Lives in Cricket No 34 - Frank Mitchell

93 The 1912 Triangular Tournament The decision prompted an outpouring of comment in the South African press expertly analysed by Patrick Ferriday in his thorough account of the whole Triangular tour Before The Lights Went Out (2011) . He quoted the Durham correspondent of the Rand Daily Mail : ‘The announcement that Frank Mitchell has been chosen captain of the South African cricket team has astounded Natal cricketers…Men who claim to know, and evince the greatest possible esteem for Mitchell, deride his inclusion as an egregious error. .....the choice will at once attract attention to the poor resources which South Africa has to rely upon in the emergency created by the defection of Percy Sherwell.’ If it was understandable that the Natal press was hostile to a past Transvaal player becoming captain, then it may have been troubling that the Transvaal press also had its concerns. A commentary in the Johannesburg Star read ‘ ...in Frank Mitchell the South Africans will have at their head the best captain in South Africa and in this case the question is not one of capacity but of principle. Frank Mitchell keeps out of the side one of those young players who have been trying for a place in this team for months, and unless the Selection Committee could not get a captain from among the men already chosen...they ought not to have made the choice they had.’ Ferriday also quoted the South African News , published in Cape Town ....’ One has said this before and intends to keep saying it until the selectors realise its truth, that the South African cricket team led by Mr Mitchell in the triangular tests, reduces what should have been a great festival to something approaching farce. If we have not amongst us a player who is capable of leading a team in the field....we scarcely have a right to be represented at all.’ The debate in South Africa was followed with interest in England. Soon after the South Africans had arrived in England, the leading article in Cricket written by its editor J.N.Pentelow was wholly devoted to Frank Mitchell. The editor wrote: Some scoffed when his name was included among the list of probables for the present team. He was not in the original selection; but Percy Sherwell declined; there was a difficulty as to the captaincy, and Mitchell was called upon. He accepted, and I believe that South Africa will have reason to feel grateful to him for that acceptance. Sibley Snooke has captained the Afrikaner team, and Louis Tancred the Transvaal; but neither is at his best when leading. The big Yorkshireman should be the right man in the right place. It does not seem to me to matter much that he has played no important cricket for seven or eight years. He is an all-round athlete – Rugger international, weight-putter, oarsman, as well as cricketer – and he is quite wonderfully active for so big and weighty a man. Not many of his team will score more runs than he during 1912, I fancy. The South African team was by no means inexperienced. Louis Tancred, a Test player since 1902, was vice-captain, and others with Test experience included Dave Nourse, Louis Stricker, Aubrey Faulkner, Gordon White,