Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

7 Chapter One An East Riding background Frank Mitchell, who played Test cricket for England and South Africa, and international rugby for England, was exceptionally well known in sporting circles in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. He sprang into the national sporting limelight in his first year at Cambridge University during 1893/94. Whilst his initial remarkable success on the playing fields of England could not be wholly sustained, he remained a player of character and ability, and became a strong leader of the various teams for whom he played. He was a captain of cricket teams in three continents and remains one of the few men and women to have captained international sides in two different sports. He was an amateur, whose first-class career spanned twenty years, but he was also a soldier, serving his country in vastly different areas of Britain’s military world, and at varying times, an administrator, stockbroker and journalist. This brief account of his life will reveal a man of many parts, good times and sad times, great days and poor days, and above all else variety, in a life lived for many years at a pace that bears comparison with anything on offer today. Frank Mitchell – he was given no other names – was born in the parish of Market Weighton, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, on 13 August 1872. His birth certificate does not give further detail of the precise birthplace, but the birth may well have been at the family home of Low Grange Farm at Shiptonthorpe. The East Riding with its administrative heart at the ancient town of Beverley was and is an area full of farms, villages, and a smattering of towns. Beverley, Driffield, Market Weighton, and Pocklington are the small towns surrounded by the farming landscape making up the Yorkshire Wolds, and on the western end of the River Humber is the busy port of Goole. The town of Hessle on the northern banks of the Humber is another small community, and then there are the seaside resorts of Bridlington, Hornsea and Withernsea facing out towards the sometimes The certificate does not show an exact birthplace but it was probably at the family home, Low Grange Farm Shiptonthorpe, where the house and buildings are much changed since the 1870s.