Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

59 entrepreneur and cricket enthusiast J.D.Logan, and comprised seventeen matches of which five were designated as first-class. Those five matches were against Transvaal, the Cape Colony (twice) and South Africa (again twice), and all were won by Lord Hawke’s team. The travelling was arduous, with the team starting at Newlands in Cape Town, before moving on to Port Elizabeth, Johannesburg (and the Old Wanderers Ground), Pretoria, Kimberley, J.D.Logan’s private preserve at Matjiesfontein, Bulawayo, and finally back to Cape Town. Mitchell would have become acquainted for the first time with two places, Kimberley and Johannesburg, which within a few years would become central to his life and lifestyle. Lord Hawke in his 1924 autobiography Recollections and Reminiscences gave a cheerful account of the tour, though finding it necessary to state that ‘all the amateurs simply had their hotel and travelling free and paid for their own drinks and washing’. The hospitality provided at banquets at every venue would not have required the purchase of many drinks. Frank Mitchell found himself used as an ambassador when he and C.E.M.Wilson were sent as Lord Hawke’s representatives to meet President Kruger at Pretoria. In the absence of Lord Hawke, Kruger, who may have felt snubbed, was not persuaded to see the English team, but the fact that Mitchell was used as Hawke’s envoy is perhaps an indication of his growing significance as a leader. Mitchell also met another contact who was to become central to his career when he and Abe Bailey, a man of power on the South African landscape, spoke at a dinner at the Grand Central Hotel in Johannesburg. Later, Bailey’s influence probably assisted Mitchell to become captain of the South African Test side. Quiet summers, winter tours and Test cricket, 1897-99 Lord Hawke, who gave Frank Mitchell so many early cricketing opportunities.