Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

53 The 1896 season with the follow-on controversy When Sydney Pardon prepared his Notes on Some Current Topics  in late 1896 for the 1897 Wisden , he was certain that the follow-on law would be amended, but he was wrong.  The Annual Report presented at the MCC AGM in May 1897 records that the result of the reference having showed ‘a great diversity of opinion, the committee decided not to recommend the Club to legislate on the subject at present’.   MCC must have had a file on such a contentious topic but it cannot be currently found in the MCC archives.   The issue was not to lie dormant for long for in August 1897 there was more trouble in the match between Essex and Lancashire at Leyton. This time Lancashire were in danger of being required to follow on so the Essex assistant secretary, Frederick Bull, bowled a wide to the boundary, and then the Lancashire batsman Arthur Mold knocked down his wicket so that Lancashire did have to follow on. This led to a verbal altercation between players on both sides and might have increased pressures for Law changes, but nothing was to happen immediately. Meantime Frank Mitchell had returned to Lord’s for another Varsity match in 1897 – though not as captain. In February 1898 he was present as a member when Mr F.E.Lacey was chosen as the new MCC Secretary. Lacey may, after playing himself in, have been present when the MCC Cricket Committee gave more thought to Law 53 during 1899, and provided a report to the main Committee which met on 30 October 1899. The Cricket Committee recommended that a side that led by 150 runs on first innings in a three-day match ‘shall have the option of calling on the other side to follow its innings’.   There were similar consequential suggestions for shorter games. The main Committee, which included again that day Lord Harris and W.E.Denison, accepted the recommendation. Thereafter a Special General Meeting of MCC was held on 2 May 1900, with Lord Justice Smith as President and in the chair. After other Law changes relating to six balls to constitute an over, and permitting declarations to take effect from the luncheon interval on the second day of a match, a revised Law 53 as to an optional follow-on was finally passed. Frank Mitchell was not present on that May day. He was engaged in weightier matters in the field, not of cricket, but of battle in South Africa. If he had been alive in 1960 Mitchell would have been interested to have learnt that the Advisory Committee promoting the regulations for County Championship matches had decided to abolish the follow-on as an experiment for the 1961 season. The wheel had turned full circle but this new stance was watered down during the 1961 season when the same committee agreed that the follow-on could be enforced if there were no play on the first day of a match. In 1963 the counties abandoned these experiments and reverted to use of the Law that had been passed in 1900. The issue of a compulsory follow-on has never since been seriously revived, and the stance taken by F.S.Jackson and Frank Mitchell over one hundred years ago has remained justified. Playing out the rest of the year in 1896 For all his outward unconcern Frank Mitchell would have hoped to play