Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

42 Rugby Union - as a player and writer against Scotland in March 1896 – wrote a chapter in this volume. The other contributors were R.H.B.Cattell and H.B.Tristram (Oxford University and England), C.N.Fleming (Oxford University and Scotland) and Gregor MacGregor (Cambridge University and Scotland). MacGregor was also an outstanding wicket-keeper who represented England eight times between 1890 and 1893, and captained Middlesex from 1899 to 1907. In Robinson’s book Mitchell contributed a chapter on Forward Play, and the other contributors dealt with other playing positions. The editor- in-chief covered history, refereeing, captaincy, training, accidents, and rugby in other countries. Mitchell started his well-constructed chapter by explaining the development of forward play, from initially a group of fourteen players in a group of twenty, to eight forwards and four three- quarters, and went on with the aid of simple diagrams to explain the arts of scrimmaging, dribbling, tackling, following up, touch play and kicking. He gave no examples from his own career, nor described incidents in matches of note, so it is a technical yet easy to read chapter. The only personal note was his view that swinging a pair of Indian clubs for half an hour a day would do a great deal towards keeping the muscles in working order. Robinson later took up an editorial position with the Daily Express and became editor of Vanity Fair between 1904 and 1906. It is tempting to think that Mitchell as captain of the visiting South African cricket tourists in 1904 might have been considered as a subject for a Vanity Fair cartoon, but perhaps by then his friendship with Robinson was less strong. Robinson, himself, was to die of enteric fever in 1907 at the early age of 36. During 1897 and 1898, after Mitchell had left university and at a time when he was playing only a limited amount of first-class cricket in England, he took his first steps into magazine journalism. The magazine in question was Pearson’s Athletic Record , which came out weekly and which concerned itself with a variety of sports, not just track and field. Mitchell wrote a page in a series of issues entitled Famous Footballers I Have Known , each page containing three columns and each column providing commentary on a particular player. Copies of Pearson’s are now difficult to find, but the Rugby Football archive at Twickenham has three of these issues between December 1897 and March 1898, and they do provide quite important contemporary comment on international and other well-known rugby men with whom Mitchell actually played. He wrote on more than 70 players in this series, so the feature would have provided him with some income. The next and critically important stage in Mitchell’s writing career was his invitation to be a contributor to the Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes, and to be a participant in the writing of a much revised volume simply entitled Football . The Badminton Library was a project conceived and founded by Henry Somerset 8 th Duke of Beaufort, who lived from 1824- 99. He was a particular enthusiast for field sports and country pursuits, and his interest was one of an aristocrat who liked on his own estate at Badminton, Gloucestershire, to be able to provide a range of sporting