Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

31 But the position within the university team is fully recorded. Mitchell began the year by being appointed as the University Cricket Club Secretary, usually a precursor to the captaincy in a subsequent season. The trial games began with the Freshmen’s Match (twelve a side) in which Mitchell captained one team and batted at No. 12. His role was to assess players from the middle and help some of the younger men in their skills and field placements. Then the Cambridge first-class season started with a game at Fenner’s against Somerset. Here Mitchell was outstanding in scoring 191 as an opening batsman, and this was the second highest first-class score of his career. Wisden records ‘Mitchell’s innings was considered to be one of the best ever seen at Cambridge. It was characterised by clean and brilliant hitting on the off side, and included 20 fours.’ (Until 1910, sixes could only be scored by hitting the ball out of the ground.) The Times referred to his ‘brilliant cutting and driving’. That innings against Somerset was the highpoint of Mitchell’s season, though he did make his mark positively in some other matches – notably when he scored 155 at Aigburth against Liverpool and District, in a match which MCC later ruled not to be first- class. Between 1882 and 1894 Liverpool and District had played 14 first- class matches, often against Yorkshire, and they had played Cambridge University in such a fixture as recently as 1894 when Cambridge had won by nine wickets in two days. The MCC decision having been made, the Liverpool and District team never played another first-class game, though they carried on playing at least sporadically until 1947 which is the last year for which CricketArchive has a record of their fixtures. 1895 was also the first year that Dublin University were given first-class status, their team playing on that basis against MCC, Cambridge University twice, and Leicestershire. Evidently that experiment was deemed a failure for they did not play another first-class fixture until 1922 when they met Essex. Dublin then, between 1924 and 1926, lost four times by an innings to Northamptonshire in games given first-class status. Unsurprisingly, the university has not played first-class cricket since. Perhaps the most interesting feature of the matches was that those played at Northampton marked the only two first-class appearances of a left-handed all-rounder called Samuel Beckett, rather better known as the author of Waiting for Godot and winner of the 1969 Nobel Prize for Literature. Cambridge in 1895 had a diverse fixture list for, as well as playing the counties of Somerset, Surrey, Yorkshire and Sussex they played first-class games against C.I.Thornton’s XI, the Gentlemen of England (with Roberts), MCC and Dublin University. Roberts was F.G.Roberts of Gloucestershire who took seven Cambridge wickets. After the Somerset game Frank Mitchell did not in 1895 make another first-class fifty for Cambridge. The highlight of the season was naturally the Varsity match against Oxford. In a game evenly balanced for much of the time Cambridge eventually ran out as winners by 134 runs. Mitchell in making scores of 28 and 43 made a reasonable contribution to the Cambridge success. In both innings he was out caught and bowled, a mode of dismissal which again illustrated Cambridge, Yorkshire interlude and America, 1895