Lives in Cricket No 38 - Lionel Robinson

40 Putting Old Buckenham on the cricketing map of contradictions and a character at once ambiguous, driven and revealing of his time. At times Archie could be warm, insensitive, charming and arrogant. He could combine ... the most staggering misjudgements and the most piercing insights.’ Others were even less kind. George Lyttleton said: ‘It is disillusioning to realise that Majestic MacLaren was an extremely stupid, prejudiced and pig-headed man’ and John Arlott more or less finished him off with: ‘It was MacLaren’s tragedy that all his virtues bred their own faults. He was strong but inflexible, intelligent but intolerant: single-minded but humourless; impressive on the field but often disappointingly petty off it.’ One sign of his pettiness was that, as Mailes wrote, when the MCC chose ‘Plum’ Warner to captain the 1903-4 Ashes tour, ‘he [MacLaren] refused point-blank to tour under Warner and vented his frustrations by spattering abuse in some graceless articles ...’ in the Daily Chronicle . Where Archie did score most highly was that he had a proven record in managing top-class cricket and moving in all the right circles; he had made three Ashes tours, having been in charge of the last two, and he knew everyone who was anyone in the upper echelons of English cricket. This enabled him both to persuade many first-class players to turn out for Lionel’s teams 32 ensuring that competitive and well-balanced elevens were put into the field in a logical programme of fixtures and also to persuade the authorities to confer first-class status on the most prestigious matches at Old Buckenham. Whilst his colonial background would have carried weight in persuading Australians to visit Norfolk, both as individuals and in touring sides, it is harder to imagine that the brash, brusque 32 Given Archie’s imperious manner and senior status, it is easy to imagine that many of the younger players that he ‘invited’ to Old Buckenham, who were on the periphery of the first-class game, might have found that they had little choice but to agree to make the trip to Norfolk. Lionel Robinson’s first cricket ground at Old Buckenham, now a paddock at the stud farm with the thatched pavilion converted to a dwelling. (Ron Brewer)