Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

72 made any difficulties for his new co-director in fulfilling his professional cricketing commitments. Astill told his youthful readers in 1925 that this employment ‘keeps me busy enough in the winter months’, but in fact by that time he was usually coaching or playing cricket in sunnier climes during the English winters, so his position may have often been distinctly ‘non-executive’. No doubt his association with the business helped turnover at the tills. After early June in 1922 the weather deteriorated with the result that as many as eight of Leicestershire’s matches were left drawn, in contrast with only two the preceding year. The county won only six games and slipped to fourteenth in the Championship table. This was hardly Astill’s fault, for he probably played at the same level as before, weather being responsible for the decline in his batting average and the improvement in that for bowling. The ‘double’ he achieved a second time, 1,210 runs at 23.72 with six fifties and 144 wickets at 19.23, including 136 at 18.80 in the Championship. These included fifteen five-wicket innings and four ten-wicket matches. For his county he bowled almost exactly twice as many overs as his two closest colleagues (this time Geary and Benskin) combined, and was forced ‘to do an enormous amount of bowling, as both Skelding and Geary were laid up by strains at various times’. 136 He began the season quietly, making little impression on Nottinghamshire but scoring a stubborn, ‘gallant’ and ‘discriminating’ 46 against Lancashire and 49 against Kent supplemented by five wickets in both these games. At the end of May his 33 in five minutes under two hours, ‘the outstanding example of stolidity’, enabled his county to register a rare first-innings lead over Yorkshire, while his first half-century of the season (66) on the last day showed him in more carefree mood. The first victory came in the next match, the Bank Holiday fixture with Northamptonshire, when he took six for 36 with ‘deadly offbreaks’ to ensure that Leicestershire did not need to bat a second time. A collection for his benefit fund from the first day’s holiday throng, which numbered about 15,000, garnered him £15 12s 0d, just over £664 at 2013 prices. 137 Undismayed he proceeded to please his home crowd in the next match with 43 and 75 against Surrey, the latter score made in 80 minutes with 13 boundaries, four in Percy Fender’s first over; but the match was unnecessarily lost through an over- generous declaration by Fowke. Apart from 78 at Burton and a haul of five for 67 in the home encounter with Somerset from which rain helped the visitors to escape with a draw, he accomplished little in the next few matches apart from a few cheerful vignettes with the bat and a regular two or three wickets per innings. The weekday game with Sussex in early July was awarded to Astill as a benefit. He had performed nobly for his native county and had ‘always loved the game, and, therefore, played it with a zest which he has never lost’; yet, as ‘Reynard’ remarkably but presciently observed’, as essentially 136 The Cricketer Annual, 1922/23 , p 73. 137 See measuringworth.com for discussion of ways of calculating purchasing power. The First ‘Doubles’