Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

113 Neither do they, nor any of the several other newspapers consulted, make any comment about his age. But at 59 years and 185 days on his debut (and 59:186 on his last day as a first-class cricketer), Alfred Green-Price truly was the oldest British one-match wonder of them all - and the oldest one-match wonder to play through an entire first-class match, anywhere in the world. 86 Summing up I had originally planned that this chapter would cover both the oldest and the youngest Brief Candles, at least in British cricket. But learning about Alfred Green-Price from his family and his latter-day friends threw up so much detail, and revealed such an interesting - and likeable - character, that I decided in the end to make him the chapter’s sole subject. 87 The fact that he was still playing cricket five years after his brief venture into the first-class game, when aged 64, tells us how much the game meant to him. From the sources explored, he was evidently very much loved in return, at home, on the sports field, and in his wider community. Yes, I’ve come across the odd item which casts a little doubt on some of his relations with others: soon after arriving at Ashtead, for example, he was summoned before the Court of Summary Jurisdiction at Epsom when a local man accused him of keeping two dogs without a licence (the outcome of the hearing is not recorded in his scrapbook!); and he evidently put one fellow cricketer’s back up at Oulton when that man’s score in a particular match was omitted from the report in the parish magazine. The player concerned was so offended that he declined to attend the end of season prize giving, because it was Alfred who was due to present him with both the club’s batting and bowling awards. Only later did it emerge that Alfred was not himself responsible for the content of this part of the parish magazine. The life of Alfred Green-Price was, ultimately, a sad one, marked above all by the tragedies of the loss of a stillborn child, the unexpected death of his wife, the suicide of one of his daughters, and the psychiatric illness of another. It was indeed fortunate for him that he was able to take refuge and comfort in his faith, and in his twin roles as a clergyman and a sportsman. Overall he emerges as a kind-hearted and godly gentleman, who - at least until the loss of his wife - lived a generally contented, full, and fulfilled life, in which cricket undoubtedly played a leading part. But how much more, surely, was the part played by his family, his congregation, and his God. 86 The only older one-match wonder was Raja Maharaj Singh, the Governor of Baroda, who played for his own eleven against the Commonwealth eleven at Bombay in 1950/51, aged 72. But he took no further part in the match after batting very briefly on the first day (he scored four). 87 And in any case, the youngest British one-match wonder, Barney Gibson, who played one match for Yorkshire in 2011 when less than a month past his 15th birthday and announced his retirement from cricket in 2015, has already been covered extensively elsewhere, as an internet search will quickly reveal. The oldest of them all