Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

66 The Batsman and Fielder I do not blame him in any way, for slip-fielders cannot be done to order, and Astill has done his best to occupy the position which, last season, it seemed Lord would fill admirably.’ That same year, however, there is a reference to a ‘clever catch [off G.N.Bignell of Hampshire] in a position he is making his own in the Leicestershire field – a mixture of second slip and backward point close in’. Before the Great War and for a few years after the commonest epithet for a catch taken by Astill was ‘clever’. As far as can be ascertained today this seems to mean not perfectly simple, neat and unfussy, one-handed, often low down and of a ball travelling fast. Later the word ‘clever’ is generally supplanted, in an inflation of language continued to the present day, by ‘brilliant’, a word that was and is applied to most catches that are not ‘regulation’. In his later 40s, and especially when captain, he sometimes fielded away from the wicket at mid off or cover, and as late as August 1937 made a catch off Leyland in the former position that his local paper described Preparing for a new season? Astill is pictured in the nets in 1925 with Frank Bale (centre) and Bill Shipman (left).