Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

63 The fields of peace and war: in England and South Africa, 1899 and 1900 Yorkshire had won in two days. On 6 September, the last afternoon at Scarborough, Yorkshire defeated a Thornton’s XI with six new players recruited from other counties. Mitchell, a very fit cricketer, then travelled down to Hastings by a sequence of trains to start play the next day for the Rest of England against the Home Counties. He relished the opportunities given to him. Whilst his attacking approach to batsmanship had not diminished, he had by now also tightened up on defence when the circumstances prescribed more cautious play. The three centuries made in 1899 were the first of the ten that Mitchell ultimately scored for Yorkshire. Batting usually at No.4 or No.5 in the Yorkshire order, he would often come to the wicket following some excellent partnerships between J.T.Brown and John Tunnicliffe. Others who would usually precede Mitchell were F.S.Jackson and David Denton. More amateurs than usual played for Yorkshire that season and, of the eight that did play, six had been or would be captains of Cambridge, namely Lord Hawke, Jackson, Mitchell, C.E.M.Wilson, T.L.Taylor and Rockley Wilson. The match at Leicester gave Frank Mitchell a share in a new fifth wicket record partnership for the county of 329 runs. His partner on 16 June 1899 was Ted Wainwright who scored 153. Fifty-six days later at The Oval, after Mitchell had scored 87, Wainwright then combined with George Hirst to exceed that fifth wicket partnership by adding 340 runs. Those two remarkable partnerships remained in 2013 the highest scored by a Yorkshire fifth wicket pair, although Andrew Gale and Gary Ballance came close in 2013 by adding 297 against Nottinghamshire at Scarborough. Yorkshire had been County Champions in 1898 and were confidently expected to retain their title in 1899. However surprise defeats by Essex and Kent, and strong showings in other fixtures by both Surrey and Middlesex led to Yorkshire’s fall from grace and they finished in third position. In the Kent game at Tonbridge, Frank Mitchell was bowled by Colin Blythe’s first ball in first-class cricket. Yorkshire did win 14 games, and lost four with the other ten drawn, but that was not good enough in that season. Brown was badly injured in mid-season, Jackson did not quite display his past emphatic form and Tunnicliffe’s run scoring became much diminished. So Mitchell’s batting did provide a crumb of comfort and, on the hard dry wickets after midsummer, he did especially well. Whilst he was no longer a youngster, there were hopes that he would remain in the Yorkshire side for much of the next decade. Even so there was room for improvement. Whilst he scored 1678 runs for Yorkshire that year, more than any of his colleagues, his average of 32.80 remained below potential. Jackson had averaged 47.35, and Brown, Hirst and Denton were above him in the national averages – as were more than twenty other English batsmen . The great Ranjitsinhji had piled up 3159 runs at an average of 63.18. Mitchell had thus made his mark and was firmly established as a good county player, although nobody then would have been contemplating