Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

154 Chapter Fourteen The Coach In 1938, as has been noted, Astill accepted a two-year contract as coach of the county club. He had shown his ability in this direction for many years as senior professional and as captain in 1935 and in odd matches during the two subsequent years. Moreover, during most northern winters when he had not been on tour he had accepted various coaching positions in South Africa (thrice) and Jamaica (four times), repeated invitations presumably indicating, at the minimum, satisfaction on the part of his employers. Leicestershire was not alone in courting him: Charterhouse was in need of a cricket coach for the summer term and Astill was initially second choice after Tate and ahead of Geary (third) and others. The school made approaches to him but lost interest because of the length of his county contract. Tate was presumably desired for his playing record rather than any possible coaching ability, but the anticipated expense and the firmly expressed opinion of the cricket master W.W.Timms eventually persuaded the school authorities to appoint Geary, Astill’s colleague-in- arms, for 1939. For this year of 1938, however, when the official captain Dempster was absent for much of the second half of the season, Geary led the side and worked closely and harmoniously with coach Astill. Although Leicestershire’s positions of 15th and 17th in the last two years before the Second World War do not indicate great success for Astill’s coaching, three later stalwarts of county cricket and still youngsters at this time 274 spoke of their liking and respect for him. Sperry and Lester both believed that they owed much to him and valued the huge wealth of knowledge that he had of the game. Dawkes, who gave such great service to Derbyshire after the War, spoke of his great patience with the young players on the staff, but added: ‘He was the boss … If Ewart says do it, you do it’. It is difficult at this distance in time to glean much specific information about his coaching, in which he was greatly abetted, at least in 1938, by Geary. Philip Snow remembered his emphasis on exercises to promote fitness, quite sober by modern standards, consisting of ‘standing-up exercises, not rolling about on the ground, gripping your ankle round the back of your neck or anything like that’. A photograph in the Leicester Mercury for 18 March 1938, shows Astill smartly taking part in physical exercises (‘physical jerks’ is the phrase in a contemporary article) organised by Alec Skelding, Leicestershire’s one-time very fast bowler who had been a physical education instructor in the First World War and was now already 274 A fourth, that splendid batsman Maurice Tompkin, sadly died long before I could ask him about Astill.