Lives in Cricket No 36 - WE Astill

90 The All-round Sportsman and spins, and would have disliked the powerful rackets of the present age that, but for the most exceptional players, call for strength rather than delicacy of touch. One wonders how during MCC’s stay at Jamnagar in 1927 he enjoyed the red courts of ‘Ranji’ which had been described two years earlier by The Cricketer as ‘of a speed too quick for the over- forty brigade’. 163 One photograph from South Africa survives of him and an unidentified lady holding rackets, as does one of him and a partner walking with golf clubs at Christchurch in New Zealand in the winter of 1938/39. As early as 1922 The Cricketer had asserted that he possessed ‘a sound knowledge of golf’, 164 and whereas this probably did not mean as much at that time as it would today, when the ability to play golf seems almost a sine qua non for the leisure-time of a professional cricketer, yet the fact that two golf clubs, Birstall and Kibworth, sent representatives to his funeral, suggests an interest in this game on his part and probable membership of those local clubs. 165 A further photograph, stamped on the back with the name of the photographer (A.Robinson of Sheffield) shows him, hatless as usual even on the green, closely watching the course of his projectile while playing bowls. Although it would have been hard for an energetic and sport-loving boy never to engage in Association Football, his adult interest may well have been restricted to watching. The only surviving evidence seems to be in a letter that he wrote to his young female acquaintance Eileen Miller about the vagaries of Arthur Staples, an all-rounder for Nottinghamshire during the summer and goalkeeper for Mansfield Town during the winter: 166 I have been smiling over Arthur Staples & his goalkeeping of late … My papers today are full of his photographs, both “keeping them out” & “letting them through”. There is one where he has tipped the ball over the cross-bar, & I wondered if it were dropping somewhere near you. 163 23 May, p 67. 164 19 August, p 9. 165 The records of neither club go back to Astill’s time, when Kibworth was still at Wistow Lane and not at the present site of Weir Road. Mark Tottman, the secretary at Kibworth, informs me that he seems not to be mentioned in the centenary book, a history of the club. It is quite possible that a representative was sent to the funeral simply out of respect for a great local sportsman. 166 Letter to Eileen Miller, dated 27 January 1929.