Lives in Cricket No 42 - Frank and George Mann

61 Chapter Ten The Search for Test Players: 1923 Frank was back in England from the South African tour in time to captain Middlesex in their first Championship match of the 1923 season. They made a very poor start and by 19 June had won only two of their first nine County Championship matches, including losing home and away to Yorkshire. There had been some great allround performances from Hearne, including 140 and twelve for 128 against Sussex; an unbeaten 175 against Yorkshire out of 289, with Hendren and Murrell the only other batsmen to reach double figures; 232 against Hampshire; and eleven for 134 against Warwickshire. Hendren too, had been in great form with 152 against Essex, 111 against Warwickshire and 177 against Hampshire, but neither had received the usual support except at Southampton against Hampshire where Frank was able to declare at 642 for three, after centuries from Dales and Lee as well as Hearne and Hendren. Middlesex did beat an Oxford University eleven containing their own Greville Stevens but could only draw at Cambridge where Frank was clean bowled by Gubby Allen. At Lord’s they beat a West Indies touring team which was not yet considered strong enough to be awarded any Tests that year, even though it contained Constantine and Challenor. Frank’s contribution to all this was restricted to a couple of half-centuries, and his top score of 44 out of 110 after following on against Lancashire, intended to be one of his match-saving efforts, failed to stop his side losing by an innings. Middlesex continued to be reliant upon their small group of professionals while each year drafting in young amateurs, usually from school or university, to make debuts. There were seven in 1923 with only Sydney Beton, Arthur Childs-Clarke and Ernest North showing any promise. Although there were no Test matches to be played that year, the MCC appointed three selectors, supported by Frank as current England captain, to look at players for possible selection as support for the established members of the England eleven, Hobbs, Hendren, Hearne, Sandham and Woolley, in the five Test series at home against South Africa in 1924 and to earn places on the 1924/25 winter tour to Australia. The selectors chosen were H.D.G. ‘Shrimp’ Leveson Gower, John Daniell, the Somerset captain, and L.H.W.Troughton, the recently retired Kent captain. They had asked for two trial matches to be slotted into the 1923 calendar in order to assess players who had made their Test debuts in South Africa under Frank, plus some promising uncapped players. It was necessary for Frank to make himself available for both those matches, as well as the two Gentlemen and Players matches at Lord’s and The Oval. So he had to miss the game at Lord’s against Gloucestershire in order to captain the South against the North at Old Trafford at the end of June. The match featured six from his