Lives in Cricket No 42 - Frank and George Mann

17 but ran out of partners in his side’s innings. Now the runs had started to come; Warner, it seems, was delighted and urged his protégé to continue to bat aggressively whenever he went to the wicket. Apart from cricket and rackets at university, Frank also played rugby union in the winter, 7 where his build and strength were ideal for a position as a forward. He earned his second Blue, one of four Pembroke College players, when playing in the Varsity Match at Queen’s Club on 13 December 1910, but was on the losing side as Oxford won 23-18, after leading at half-time. He did not attract the attention of The Times reporter in that newspaper’s account of the match, and although many Blues went on to play top-level club rugby he played only briefly for Blackheath, then one of London’s leading sides. After Frank left university without adding to his academic qualifications, Sir Edward decided his son’s future lay with the brewery. But he expected Frank, now aged 23, to learn the business by starting at the very bottom and arranged for an apprenticeship with the Styles and Winch Brewery on the banks of the River Medway at Maidstone in Kent to begin in 1912. But it was agreed that Frank would be permitted to keep playing cricket for Middlesex throughout the summer, at least while ‘Plum’ Warner continued to see him as a regular and important member of the team. Charles Julian Mann was the last of the four sons of Sir Edward Mann to enjoy the benefits of a public-school and university education. His application to Pembroke College at Cambridge University in August 1910 gave brief details of his record at Malvern College: ‘School Cricket XI. School Racquets Pair. Head of House.’ and he began attendance after matriculation in October 1911. Wisden reports that he scored 371 runs at 18.55 in his two seasons of Malvern College cricket, well down the school’s averages, but these were in sides where several contemporaries went on to play first-class cricket. At Cambridge, he studied history up to 1915 but was excused a special examination in military history in the Michaelmas Term of that year and qualified to graduate by proxy in order that he could join the Scots Guards. He was gazetted as a temporary second lieutenant on 8 September 1914 on the same day as his older brother Frank. 7 Perhaps surprisingly, because Malvern College was primarily a soccer school at this time. Education and Progress of Four Brothers