Lives in Cricket No 42 - Frank and George Mann

46 A New Captain for England sent it slowly ambling along the ground towards silly short-leg. It had slipped out of his hand. Mann went out to intercept it, and swiped it to the spectators, some of whom were so annoyed that they started the Australian demonstration, and compelled Mr. Douglas to walk to the boundary and rebuke them. The article went on to discuss the rights and wrongs of Frank’s decision to hit the ball. Some said that, as the umpire had not announced a no-ball, the batsman was in his rights to hit it. Others put forward the case that the ball was obviously a misdelivery and that the etiquette of the game clearly suggested that it should have been left alone. The article turned to Law 12 and pointed out that, in MCC Decisions and Interpretations , it was laid down that ‘when the ball has been delivered but remains stationary before reaching the striker, no runs can be added to the score unless it has been struck by the striker. The striker has the right to hit the ball without interference from the field.’ It is easy to imagine Frank swinging his bat like a golf club and taking great delight in choosing the direction for his swipe before letting fly, but on the other hand, surely his options were limited and once the choice had been made, some of the fielders would have had plenty of time to position themselves to prevent the ball from reaching the boundary? Perhaps everyone was enjoying the humour of the situation and just let the joke play out, not realising the potential for something as serious as an ‘Australian Demonstration’. The promising Winchester schoolboy John Guise made his debut for Middlesex in that match at Leyton. In contrast to 1921, when Frank gave trials to eight new amateurs, Guise was the only newcomer in 1922. Like Gubby Allen before him, Guise was still playing school cricket and not due to enter university until the autumn. Allen was also in the match at Leyton, having joined Middlesex after the Varsity Match: he played in nine county matches after Frank Mann had promised Gubby’s mother that he would Despite the Middlesex successes of 1920 and 1921, the Morning Post, in this ‘open letter to Mr F.T.Mann’, agonised in the middle of the 1922 season about the character of championship cricket.