Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

68 Chapter Seven The First ‘Doubles’ In his review of English cricket in 1921 Sydney Pardon, obsessed by the national team’s poor performance against Australia (to which a contributory cause he believed was the inclusion of weak teams, most notably Glamorgan, in the Championship), lugubriously pontificated that ‘during all the years’ in which he had edited Wisden ‘there has never been a season so disheartening’. Nonetheless for Leicestershire, although they moved up only two places to eleventh, the summer was indubitably a success with a new record of ten victories; 127 while for Ewart Astill it was, in his thirty-fourth year, a triumphant march to his first double of 1,000 runs and 100 wickets, the mark of the true all-rounder. Only once before, in 1912, had a Leicestershire player completed the ‘double’, and then Jack King had needed a few innings for MCC to complete the necessary runs. Astill, playing exclusively for his county, sailed past both targets, scoring 1,380 runs at an average of 27.05 and taking 153 wickets at 20.99 each. 128 His aggregate of runs was at the time the tenth best for his county; his total of wickets easily broke the Leicestershire record, Fred Geeson’s 121 of twenty years earlier, and has to the present day been beaten only once, by Jack Walsh with 170 in 1948; his ‘double’ is still the most comprehensive ever accomplished by a Leicestershire player. 129 On ten occasions he reached 50, including his first two centuries; on fifteen occasions he took five or more wickets in an innings, three times taking ten or more in a match and eleven times taking eight or more. In only four Championship games did he fail to score either fifty runs or dismiss five batsmen. But for an injury to his back late in the season his figures would assuredly have been even higher. His number of wickets and average would have been improved also had Leicestershire’s fielding not been poor and at times even lackadaisical; while his batting average would have been higher with a little more luck, for he was run out no fewer than seven times though usually not at fault himself (once, for instance, when the occasional player Jack Middleton declined to run and once when he backed up only to see his partner’s drive deflected off the bowler’s foot onto the wicket). Wisden mused as to how he would have fared ‘if 127 They would probably have achieved even more victories if their schedule had included matches against the lowly Worcestershire and Essex. On the other hand the other county not played was Middlesex, who won the Championship that year. 128 In the Championship his figures were 1,348 runs at 27.51 and 152 wickets at 20.25. In the whole country only Kennedy, Newman (both with poorer averages), Woolley, Freeman and Parker took more wickets. 129 Jackson scored 1,480 runs in 1955 but took only 109 wickets, and Astill himself made 1,601 runs (1,515 for Leicestershire) in 1925 but needed representative matches to reach 105 wickets.