Lives in Cricket No 38 - Lionel Robinson

87 Chapter Seven: The death of Lionel Robinson and the fate of his cricket ground The last rites As Armstrong’s team left Norfolk, their collective tail somewhat between their legs, the atmosphere at Old Buckenham must have resembled that of a town that has just seen the circus depart. The feeling that an era was coming to a close can only have been increased when the press announced that there would be a sale at the Royal Hotel, Norwich, on Saturday, 6 August when a John D Wood would be offering up for sale numerous sporting and agricultural property from the Old Buckenham estate as well as nearly 900 acres of land, a sizeable part of Robinson’s domain. Alas, if Lionel was in dire need of money, it was not forthcoming as many items were withdrawn, unsold. As was stated in chapter five, neither Lionel’s physical health nor the state of his bank balance were conducive to the resumption of country house cricket on any significant scale and it is a clear sign of his lack of further ambitions that he dispensed with Archie MacLaren. Archie returned to life on the breadline. He started by taking a coaching engagement at Lancashire, but his undiplomatic manner meant that he was released after only two years’ service. In later years he had to turn his hand to keeping a hotel (where, perhaps unsurprisingly, he was too rude to his guests for his own good), to importing willow from Spain to make cricket bats and to further coaching, a role in which he made innovatory use of films that he had commissioned. He returned to the management of cricket tours, captaining the MCC tour to Australia and New Zealand in 1922-23 (where he brought his first-class career to an end with an unbeaten double century at Wellington) and overseeing the visit of S.B.Joel’s XI to South Africa in 1924-25. He also revived his career as a journalist, writing regularly for The Cricketer in the 1920s and 1930s and published two instructional volumes on cricket. In the mid 1930s, his wife Maud inherited a sizeable fortune and they were able to retire, building an estate on 150 acres near Bracknell and playing the bountiful hosts, rather as Archie’s ex-employer, Lionel Robinson, had done before him. 63 Only one more match was arranged in the summer of 1921 and that too involved hosting a set of international tourists; this time the Philadelphian Pilgrims, the fourth fixture of whose tour involved them visiting Old Buckenham in early August for a two-day match. 63 In 1938 he journeyed to Hollywood to visit Sir C Aubrey Smith, who had also skippered England at Test cricket, and was not too proud to take a walk- on part behind Smith, who was starring in Alexander Korda’s film, The Four Feathers ; he appeared as a veteran of the Crimean War and was paid two guineas for two days’ work. Archie died of cancer in 1944 at the age of 72.