Lives in Cricket No 3 - George Duckworth

Chapter Three The Legacy His life around and after cricket There was, of course, a private life to pursue while all this hubbub of cricket, at home and abroad, was being negotiated. It comes as little surprise to learn that George Duckworth was an enthusiastic dancer and debonair frequenter of the local dance-floors of his native town. It was on such a night as this that he met and fell for Bessie Brown, his future wife, and herself a Warringtonian, employed by the Crosfield’s soap works. They were married on 26 April 1924, just at the start of the groom’s second full season in county cricket, the one in which he was capped. The couple settled to a long, happy and eventful marriage of over forty years’ duration. Their only child was born in 1927. This was his daughter, Barbara, to whom I am immeasurably grateful for her gracious as well as clear-cut agreement to offer much information about and many insights into the life of her popular father. He took a merited benefit in 1934, against Surrey, a game in which Jack Hobbs played, a generous gesture by the 51-year-old premier batsman, who proceeded to score 116, the last of his record number of centuries. The members sang Auld Lang Syne as he walked back through the pavilion after being dismissed. He was a much needed boost, for Lancashire had started the season badly, although they rallied gamely to finish as champions. The crowds were smaller than they had been in the 1920s, but they responded as well as they could to the white sheet carried around the ground for them to toss coins into. ‘How much is a Duck Worth?’ read the legend. In the context of the slightly dwindling benefits of the 1930s, Duckworthiness was priced in not too miserly a fashion at £1,257. That would be worth about £50,000 now, well short of the bonanzas that the lucky Lancashire beneficiaries have conjured up for them by tireless organisers over a year of pageantry and 47