Lives in Cricket No 29 - AN Hornby

90 The hand of Hornby? stamp of William and James Tyldesley. Hornby also felt that there was a lack of committee men taking a personal interest in the players. Summing up Albert Henry pulled no punches: ‘It is necessary to say quite plainly that I attribute our failure this season very largely to the unfortunate policy the committee are pursuing.’ This was a devastating critique of the Lancashire committee made all the more so because it was now very firmly in the public domain. But it was no surprise that Albert Henry’s father A.N. fully endorsed his son’s remarks. Another to offer his support was John J Bentley, who for a short time was manager of Manchester United and who had been a county member for many years. Many members felt that Hornby had been right to speak out, while others felt that his statement was a ‘letter of resignation’ from the captaincy. A meeting of members, chaired by Sir Arthur Howarth, was convened to discuss Hornby’s claims. Hornby himself was greeted with cheers when he spoke and there were cries of dissent from the packed audience when he offered to resign the captaincy, but the get-together left the whole issue in abeyance. One newspaper report described the meeting as having come to ‘a quiet and inconclusive end’. Interestingly, Hornby senior kept his distance. He did not attend the meeting and a few Lancashire members commented that he should have been present to try to heal the rift that his son had opened up. Subsequently, Hornby Jnr was to lead the side in the following season, during which the team posted a similar record to 1913 with six wins, eleven draws and nine defeats in their 26 matches. It was his last season as Lancashire skipper. Cricinfo, normally a reliable source, records in an article published on its website on 21 August 2009, that Monkey Hornby was called from the field when he was captaining Lancashire against Yorkshire (at Old Trafford in August 1914) and summoned to the War Office, and within hours Sir Archibald White, Yorkshire’s skipper was heading