Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

brief visit to Canada where the team played at Toronto and Ottawa. The amateurs who went included two whose names will again appear in this chapter – S.M.J. (Sammy) Woods of Somerset and Kenneth McAlpine of Kent. The Gentlemen of Philadelphia triumphed in the first game of this visit but otherwise the English team were too strong for their opponents. Encouraged by the success of the 1891 tour, Lord Hawke intended to travel to America again in 1893. This tour was then postponed by a year but took place successfully in September and October 1894. The two primary matches were again against the Gentlemen of Philadelphia who included in their teams such notable local players from the Germantown Club as Mr G.S.Patterson, Mr F.H.Bohlen, and Messrs R.D. and H.I.Brown. Lord Hawke’s team of wholly amateur players once again included McAlpine. Such was the enthusiasm in Philadelphia for more of such cricket, and no doubt, for the socialising that was important in these tours that arrangements were quickly mooted for another tour by Englishmen in 1895. However local disagreements nearly led to two English teams arriving in 1895 and playing at the same time at venues that would not have been far apart. The five major clubs in Philadelphia were at Germantown, Merion, Belmont, the City of Philadelphia and Tioga. Germantown was the oldest club and had the best group of players including those just named. There was some resentment amongst the other clubs at the way in which the Germantown officials thus sought to monopolise arrangements for an 1895 tour, and the four remaining clubs formed themselves into a grouping called The Associated Clubs of Philadelphia. Feelings thus ran so strongly that at about the same time in the summer of 1895 representatives of both camps were busy arranging tours by English cricketers. The Germantown club invited Kenneth McAlpine, with his experience of two previous tours, to put together a team and those that were then chosen included Sammy Woods, who had been the star player of the 1891 tour. Another who agreed to tour was H.D.G.Leveson Gower, the Hon. Secretary of Oxford University Cricket Club. Then R.S.Lucas, a member of Lord Hawke’s 1894 team, and Pelham Warner, another Oxford player, were also due to go. Meantime the Associated Clubs of Philadelphia sent a Mr Scott as their accredited representative to the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge to see if a combined university side would agree to visit the North American shores. The first step would be to find a university man to captain such a side. The outgoing captains of Oxford and Cambridge were G.J.Mordaunt of Oxford and W.G.Druce of Cambridge. Both were excellent batsmen, and Mordaunt had the advantage of having been another member of the Hawke team of 1894. It is not known if Mordaunt was asked, but Druce felt unable to make himself available for this tour and so (with Leveson Gower of Oxford being a member of the McAlpine team) the choice of captain fell on Frank Mitchell, Hon. Secretary of the Cambridge University Cricket Club in 1895 and the incoming captain for 1896. Neither of the captains of the two English sides was involved in frantic 33 Cambridge, Yorkshire interlude and America, 1895