Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

107 place by the turn of the 1880s. When at ‘home’, Alfred was evidently keen to play at the highest standard available to him, subject to having a first loyalty to Radnorshire. His first match for Herefordshire, or Gentlemen of Herefordshire, was in 1881, his last in 1919; his first for Radnorshire, or Gentlemen of Radnorshire, was in 1885 and his last in 1922. In all that time I have a note of just four centuries that he made for Herefordshire, and two for Radnorshire, though these were not the only teams he played for once he had moved to Tarrington in 1902. But it was that move that - whether by coincidence or not - that led, 17 years later, to his becoming a first-class cricketer. For the next village between Tarrington and Hereford was Stoke Edith, home at the time to P.H.Foley, cricket-lover extraordinaire and the prime mover behind Worcestershire’s elevation to first-class status in 1899. Foley’s large estate was home to a club side known as Frome Valley (sometimes given as Froome Valley), and they were Alfred’s home club throughout his years at Tarrington. More significantly still, Foley’s land agent was one H.K.Foster, captain of the Worcestershire side; and he just happened to live at Tarrington Court, just a long six-hit fromAlfred’s home in the Tarrington vicarage. Foster was a regular player, when available, for Frome Valley and for Herefordshire, The oldest of them all As this scorecard from 1885 shows, Green-Prices were stalwarts of early Radnorshire cricket. Another was F.C.Cobden, Cambridge’s hat-trick hero in the 1870 University match.