XI game and ‘people said Hex should have been in the first team as the defeat was from want of bowling.’ In October 1892 Hex’s grandmother Anne O’Brien died, and Hex writes to his mother asking ‘How are aunt and uncle behaving towards you?’ as if he were anxious. This indeed meant that they would have to find somewhere to live, and in the holidays, presumably at Christmas, when Kate took a flat at Ealing, Hex used to go out and shoot fieldfares which they made into pies. That does not suggest that they were very well off. As early as this Kate mentions ‘giving up the Army idea’ and Mr Johnston, the family lawyer, seems to have raised the idea that Hex should stay in Edinburgh and study for the law. This was connected with the idea that he might fail the physical exam, ‘as his heart was not very satisfactory’. Quite what evidence there might have been for that is not clear, though his India, Jersey and Edinburgh