Lives in Cricket No 42 - Frank and George Mann

80 Education and War-Time eleven matches, batting mostly at No.6, scoring 361 runs with a best score of 41. 39 He played in the Varsity Match in July to earn his ‘blue‘ but did not appear in first-class cricket afterwards. In 1939 he was under a new captain, Peter Studd, the fourth member of his family to captain Cambridge University and future Lord Mayor of London in 1970. George played in fourteen matches, usually opening the batting, including the Varsity Match; he made his first first-class century against Leicestershire during an opening partnership of 262 with J.R.Thompson. He was asked to make his County Championship debut for Middlesex at Bradford against Yorkshire as a member of a team containing Jack Robertson, Syd Brown, Bill Edrich, Denis Compton, Gubby Allen, Leslie Compton, Fred Price, Jim Sims, and Jim Smith, under the captaincy of Ian Peebles, and played in a total of 12 matches. Peebles was delighted to have him in his side and reported that he was ‘immediately an immense asset, getting runs when they were most needed, always batting unselfishly entirely according to the interests of his side.’ His highest score was 88 against Sussex at Hove in a fourth-wicket stand of 223 with Edrich. He took over from Peebles as captain for the match at Lord’s against Warwickshire after Peebles and Walter Robins had left to enrol for military service, but the last match of the season against Kent was cancelled. In 1938 George had gained a lower second in Part I of the History Tripos and in 1939 a lower second in Part II, a reasonable outcome bearing in mind his time spent in whites. On 29 June 1939 he graduated BA by proxy. 40 Meanwhile John Pelham’s application for admission to Pembroke College, signed by his father in 1937, indicated that he had School Certificate passes in Mathematics, French, German, Latin and English and that his proposed study would be Modern Languages. Instead of taking his place at University in 1938, he took a year out to stay ‘in a woodcutter’s hut’ in Bavaria to continue his studies of the German language. He made his first- class cricket debut for Middlesex at Fenner’s in 1939 playing against his brother in the Cambridge University team and actually outscored George with a first-innings top-score of 62 runs to 32. He now joined George in the University side, making his debut against the West Indian tourists and, facing a rampant Learie Constantine, went in at 48 for three, still 95 runs short of preventing an innings defeat, to score an unbeaten 59 to take the University to safety. He would have expected to earn his ‘Blue’ that year but was prevented from playing cricket for several weeks before and after the Varsity Match with an infected eye. He attended Pembroke College for the three terms of the 1938/39 academic year and was given a lower second class in Part I of the Historical Tripos. 39 As a bowler of (now) unrecorded method, George conceded 212 runs off 36.5 overs (none of them maidens) in 1938, without taking a wicket. His bowling services were not called upon so frequently in 1939, and his University figures in his second season comprised one for 124 off 17 overs. The ‘one’ was the wicket of Brian Valentine caught by A.H.Brodhurst for 39 against the Free Foresters at Fenner’s. In August 1939 he took two wickets at the fag-end of a drawn Championship match at Hove and this eventually brought his career bowling average down to a less-stratospheric 129.66, though still at the overall rate of 5.63 per six-ball over. 40 He was playing for the University in a two-day match against Surrey at The Oval at the time.