Lives in Cricket No 38 - Lionel Robinson

37 Chapter Three: Putting Old Buckenham on the cricketing map – Archie MacLaren starts to earn his beer money Lionel hires Archie Whenever Archie MacLaren actually moved his family to the estate at Old Buckenham, Lionel had formally appointed him as his ‘private secretary’, effectively manager of cricket, by the start of the 1912 season. Some sources, such as Jeremy Malies, state that he was also put in charge of Robinson’s stud farm, but this seems to be unlikely; Lionel and his partner William Clark had been successfully involved in the breeding of horses for many years (as will be described below) and knew far more about racing than Archie. Malies states that MacLaren hired a few experienced grooms and, pretending to know what he was doing, hoped for the best but few, if any, details of his involvement with the equestrian operation survive; he was, by nature, fond of ‘slow horses’ and Malies reports that a later attempt to run a stud farm was ‘disastrous’. However it was achieved, Archie’s appointment to manage the cricket turned out to be an inspired choice. Robinson had top-quality facilities, large amounts of money to spend and (probably) an awareness that he needed a knowledgeable and influential figure to run his cricket operations efficiently. A suitable candidate could not, obviously, be a professional, nor would Lionel feel able to defer to a ‘junior’ amateur; the successful applicant would need to be a gentleman of considerable standing in the world of cricket 31 and, furthermore, one nearing the end of his first-class career; for it would be very difficult to continue playing if most of his time was spent in the middle of nowhere. In hindsight, Archie MacLaren was the obvious choice. Not only was he, as ever, dodging the bailiffs and desperate for regular employment to pay for his regular intake of falling-down water, he also had suitable Antipodean credentials. Michael Down and Colin Riley both 31 Evelyn Metcalfe recounts a tale of some bad behaviour by Lionel which exemplified the need for a captain with both authority and self-confidence who could stand up to his employer. Metcalfe found himself captaining a team including Aubrey Faulkner who was, at that time, at the peak of his power as a bowler of leg-breaks and googlies and far too skilful for the visiting side. Inevitably, Metcalfe found himself enforcing the follow-on but, taking pity on his hapless opponents, he declined to put Faulkner on to bowl. Unsurprisingly, wickets fell more slowly and Lionel began to fear that an outright victory would elude his team. He began to rage on the boundary, shouting for Faulkner to be put on. When the sky filled with black clouds he became even more animated and his skipper finally yielded; Faulkner was given the ball just in time to finish off the innings before a torrential thunderstorm. In his account in The Cricketer , Metcalfe states that it was the fear that he might never be invited to Old Buckenham again that finally induced him to use Faulkner – it is not entirely clear that he was joking ...