Lives in Cricket No 38 - Lionel Robinson

67 the MCC to scramble to 138. On the second morning it was Norfolk’s turn to bat on the far from dry wicket and they fared even less well than the MCC; apart from Eric Fulcher, who scored 47 at a run a minute, the only man to score more than six runs was the skipper who, having put himself in to bat at ‘jack’, made an undefeated 21. A final total of 89 left the home side with a deficit of 49. With runs being scarce and time running out, the MCC reached 59 for eight before declaring to set Norfolk 109 to win in 100 minutes. Norfolk made a much better fist of their second innings but three men were run out, most importantly the hard-hitting Harold Watson who had scored 24 runs before being dismissed. When stumps were drawn, the scores were level, with Norfolk having two wickets to fall – one of those was Archie, who was left stranded on 12. A most exciting finish! The resurrection of the Old Buckenham Village Cricket Club Whilst the ground at Old Buckenhamwas no longer in regular use for games of a high standard, Robinson was quite happy to let the reconstituted village club play on his square. Some of the players in this post-war club were survivors from the team which had played at Old Buckenham before Robinson’s arrival and a perusal of Kelly’s Directory of Norfolk for 1916 reveals that many of the family names of players in the cricket club are also found as occupants of the village (names such as Allington, Derisley, Gedge, Loveday and Whitehand). It would seem to have been a genuine village side, strengthened by the appearance of groundsman Porter, Harold Dougill (who went on to play in 18 games for the full Norfolk side), L.W.J. ‘Len’ Hart, and by the reappearance of ‘Squibs’. It wasn’t strengthened by the appearances of Lionel’s sons-in-law; ‘Jim Jack’ Evans played once, without being asked either to bat or to bowl, while John Brockbank, who played six completed innings, only managed to break his ‘duck’ twice. Despite their assistance, the village side continued to prosper into the 1920s. Len Hart – another forgotten man of Norfolk cricket Leonard William John Hart, generally known as Len, was born in Thorpe St Andrew on 2 December 1888. He was one of five children born to William and Charlotte Hart; his father was a journeyman carpenter but Len was upwardly mobile and trained to become a schoolmaster. He married May Winifred Jackson in 1912, by which time it had already been established that he was an all-round sportsman. He would go on to excel at cricket, association football, golf, bowls and lawn tennis. Although his first serious sport was as a footballer playing for Thorpe Village Football Club, it was in cricket that he made his name, on and off the field. Hart’s first teaching post was at Helhoughton, where he founded the Raynham and District Football League, but he was transferred to Old Buckenham in 1916. When the war ended he played a major role in the reforming of the village cricket and football clubs and it soon became clear that he was comfortably the best cricketer in the village eleven, for whom he turned out regularly. For the next few years, whether or not the village side was successful often depended on his personal performances with both bat and ball and he regularly took over 100 wickets in a season. It was Hart who was the The Great War