Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

99 Difficult times – and bankruptcy In setting out his income to the Official Receiver, Frank Mitchell disclosed that the only direct payment he received from the South African cricket authorities for the 1912 tour was £90. His accommodation was being paid for, as the team travelled around the country, but it is self-evident that that £90 would not cover the living costs for his family. Thus is revealed the heart then of the dilemma at that time for the amateur cricketer without substantial private means. Another comparison comes from the case of Louis Tancred, who was South African vice-captain on the 1912 tour. To travel and play as an amateur on that tour, Tancred needed his employers, a sports club who gave him £40 a month, to still pay him, but they actually reduced his pay overall by £120. The South African Cricket Association then voted him a bonus of £120 which did not count as formal income – so he was able to come to England as an amateur. Dave Nourse who toured as a professional received £125. The professional cricketer in the Edwardian era would also have had a variable income depending upon his ability and county. Ric Sissons in his book The Players: A Social History of the Professional Cricketer made a valiant attempt to assess annual income for regular first eleven players at Surrey and Lancashire and put earnings for those two clubs around 1900 at about £160-190 for Surrey players and £150 for Lancashire ones. For the leading first eleven players, and Frank Mitchell for a few seasons could have been put into that category, annual income at Surrey would have been £260-290 and at Lancashire £200. Yorkshire pay might have been at the top of that range. Frank Mitchell could not have come to England as a professional player for South African in 1904 or 1912. To have been a professional would have then excluded him from all social contacts in the institutions of value to him, in particular the Wanderers Club in Johannesburg and the Johannesburg Stock Exchange. In any event, South African cricket was not being played with professional players as the basis of the provincial game. He could not have started a business as a stock and share dealer if he had first been a professional cricketer. Sissons in his ground-breaking book wrote: Major Philip Trevor in the “The Problems of Cricket” published in 1907, considered that two of the most significant reasons why an amateur would be reluctant to turn professional were the friendships they might lose and the marked fall in their social status. The disguised professional was created by social and class pressures on middle-class cricketers who lacked the independent financial means to play as true amateurs and who could not accept the stigma of being a professional. There are a few players who did choose to become a disguised professional, among them being W.W.Read of Surrey in an earlier generation and Mitchell’s almost exact contemporary Charles McGahey, whose clerical duties as assistant secretary of Essex were less than onerous. Even fewer made the direct turn from amateur to professional, an early example being Edwin Diver who in 1886 wrote cheerfully and honestly to the Surrey committee: ‘ Being heartily sick of office work and extremely fond of cricket