Lives in Cricket No 38 - Lionel Robinson

72 who were far too penetrative (in their very different ways) for most of the visiting batsmen. So enthusiastic were the Australians to continue kicking the Mother Country while it was down that they had coerced the MCC into hosting another Ashes tour the very next English summer and the two teams travelled back to Britain on the same ship. Although the outlook for English cricket fans did not look very rosy when Armstrong’s team arrived, they were about to get much worse. One of the less highly considered of the tourists was the paceman, Ted McDonald; he had played in the final three Tests in the winter, capturing only six wickets at an expensive 65.33 runs each and was not regarded as a major threat. However, when he was given the new ball in the first match of the tour against Leicestershire, he demonstrated his liking for English conditions by taking eight for 41 and four for 63 as the hosts went down by the heavy margin of an innings and 152 runs. Before long he had formed a deadly new-ball partnership with Gregory which terrorised and rolled over batsmen in both county and Test matches. The tourists at Old Buckenham Before McDonald and Gregory could begin their country-wide rampage, they were obliged to visit Norfolk for their game against Lionel Robinson’s XI. Archie, who had been more than willing to let other senior amateurs skipper his sides in previous important matches, decided that the opportunity was too good to miss and he decided to play in his first first- class match since 1914. 52 At this point the Australians had not started their ‘reign of terror’ so Archie had no reason to boast of how he could defeat them if only he was to be given a free hand. The game was thus of no more significance than any other warm-up game, except that Robinson was being represented by a particularly strong side. 53 The team was built about a core of established amateurs (Johnny Douglas, Donald Knight, Vallance Jupp, ‘Jack’ White and Percy George Fender) 54 , some promising youngsters from Cambridge University (keeper George Wood, Clem Gibson and Percy Chapman) and a pair of the best professional batsmen that money could buy (Jack Hobbs and ‘Patsy’ Hendren, the latter playing his third first-class game at Old Buckenham Hall). Michael Down states that Archie had selected the team ‘with the idea of fast-scoring, accurate bowling and, most important, brilliant fielding’. 55 It was a team described by Ronald Mason as being ‘of all the talents’, worthy of a festival match, perhaps at Scarborough, at the end rather than the beginning of the season and its positioning within the tour requires some brief consideration. 52 Before the match, Lionel was quoted as saying that Archie’s presence as captain was worth ‘a hundred runs’. 53 Lionel wrote to Pelham Warner to apologise that the match could not be used as an official Test trial, as Warner had requested, stating that his side had already been selected. 54 Archie had originally chosen Greville Stevens but he was unable to obtain leave from Oxford and was replaced by Fender. 55 Archie employed similar criteria when selecting his Eastbourne side; the main difference is that the team he selected to play at Old Buckenham was composed largely of Test-quality cricketers at or near their peak whilst the eleven selected for Eastbourne consisted almost entirely of ‘long-shots’, none of whom had caught the selectors’ eye during the season. The visit of the Australians In 1921