Lives in Cricket No 38 - Lionel Robinson

63 The Great War as the government deemed it necessary to keep sizeable forces in the Middle East and on the Continent. As well as replacing the ‘lost’ players, the authorities had to oversee the reconstitution of the structure of senior cricket. At Test level, the Australians were keen to resume Ashes tours as soon as possible but such was the damage done to the infrastructure of English cricket that it was not until 1926 that the Australians were seriously stretched and eventually defeated in a series. At a lower level, school and club cricket also underwent a recuperative process. The area of the game where recovery was least successful and enduring was that of country house cricket. It is widely assumed that a disproportionate number of the upper-class men who had played this form of game before the war had perished while serving as junior officers on the Western front. It also seems clear that economic factors meant both that many of the surviving players now had to spend much more of their time in gainful employment rather than idling away their time in a succession of country mansions and that their one-time hosts no longer had the disposable income to provide a continuous stream of lavish hospitality to 22 young men of impeccable breeding. To what extent this general picture applies to events at Old Buckenham is unclear. What is known is that Robinson, who had ceased to be active in the world of high finance but who still had a sizeable fortune, did not resume his bankrolling of country house games at Old Buckenham after the Great The memorial given to Old Buckenham by Lionel after the Great War. (Tom Walshe)