Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

36 Cambridge, Yorkshire interlude and America, 1895 Back at university on 15 October 1895 Mitchell resumed his studies and his expertise at rugby football. He would have returned well satisfied with his first experience of international captaincy. He wrote in 1935: It was not a bad performance on our part to make it one match all. They had no professional help, but were at least entitled to a place in the middle of the County Championship here. This is a surprising statement when I say that their team was chosen from about half a dozen clubs. At this period their cricket was at its best, and though we have had several since, notably J.R. Lester, J.H. Scattergood, and C.C. Morris, who have been in the front rank, I am convinced that it was in the early ’90’s that Philadelphia cricket reached its peak. Attendances [then] of 5000 were the usual thing; everybody turned out. Hospitality was unbounded. We did our share in disposing of the soft- shell crabs and reed birds, washed down by the ale of Milwaukee, Pabst and Schlitz, until there appeared to be nothing else in the world for which we wished. The girls there had no chaperons. It was quite usual for one of them to ask you out for lunch at her home and fetch you in her own trap. Father and mother were seldom there, but other young men made up the party. The American men had to work; their lady folk took the greatest pleasure in spending their fathers’ and husbands’ earnings. It is no wonder that young amateurs queued up a hundred years ago and more to go on a cricketing tour abroad.