Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

85 Mitchell arrived with his team in 1904, but then went off to start his season with a 0 for Yorkshire against Yorkshire Colts, before playing for MCC v Kent, at the Parks in the Oxford University v Yorkshire fixture and then in the Old Trafford Roses match. The rest of his team had their own practice elsewhere. When the South African tourists began their matches, he joined them with another 0, bowled Bosanquet (a googly?) against MCC. Then he had a run of good scores, 70 not out and 40 against Worcestershire, 22 and 102 not out against Cambridge University, and 82 against Oxford University. He might have been surprised and disappointed if he had known that his century against Cambridge, when he was only 31, would be his last in first-class cricket. In early July his team lost to the Gentlemen of Ireland at Cork playing on a wicket which he described as a ‘ mud heap ’, although he scored 25 of the South Africans first innings of only 64. While his team perhaps had then a few days enjoying the beauty of Ireland, he went to Bramall Lane to make 39 and 79 for Yorkshire against Derbyshire, maybe silencing the doubters who had been so critical of him a decade earlier. A game against Hampshire followed at the Municipal Ground Alton, now known as the Jubilee Playing Fields. The only first-class match ever played at Alton resulted in an easy win for the South Africans. The team travelled via Taunton and another good win, against Somerset, to Lord’s. This was the match of the tour and the South Africans won it by 189 runs. The England XI was not quite as powerful as MCC had hoped for but the team of G.MacGregor, J.Vine, J.T.Hearne, J.H.King, K.S.Ranjitsinhji, G.W.Beldam, G.L.Jessop, W.H.B.Evans, Rev F.H.Gillingham, J.Gunn and T.Wass contained seven men who had or would play Test cricket for England. Mitchell would have very pleased to meet Ranji again. Their friendship was cemented in university days when Mitchell had gone salmon fishing at Ranji’s country retreat, Ballynahinch Castle. Somewhat poignantly it would be Canon Frank Gillingham, born in Tokyo, who would conduct Frank Mitchell’s funeral thirty-one years later. In the actual match Mitchell hit a vigorous 75 and Schwarz an even more vigorous 102 as South Africa made 352. The England XI made a below par 167 but were not asked to follow on (shades of 1896). After South Africa stuttered to a second innings 207, Sinclair (six for 67) and Schwarz (four for 76) bowled the England XI out for 203. It was a deeply satisfying win for the South Africans, played in front of the English cricketing establishment, and very probably the highlight of Frank Mitchell’s cricketing life. As a young man he had started strongly, faded almost into obscurity, was given hope by Yorkshire, repaid them well, started a new life in South Africa and now had returned to his homeland to show all how strong South African cricket was becoming. The rest of the tour was a touch anti-climactic. There were some good wins and two draws against Yorkshire. In the first match only rain saved South Africa from a certain innings defeat, with Lord Hawke, the Hon. F.S.Jackson, Denton, Tunnicliffe, Hirst, Rhodes, Hunter and Haigh turning out against their former colleague. Such a strong side would not be chosen against visiting tourists today. In the second Yorkshire match, rain and Mitchell‘s second innings 57 not out in over three hours saved his side. International cricket: South Africa in England, 1904