Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

51 If the Cambridge team, save for their captain, were shaken by the reception – and all the evidence suggests that they were – Mitchell himself put forward an air of total unconcern. At the end of the Oxford innings he (writing in 1935) recorded: As I was strolling along, an old clergyman emerged from the Old Blues’ stand waving his field glasses round and round his head, in a manner lunatic; when I could not resist smiling, he threw them at me and to this day I regret that I did not pick them up. They would have been a splendid trophy to have had – quite unique – a pair of glasses thrown at the Cambridge captain in 1896. Cambridge may well have been unnerved by the ugly demonstrations for in their second innings they subsided to 61 for six with Mitchell bowled by Cunliffe for four, before recovering to a reasonably respectable score of 212. That left Oxford with the very considerable task of scoring 330 to win in about five hours. Odds on such a win were very unlikely when they fell to 60 for three, the three men out including Mitchell’s friend Pelham Warner, run out for the second time in the match, an unusual event for an opening batsman. But the Oxford captain, G.O.Smith, played the cricketing innings of his life. After making a wonderful and increasingly dramatic 132, Smith was caught at slip by Mitchell two runs short of victory but no matter, for Oxford still won by four wickets with time to spare. It remains one of the finest of all Varsity matches. Smith had already achieved fame as a notable centre forward in association football, both for the Corinthians and for England, for whom he played twenty times, many as captain.  He was to become joint headmaster of Ludgrove Preparatory School where a Yorkshire cricket captain, Alan Barber, later served for many years as head. That Oxford victory did not quell those queuing up to have their letter printed in The Times . A total of twenty correspondents debated the follow-on law over the following fortnight. Lord Cobham wrote in favour of Mitchell whilst his brother Edward Lyttelton took an opposing view. Some writers did so with anonymity as their password. That Cambridge deserved to lose was obvious to HM: ‘ Cambridge batsmen going to the wicket in their second innings went in dispirited and self-condemned men; they had become conscious of unsportsmanlike conduct and this consciousness brought home to them by the attitude of spectators unnerved them.’ Wet Bob (Eton) went further: ‘ Not long ago I was talking to an old Etonian friend, and ex-captain of the Cambridge XI about the change that has lately come over the composition of the University XI’s, all sorts of schools and even private tuition being represented, whereas in our day it was very hard for anyone not hailing from Eton, Harrow or Winchester to get the chance of a Blue. My experienced friend said it had the effect of lowering the tone of University cricket. I see that he was right.’ Wet Bob may have been referring, not only to Mitchell, but to the chastised bowler Mr Eustace Beverly Shine, who was shown in Wisden as having been educated privately. Shine had in fact attended Saffron Walden Grammar School which had been educating The 1896 season with the follow-on controversy