Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

61 seemingly said or approved as to retrospective application of the rules to past games between representative teams yet, in time, the matches that Lord Hawke’s ‘English Team’ played against South Africa were regarded as Test matches. Frank Mitchell and seven others were treated as having made England Test debuts, with Albert Trott also added to the list having played three previous Tests for Australia. When these designations of particular matches as Tests were made, and who made the designations, remains in doubt. In May 1912 J.N.Pentelow, a leading cricket writer, wrote a long article about Frank Mitchell for the magazine Cricket. In that article and having referred to Mitchell’s matches with Lord Hawke’s side, he wrote with reference to the pending Triangular Tournament between England, Australia and South Africa, ‘ I have always ranked him as among the men who ought to have played for England. But his first Test match will be played for South Africa, and at the age of 39!’ Bill Frindall writing in 1979 the introduction to his book The Wisden Book of Test Cricket stated: ‘Although purists may object to the inclusion of matches in which England was represented by privately arranged teams in Australia and South Africa prior to the first official MCC tours to those countries in 1903-04 and 1905-6 respectively, the status of those matches has now been sanctified by time and no purpose would be served by omitting them.’ The key words are ‘sanctified by time’. Indeed all three of the private tours undertaken to South Africa by English teams before the one involving Frank Mitchell had at least one match designated later as a Test. Harry Altham in his 1926 History of Cricket called the representative games in those four tours Tests. So though Frank Mitchell may have been fortunate to be credited with having played Test cricket for England, he was not as lucky as others like the Honourable C.J.Coventry, and B.A.F.Grieve whose actual debuts in first-class cricket began with retrospective Test matches against South Africa, and who by no modern standard could ever have been considered good enough to play Tests. Mitchell’s England Test batting tally from four completed innings was 88 runs at an average of 22. He did not bowl but took two catches including one off the last ball of his second and final England Test match. Quiet summers, winter tours and Test cricket, 1897-99