Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

22 bowled him! Now, I guess many of you have read cricket stories, and grinned to yourselves when you learned that the hero of fifteen had bowled a county cricketer first ball; but, believe me, things happen in real life that are far more sensational than any you read about in stories. Take my case, for instance. If you’d read about a thing like that in a story I fancy you’d have needed a pinch of salt to help you digest it! Still, fortunately for me, it actually happened, and largely as a result of it I was one of the four applicants chosen to join the club and ground staff at Aylestone Road ground. 42 You can bet I was pleased about that! Imagine it happening to you – at fifteen! Since Astill was still in 1925 deliberately subtracting years from his age, 43 and writes in the next paragraph of his début ‘the following year – 1905’, an event that actually occurred in 1906, we may conclude that this trial was held in 1905 when he was already seventeen. Of his début he writes: My chance to show what I could do in a first-class match came surprisingly quick, for it was in the following year – 1905 – that I was included in the side to meet Hampshire at Portsmouth. I didn’t come out of the match so badly, either, for my figures were three for 40, and my victims included no less a ‘light’ than Bowell. But what pleased me most about that match was the flattering comments upon my performance which the great Mr.C.B.Fry made afterwards about me in an article in the ‘Captain’. Mr.Fry, who was playing for Sussex in those days – later, of course, he played for Hampshire, and captained England, chanced to be watching the match. He said – But perhaps I’d better not tell you what he said, in case you think I’m ‘swanking’. Anyway, I was jolly pleased. Wouldn’t anybody have been – at sixteen? The match was Leicestershire’s last of the season, a woeful season after they had finished fifth in the Championship table the previous year. The County committee concluded that the reasons were to be found in not only unreliable batting and increased weakness in bowling, but also in a ‘slackness in the field, a lack of grit, [and] an absence of esprit de corps’, 44 hardly an environment of good auspices for a lengthy, happy and successful county career. Leicestershire were now lying last but one, though safely out of reach of Derbyshire who would still have been just behind even if they had beaten Lancashire and Surrey, fourth and third in the table respectively, in their last two matches. 45 The committee 42 All of Astill’s games for the county in Leicester were played on this ground (Grace Road being used only up to 1900 and from 1946. The Aylestone Road ground was very lively until the addition of Nottingham marl at roughly the time of Astill’s début. For further details see E.E.Snow, Cricket Grounds of Leicestershire , ACS, Haughton Mill, n.d., pp 10-12; A.R.Littlewood, J.H.King pp. 47-48. 43 See Chapter One. 44 This is quoted from the 1907 Wisden , p 243. 45 Predictably they lost both, by an innings and ten wickets respectively. The Prodigy