Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

88 South African residence, 1905 - 1911 Bailey’s secretary until July 1911 when he decided to become a member of the London Stock Exchange and settle in England. Working with Abe Bailey would not have been a sinecure. Another player, Ernest Vogler, born in South Africa, wanted to qualify for Middlesex, a desire that caused some friction with Middlesex members. So Abe Bailey found a position for him as a steward on one of the Bailey estates. Later Bailey financed Vogler in the setting up of a sports business that then failed. Bailey continued to retain him, but on the basis that he did not leave South Africa without the consent of Bailey. There is a hint of feudalism in such arrangements and when Vogler, in 1910, became bankrupt Bailey was the principal creditor being owed £1222, the balance on a bond signed by Vogler. Amongst English professional coaches, employed by Bailey, was Alfred Atfield to whom Bailey gave congenial employment at the Wanderers Club over a number of years. Throughout this period Mitchell remained close to the Wanderers Club, which provided so many sporting opportunities for its thousand members. As well as cricket, members could play or participate in gymnastics, lawn tennis, rugby football, soccer and numerous other athletic pursuits. The manager of the cricket team to England in 1904, George Allsop, who had acquired an Irish wife whilst the team were in Ireland, was also Secretary of the Wanderers Club. He and Mitchell had had a good relationship whilst touring together in England. In 1905 Frank Mitchell spent some time in England, and almost certainly stayed with his parents in Yorkshire. He was perhaps also still doing some business then for Abe Bailey. He played a few games for the Londesborough Park XI and scored 81 not out against Shipton, a small parish near Londesborough and Market Weighton, so that would have been a very local derby match. MCC agreed to send a team to play in South Africa in 1905/06. His old friend Plum Warner was to be captain of the English side, and it is possible that both Mitchell and Lord Hawke were involved in the arrangements for that tour, though MCC will have dealt directly with the relatively newly formed South African Cricket Association rather than with Abe Bailey. That MCC team was in South Africa between December 1905 and March 1906. South Africa won four of the five Tests, so this tour was the most enormous boost for that country, building on the base created by Mitchell’s team in England in 1904. Mitchell played no games for any provincial or South African teams whilst the Englishmen were in his adopted country, so the pages of Cricket for 1905-06 are silent about him. One member of the English touring party was Captain E.G.Wynyard, the former Hampshire cricket captain. Wynyard would have met Abe Bailey on that tour and, it was Wynyard when back in England who later became Bailey’s representative, and the representative of the South African Cricket Association when negotiations were taking place about a possible Triangular Tournament for 1909. Wynyard, thus, may have been taking over some of the responsibilities that Mitchell and then Schwarz had had