Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

51 the remaining ten matches, as his wiles were frustrated, on occasion by batsmen but more frequently by unrelenting rain. Finally, as ‘Reynard’ recorded, having ‘for the greater part of the season … sighed and longed for some sunshine, bright and irradiating, as wrapped the ground in a glow of freshness and greenness and beauty … this morning [o]n the absolutely last day of the season our desires were fulfilled’. But by then it was too late, and Astill’s hopes of possibly reaching a hundred victims in a season had been completely washed away. Leicestershire’s parlous financial situation was much improved in 1913 because of generally fine weather, Saturday starts, the use of as many as four out-grounds and a shilling-fund run by local newspapers. On the playing side they obtained one more victory than in the previous season but dropped one position to fourteenth. Whereas King and Astill had the previous year taken 171 Championship wickets between them at an average fractionally below 20, they now took only 69 at well over 33. Bill Shipman ensured that Ratby’s contribution still topped the hundred mark and the emerging George Geary and Alec Skelding took up much of the slack, but Astill’s new-found bite was lost on the generally hard and batsman-friendly wickets, and he suffered the ignominy again of being dropped from the side while never being selected in a first-class game by MCC. His presence at Lord’s because of his duties on the ground staff there did, however, lead to the single known instance in his career of him acting as scorer in a ‘public’ match, that between MCC and the Royal Artillery in July. The one consolation for this season of 1913 was his batting, for he three times improved his highest score, but yet, if one subtracts those three innings, his average drops from 15.96 to once more under 10. Next Year, Sometime, Never The Bath Grounds, Ashby-de-la-Zouch, complete with railway line, where Leicestershire played 42 first-class matches between 1912 and 1964.