Lives in Cricket No 27 - CB Llewellyn

75 Chapter Fourteen Llewellyn and the Triangular Tournament The continuing enthusiasm of SACA for Buck’s cause is confirmed by the letter which their Secretary sent to him following the Association’s meeting on 1 January 1912: he offered Buck a match fee of £20 for each of the Tests in which he would play in the forthcoming season. By way of comparison, Dave Nourse, the other declared professional on the tour was paid £125 for the whole trip, while his wife received a monthly allowance during his absence, and Louis Tancred, who played as an amateur, received a ‘gift’ of £120. The English professionals also received £20 for each Test in which they played. The selectors took his good form on trust. It was not practicable for him to take part in the trials conducted by the selectors in South Africa, nor for that matter did he participate in the preliminary practices in England. In the event Buck appeared in four of the Tests, as well as in the South Africans’ game against Middlesex at Lord’s. He had played with success for Accrington in 1911 and the club staunchly refused to let him off their league games for more than that. They would not release him on Saturdays or bank holidays, and so he missed the First Test. It is the grisly truth that the tournament was a failure. The weather was dreadful throughout. The South Africans were well below the required level of play and Australia, as the result of a bitter disagreement between some players and their board over the choice of manager, arrived here without Trumper, Armstrong, Clem Hill, Ransford, Cotter and their outstanding wicketkeeper, Carter. The Australians were still too good for the South Africans, whose weakness was immediately demonstrated in their First Test at Old Trafford – in Buck’s absence – when their opponents amassed 448 by 5.30 pm on the first day, at a rate of about 90 runs an hour, which proved enough to give them victory by an innings and 88 runs. A keen-eyed, critical observer, E.H.D.Sewell, described the majority of the South African bowlers as bowling a bad length,