Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

54 in some uncontroversial and good quality cricket during the remainder of the 1896 summer. The Varsity match had ended on 4 July, and with that match so had the Cambridge season. But Yorkshire still had fifteen matches to play and Mitchell must have hoped for further opportunities with the county of his birth. No such opportunities were granted to him. Yorkshire were powering their way to another championship with a largely settled team and established batsmen. F.S.Jackson, J.T.Brown, R.Peel, G.H.Hirst, J.Tunnicliffe and D.Denton each scored more than 1000 championship runs. If there was room for experiment in the middle order, the two men given the chance to play were J.T.Mounsey, later cricket coach at Charterhouse School, and the amateur Ernest Smith, later headmaster of an Eastbourne school. Smith came into the Yorkshire side in August and though his performance was modest he retained his place as Yorkshire kept winning their games. Mitchell might have wondered whether he should have taken up the opportunity offered by Sussex three years earlier. Yet he still had academic studies to complete. His degree course was in Classics in which he did not particularly distinguish himself. He was excused a number of examinations by special dispensation – no doubt because he was on the cricket field – but the ultimate outcome was a Third in his Part 1 examinations. For cricket in the remaining weeks of the 1896 season, Mitchell turned back to amateur sides. He played for the Yorkshire Gentlemen v the Players of Yorkshire, for Incogniti against Bryn-y-Neuadd, and no doubt for a variety of other teams. If he had employment during the autumn and winter months then the details have not come to light. Perhaps he resumed a teaching career at a preparatory school for certainly there were no private overseas tours that winter which might have kept him occupied and entertained. The 1896 season with the follow-on controversy