Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

27 the only Captain of the CUCC.’ Regrettably his research on the past Blues from Gonville & Caius was seriously wrong. Up to 1935 nineteen other students from the college had attained a Blue and he should perhaps have known that one of them had captained the university side in 1873. That young man was Frederick Eustace Reade Fryer who attained a Blue in four successive years. Sir Francis Lacey later became Secretary to MCC and B.O.Allen was to captain Gloucestershire. Now the total of Gonville & Caius undergraduates who have attained a cricketing Blue are into the forties. They include M.E.L.Melluish, captain of the Varsity side in 1956, and O.S.Wheatley later of Glamorgan. After his dramatic start to his first Cambridge year, Mitchell would have been disappointed not to have been top of the University averages. Thomas Tosswill Norwood Perkins took that honour with an average of 32.8 whilst Mitchell came second on 28.8. Mitchell, however, headed the bowling averages with 21 wickets at 21.12 runs apiece. That performance was not regarded as notable because as the anonymous Wisden writer reported, Cambridge were ‘ by general consent worse off than any University team that had been seen at Lord’s in the present generation’. Mitchell, though, was proud to have secured the wicket of W.G.Grace twice in one season. Some good bowlers never had that success. A brief return to the Yorkshire side followed in late July. His first ever major game at Headingley was against Gloucestershire. He scored just 2 and 2. He would always remember that in their second innings Yorkshire had lost nine wickets for 19 runs before George Hirst and David Hunter made 42 for the last wicket, enough to ensure that Yorkshire later won Cambridge: the freshman’s year, 1893/94 The young Frank Mitchell early in his Yorkshire career.