Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

presumably believed that there was nothing to lose in ‘blooding’ the youngster in place of Benskin. The international news on the first day of the match, Thursday 23 August, was that pillaging was rampant after the Valparaiso earthquake and that insurgents had captured the Cuban town of San Luis in the tobacco- growing area of Pinar del Rio, and nationally that Edward VII took lunch at the casino in Marienbad, where ‘the table was tastefully decorated with roses and a centerpiece of forget-me-nots’ and the king’s physician, Dr Ott, complained ‘bitterly that the visitors to the spa, who ostensibly go there for the benefit of their health, indulge much too freely in dinner parties, bridge-playing, and late hours’. 46 Locally we learn that a schoolboy had fallen out of a tree near the Western Park and died; the Botanical Institute of G.W.Morris in Wharf Street was advertising ‘Invincible Pills: they never fail … possessing wonderful curative powers over all Female Ailments’, whilst holidaymakers were recommended to take Carr’s Fever Powders ‘for colds, sore throats, feverish heats, headaches etc.’ The opening day was hot, 31°C in the shade in London, when Leicestershire went out to bat at Southampton before a crowd which, though it would have been small for Aylestone Road, was ‘good for Southampton, where attendances are notoriously fickle’. Coming in at No.10 ‘Astill scored his first run in county cricket, pushing the ball to the on, and was cheered encouragingly. Llewellyn served him some slows, which the youngster appreciated, dispatching one to the boundary. The Leicester Daily Mercury 46 Leicester Daily Mercury , 23 August 1906. 23 The Prodigy A youthful-looking Ewart Astill with much to look forward to.