Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

99 The Tourist: ‘a Joy to Know’ Stourbridge Week, he barely contributed to Leicestershire’s 305 against a very weak Worcestershire side doomed to finish bottom this year and missing Root who, like Geary, was playing for the North; but he then took over with three for 44 and six for 38. In the return at Leicester, after Major Fowke had torn a leg ligament, he was acting captain in the field for the ‘Saucemen’s’ second innings; and while his committee scrambled to find other amateurs to fill Fowke’s rôle for the next few matches, he was appointed to captain the County’s entirely professional team for the immediate encounter with Hampshire. He thus became the second professional, after the now retired King two years previously, 186 to lead Leicestershire officially for a whole match. Though making negligible contributions as batsman and bowler, by all accounts Astill acquitted himself as captain with great competence in a very low-scoring and narrow defeat at Southampton, the ground on which he had made his début twenty years before. The very next match saw a triumph for himself and his county, and what a triumph that was, the highlight of the season! The sylvan setting was the Bath Grounds at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, which ‘creates a cricket atmosphere that is as near the ideal as one can hope to get in these days’, as the Sports Mercury had avowed some year earlier, 187 but it was a ground notorious for the bad drainage of its alluvium. It was one of Astill’s favourite hunting-grounds, for he took 71 wickets here in 16 games at an average of 17.23. On a soft and drying wicket he first ‘played admirably’ in making 87 in three hours and ten minutes against a rampant McDonald, ‘his skilful defence and safe hitting contrasting strongly with many failures’ ( Wisden ) to guide his county to a total of 224. After a brief rest he opened the bowling with Geary, but after rain prevented all but a brief interlude of play on the second day, the third started with Lancashire having still lost only three wickets in their first innings. A boring draw beckoned. Astill and Geary had, however, other ideas, taking an equal share in the rapid dismissal of the Lancastrians. With a revised batting order Leicestershire then lost three wickets for only eleven runs, but Astill and Sidwell, ‘just to show that they weren’t worried … put on 40 in a quarter of an hour before the lunch adjournment’. Rudd’s declaration left Lancashire to score 217 in two and a half hours. Astill bowled their captain, Major Green for a duck, but left his partner to take the other nine in rushing Leicestershire to a victory by 144 runs over the team destined to be champions that year. As C.W.L.Parker had written the year before, ‘Let us be duly thankful that cricket is the most gloriously uncertain of games. So long as we remember that uncertainty the bottom dogs can take courage’, 188 a courage that enables such results to occur. The powerful Nottinghamshire side was next to experience his twofold skills. In the home game he stymied their batsmen’s aggressive instincts by opening the match with seven maidens in his first nine overs. At Trent Bridge, when Leicestershire had conceded a lead of 53, he batted so 186 Against Lancashire at Old Trafford. See Littlewood, J.H.King , p 110. 187 19 June 1920. 188 Quoted in Leicester Sports Mercury , 1 August 1921, p 11.