Lives in Cricket No 3 - George Duckworth

The selection process was undermined by its technical inefficiency – estimates of the error rate ranged from 10% to 25% - as well as by social and ethical considerations, but now there remain just about a hundred grammar schools again. Warrington Grammar School retained its independence until, such were the pressing needs of secondary education, a 16 acre site at Latchford, on the outskirts of the town, was developed under local authority responsibility, as Boteler Grammar School, now Sir Thomas Boteler Church of England High School. The old School Brow buildings were later used by the corporation’s highways department, before finally being demolished in 2004. George Duckworth was fortunate in that a grammar school existed in the area and it was one where fully free scholarships were offered, at a juncture when there was no national system in evidence. But there must have been good management as well as good luck, because, as well as a shortage of scholarships, most of them were in any event grabbed by middle class children with the advantage of a domestic background of appropriate values and supports. He must have been a boy who was keen as well as sharp, for, as Michael Young indicated in his 1957 satire, The Rise of the Meritocracy , ‘intelligence plus effort equals merit.’ In so doing and being, George Duckworth upholds the research done into the origins of both professional footballers and cricketers of this period. It appears that, like him, they tended to hail more from the ranks of the aspiring artisan working class and less from the substratum of the unskilled labouring class. On balance, they brought the necessary qualities of patient application and regular habits to the deployment of their sporting potential. Arthur Duckworth may have been a journeyman wiredrawer but he was a tradesman of sufficient weight to play a good order of club cricket, at a time when a good order of club cricket was not an inexpensive pastime, nor one where any but the more respectable working man would have been welcome. What is even more astonishing for that day and age is that several others of the children also did well academically. The next two in line, Annie and Marion, went respectively to Edge Hill Training College and Manchester University and became teachers. James prospered at the new Warrington Secondary School. Eventually, he became Chief Inspector of Public Health for Runcorn. His daughter, Ruth, cultivator of the family tree and pleasantly The Background 9