Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

58 captain is rarely treated’. Far more frequent triumphs attended his bowling. At Hull he won the ‘marked respect’ of that redoubtable opening pair Holmes and Sutcliffe in taking five for 101. There followed Leicestershire’s first-ever match against Somerset, in which his confident 38 in the first innings was, by merely two runs, the second highest of the entire match. He then opened the bowling and dismissed four batsmen in an unsuccessful attempt to obtain the lead, but scored a further 28 to rescue his county from a parlous 30 for five yet leaving the visitors only 138 to obtain for victory. On an admittedly difficult wicket, however, he proceeded to snuff out their hopes with six more wickets, three being taken for a paltry six runs on the final morning, to finish with a match analysis of ten for 84. In the return at Weston-super-Mare only one of his colleagues scored more than his 54 runs in the match, two of his five catches in an innings (only Rodney Pratt has ever caught more for the county) helped King to a hat-trick, and his four wickets for a single run on the second morning so restricted the home side’s lead that a hard-hit 71 by Rudd and fine bowling by King and himself were sufficient to bring victory. The Somerset players must have wished that the two counties had not ended their avoidance of each other, and may have had a premonition that Astill now had their measure: in two matches he had already taken 19 wickets against them for 9.15 runs each, and in the only 15 matches of his career against this opposition 114 he was destined to dismiss 83 batsmen at 13.84, his lowest average versus any county. Other bowling highlights were five for 85 v Kent when, in an otherwise humiliating defeat, he quite outshone his opening partner, the lightning- fast Skelding; seven for 47 on a rain-damaged pitch v Northamptonshire which gained his county a lead of a single run and paved the way for ultimate victory; six for 46 v Yorkshire with the notable scalps of Sutcliffe, Hirst and Rhodes in a drawn game quite spoilt by the weather; and five for 24 v Derbyshire which was sufficient to bring an innings victory over the bottom club despite a first-innings lead of only 67 after a declaration with only two hours left for play: (‘Leicestershire have done nothing more remarkable in the cricket field for years’, proclaimed the Leicester Sports Mercury .) Organisers of the Hastings Festival were impressed by Astill’s performances as he was selected to play for the North against the South, but though batting well he was given little bowling for a strong side and took no wicket. If he had played instead in his county’s last match of the season he may have taken the three still required for a first seasonal hundred. Nonetheless, the Leicester Sports Mercury enthusiastically declared that his ‘return to his best bowling form has been one of the outstanding things of the season and he clearly ranks high among the right arm medium pace bowlers of the present day.’ 114 The two teams did not meet each other for another long spell from 1923 to 1928 inclusive and subsequently not in 1931 or in the four years from 1933. The only two counties met by Leicestershire every year during Astill’s career were Derbyshire and Yorkshire, while Northamptonshire and Glamorgan were played every year after their elevation to first-class status. The New Man