Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

53 Next Year, Sometime, Never team-mate Shipman, in partnership with him for a while, added another 53 as their county reached 356, but all to no avail as the visitors won by seven wickets. The talk on the first day, a Saturday, of the next match at Chesterfield was almost exclusively of Charles Edmund de Trafford, who had first played for, and captained, Leicestershire in their pre-first- class days. In his second game after a seven-year absence he appeared in his fiftieth year after his county had lost three cheap wickets with a further two to fall at 11 and 41. Hard driving 108 brought him to 137 in two hours, his highest score in first-class cricket. With this inspiration before him Astill hit two sixes and nine fours to end with his own highest score hitherto, an undefeated 75 in a total of 351, comfortably sufficient to ensure an innings victory on the Monday. Thereafter, however, a succession of low scores and poor bowling (relieved only by four wickets in the second innings against Yorkshire and a five-wicket haul in the return with Derbyshire) was ended by his omission from the team for the last few matches. Was he comforted or embarrassed by the news announced in the Leicester Daily Mercury of 30 August? Owing to W.G.Quaife being unable to make the journey, Astill, the Leicestershire professional, has received a remunerative appointment for the winter months at one of the important colleges at Kimberley. Astill will sail for South Africa on September 13. Whether he was comforted or embarrassed, his southern sojourn did nothing to revivify his county career in 1914. His only first-class successes came in two matches for MCC, for which he took 12 wickets for 164 runs. In the first, against Hampshire, he opened the bowling in both innings, on the second occasion bowling unchanged with the Norfolk player Harold Watson to win the match for his side, but the wicket was distinctly unfavourable for the batsmen. In three matches for MCC against minor counties he showed good form with the bat, being out only twice in scoring 146 runs with a not out 75 against Cambridgeshire as his highest innings. Such form, however, he was entirely unable to repeat for his county: he played in but three matches, the first and the last two of the season, conceding 204 runs in taking a paltry three wickets and scoring 63 runs. His career figures in 150 first-class matches were now 1,784 runs at 9.91, 488 wickets at 23.91 and 96 catches. His 451 wickets for his county put him fifth after King, Odell, Jayes and Woodcock among Leicestershire’s bowlers at the time, but apart from his work in 1912 he had not been worth his place in the side for the last few seasons. He was no longer a youngster but a man of 26. Surely Leicestershire would not persevere with him any further; surely he must now make use of his training in accountancy and seek his livelihood in his father’s or some other business; surely he had exemplified Cyril Connolly’s later dictum in another context, ‘Whom the gods wish to destroy they first call promising’. 109 108 He scorned batting gloves and on one occasion was reputed to have straight- driven a boundary off his knuckles. 109 Enemies of Promise , cap 3.