Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

50 been bottom but one, above only hapless Worcestershire. A few expensive wickets, but including Rhodes and Hardstaff, in crushing defeats against the ‘Tykes’, the ‘Lacemen’ and the Lancastrians proved his fitness and resilience. These qualities were then called for in the fourth game against the ‘Cobblers’, who were just beginning perhaps their best- ever season to this day in winning over half their matches, losing but one and only narrowly conceding Championship honours to Yorkshire. In a total of 430 three of the first four batsmen fell to Astill in an analysis of 46 overs, 13 maidens, 108 runs and five wickets. Then at Trent Bridge a further 42 overs brought him five for 89 with A.O.Jones, George Gunn and Payton among his victims. Perhaps he was getting tired, for in the following match against Kent he took only two for 45 and one for 24, respectable enough figures except that the wicket was so bad that Blythe had match figures of fifteen for 45. Only King with a first-innings analysis of eight for 26 could offer competition as the ‘Hoppers’ won by eight wickets. In their first effort Leicestershire had mustered their lowest-ever score, a disastrous 25, to which Astill contributed just a single. Less fearsome opposition then enabled a battle-hardened Astill to enjoy an empurpled phase in which he took 29 wickets in four matches at an average of under 14 each. On the only day on which play was possible against Worcestershire, Astill and his fellow-spinner King dismissed their opponents without help from any other bowler, and continued their form into the next match at Nuneaton where they again bowled unchanged in dispatching the Warwickshire batsmen for 85. Astill then followed up his five for 26, in 21 overs, with a further five to give his side their first victory of the season, their opponents their first defeat and himself match figures of ten for 88. The crucial dismissal was that of the hard-hitting top-scorer in Warwickshire’s second innings, Baker, caught by Knight, after victory had seemed certain with 22 needed to win and five wickets in hand. Thus buoyed up he took five wickets in an innings for the third time in succession in a comfortable victory over Hampshire, from which he emerged with match-figures of eight for 101. His seven further wickets against Derbyshire on the Ivanhoe Gardens pitch at Ashby-de-la-Zouch were then negated by an ignominious collapse by the home county in the fourth innings. The defeat would, however, have been narrowed but that Astill ‘was punished quite severely without any intention of the sort on the part of his opponents’. Wickets he found harder to come by in the second half of the season, and he obtained but two in Leicestershire’s other victory, over Sussex at Aylestone Road. His one substantial contribution came in the home game versus Worcestershire, to whom a thunderstorm gave a narrow victory, their only one of the season: five wickets for 42 runs in a first innings of 247 were supplemented by a further five for 33 in the second. Thereafter, although he dismissed opening bat Rhodes cheaply in both innings at Bramall Lane, 107 in the first ‘completely beating the soundest defence in Yorkshire with his faster ball’, only ten other opponents fell to him in 107 Thus having his wicket three times in four innings during the season. Next Year, Sometime, Never