Lives in Cricket No 3 - George Duckworth

the formal course. There was no direct family pressure upon him: in fact, his ambitious father may well have been chagrined. Apart from the basic difficulties of being a working class lad in a distinctly middle class environment, he was aware of the family economic struggle. The recent arrival of two sets of twins had practically doubled the calls on the domestic economy and George Duckworth felt he must contribute. Another consideration was that it was 1916, in some ways the most arduous of the Great War years, generating a feeling of unease and instability. It was an understandable decision in fraught circumstances. He took the test that was usually known in the north of England as the ‘town hall exams’, the gateway to entry into steady local government service. He passed with stratospherically flying colours with a mark of 98% and the Warrington Borough Council posted him as a clerk in the municipal Electricity Department at Howley. Local government service offered security without profit. The pay was lowly, and with men at the front, George Duckworth, switched to a temporary job at Firth Steelworks in Warrington, where the pay was better. It was profit without security. Back home from the trenches came the incumbent at the end of the 1914-1918 War – and the young man suffered the indignity of finding himself upon the meagre dole. His father stepped in to the economic breach. The lower age limit for beginning an apprenticeship had been lifted, because of the rigours of warfare, to eighteen, and George became an apprentice at Rylands. It may have been slightly galling for Arthur to settle for his son following him in the trade of wiredrawing, replete with a knowledge of maths, Latin and the like, which probably made him the most learned wiredrawing tyro in the business. The father was now a foreman wiredrawer on the day shift, and it seems not to have helped the calmness of his disposition constantly to hear complaints from the night shift foreman about the antics of the apprentices, including George, under his fragile control. They did not take their labours over seriously, but the money was passably good. George Duckworth remained in this employment until 1922 and the onset of his cricketing career. In retrospect, it occurs to one to wonder whether he was already yearning and biding his time for a sporting career. His father, a keen sportsman, took him as a child both to Warrington rugby league matches, played at Wilderspool, just a few minutes walk The Background 11