Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

62 Chapter Nine The fields of peace and war: in England and South Africa, 1899 and 1900 An exhilarating season: the summer days of 1899 Before 1899 Mitchell had never played a full season for Yorkshire. Sporadic matches when he was at Cambridge were followed by years when he was barely, if at all, in the side. All that changed in 1899. Following his success under the eye of Lord Hawke in South Africa earlier that year, he was chosen for the first match of Yorkshire’s 1899 season starting on 4 May at Worcester. He scored 32 and 22, enough to be chosen for the next game at Lord’s when he made seven and 40. Only one innings was then possible for him when Yorkshire then travelled to play Somerset at Bath, where he scored 21. Promising starts had not yet turned into innings of substance. The Yorkshire side now moved a few miles north-west from Bath to play Gloucestershire at the Ashley Down ground in Bristol. This time Mitchell did fulfil the promise he had first shown when playing against Yorkshire as a university freshman five years earlier. In scoring precisely 100 he put all the opposing bowlers to the sword. Wisden states ‘ Mitchell played an extremely fine innings that was quite free from any real blemish. He was batting for two hours and ten minutes and hit ten fours, five threes, and ten twos.’ Mitchell, aged nearly 27, and well beyond the time that he could be described as a promising youngster, now had the chance to make his place in the Yorkshire side secure. That is exactly what he then did, and he played in every Yorkshire first-class match that summer. Those matches were 28 in the Championship, two against Australia, two against MCC and one each against Cambridge University and Mr C.I.Thornton’s XI. In championship cricket, Frank Mitchell was to add two more centuries to his one at Bristol. He achieved a wonderful 194 at Leicester, to be his highest first-class score, which included a rare six (out of the ground), a five, and 22 fours. At Bradford he made his first home century for his county with a splendid 121 against Middlesex. Championship matches commenced on Mondays and Thursdays throughout the season, which started for Yorkshire on 4 May. First-class cricket was not played on Sundays, so the only dates not allocated for Yorkshire games in the four months from May to early September were the opening days of the Leeds Test which started on 29 July, and the days of the late season match of the Australians against Mr C.I.Thornton’s England XI at Scarborough. As Mitchell and five other Yorkshire players were in Thornton’s XI, there was little respite for them other than such free days that they earned because