Lives in Cricket No 3 - George Duckworth

away from their home, and, of course, for the youngster to follow his father’s fortunes with Warrington Cricket Club. Club cricket had been fitfully played in the town since 1837, on fields at Sankey Street, opposite Bank Hall, where the town hall stands, and across the road from the old grammar school on Froghall Lane. Warrington Cricket Club officially dates from 1851, with a ground at Bank Hall. Indeed, in June 1864, the recently founded and very Manchester-orientated Lancashire club played its first ever game at Bank Hall, narrowly drawing with the Birkenhead Park club, in a nice example of Warrington’s geographic placement between the central powers of Liverpool and Manchester. With the municipal authorities desirous of building offices and a park on the land, the club moved to Arpley meadows. From 1874 to 1967 the club played at Arpley. About 1881 it became known as the Warrington Cricket, Bowling and Association Football Club. The lease was bought out by the club in 1889, and, in 1905, the Stockton Heath Hockey Club moved to Arpley, merging with the Warrington club in 1926. Originally members of the West Lancashire League, Warrington joined the Manchester Association after the First World War. This was a loosely bound alliance, with clubs determining their own fixture lists and both first and second eleven championships being resolved by a percentage method. For all that, the cricket was often of a decent standard, with professionals employed and, as at Warrington, some clubs charging for entry. Through the Duckworth years, père et fils , the standard of cricket was high. We are indebted for information about these matters to Alan Bolton, the club’s able historian and, it seems, given the extensions of the family, otiose to add, George Duckworth’s nephew. By the 1960s, the club succumbed to the strains of modernity and found itself in impoverished condition. Bravely, it rallied, and, in 1968 it moved to a new life and a new ground at Walton Lea, where, in handsome surrounds, it maintains four senior sides in the Cheshire County League, has played host for Cheshire County CC matches, and fondly observed a follower in the Duckworthian footsteps in the stylish figure of John Crawley of Cambridge University, Lancashire, Hampshire and England. It was at Warrington Grammar School that young George Duckworth inherited his father’s kingdom behind the stumps. Aged just twelve, a discerning teacher decided, purely on the basis The Background 12