Lives in Cricket No 38 - Lionel Robinson

69 The Great War in at Old Buckenham, Hart would turn out for other local teams such as Attleborough - he was clearly fanatically enthusiastic about playing. It has been suggested that he played so much cricket that it was a wonder that he could fit in the time to do any school-mastering; however the Norfolk Education Committee turned what the Eastern Daily Press described as a ‘Nelsonian eye’ to his absences and his son, Peter, claimed that his father’s absences did not stop him being remembered as a ‘damn good schoolmaster’. There happened to be a cricket-playing parson named Rev L.Hart based locally and Len would occasionally play under the name of the ‘Rev Hart’; however, very few people were fooled by this somewhat transparent alias. Pupils remember Hart, dressed in his colourful South Norfolk blazer, letting them out of school early on match days so that he could return to his cricket. It has been proposed that his pupils would not have minded his absences for he was well-known to be something of a martinet in the classroom. With Robinson ailing, but still alive, the facilities at Old Buckenham were under-used but once the owner passed away there was a vacuum in country house cricket which Hart and a few like-minded cricketers hurried to fill. In 1923 he was one of the founders of the South Norfolk Cricket Club, which was granted permission to base itself at Old Buckenham Hall by Lionel’s widow Mary. Like Hart’s own sides, South Norfolk were superior to the villagers in terms of social class and only Hart turned out for both elevens on a regular basis. They were also a much stronger team; inspection of the averages for the two teams in 1923 makes this amply clear, in that Hart was clearly still the dominant player in the village side but was just another member of the South Norfolk eleven. The story of how this club flourished and how Hart raised his game to become a highly effective bowler in top-quality club cricket will be dealt with in chapter seven. Hart continued to arrange fixtures and play for the South Norfolk Club until their demise in the early 1930s more or less put an end to his career as an organiser of cricket and he returned to being merely a player, albeit a fanatically keen one. However the days of his greatest service to cricket in the county were still to come. In 1951 he took over the dual role of scorer and team manager for the senior Norfolk side and remained in post until he retired in 1967; he continued to visit Lakenham until failing eyesight in his last couple of years prevented him from attending. Serving under three skippers (Laurie Barrett, Peter Powell and Bill Edrich), Hart’s obituary in the Norwich Mercury makes it clear that he was always ready to contribute ideas and to ask for better facilities for ‘his’ players. In the 1973 Norfolk annual report, Laurie Barrett referred to him as ‘Uncle Len’ as an indication of the affection with which he was regarded by ‘so many young players’. His early years as a schoolmaster clearly prepared him for this role, although he had since switched careers and taken responsibility for organising the education classes at Norwich Prison. In his final years, Hart lived in Plumstead Road East, Norwich with his second wife, Doris (nee Barber), whom he married in 1963 when aged