Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

14 for a match against Cambridgeshire. In his only innings of this game he scored 142, with 23 fours - the start of a sequence of five centuries (though no other 50s) in ten matches. The other four centuries of this sequence came in his annus mirabilis of 1935, a season in which Bedfordshire were to finish 21st out of the 24 sides in the Minor Counties table, but which was a triumph for Poole. In eight Minor Counties matches he scored 599 runs at an average of 54.45; only former first-class cricketer George Wharmby had scored more runs for the county in an eight-match season (616 in 1908). He was the seventh-highest run scorer for any side in the 1935 Minor Counties season, and his tally of four centuries in a season was a new Bedfordshire record. 6 All this in a side that was struggling near the foot of the table, with only Wiltshire, Cornwall and Denbighshire finishing beneath them. His success had been noticed. The Cricketer’s Winter Annual for 1935- 36 referred to him as an “outstanding batsman”, and noted that in all matches for the Club & Ground in the previous summer he had scored 845 runs in the season at an average of 52.81. He had also, apparently, been spotted by higher powers in the Minor Counties game, for The Cricketer goes on to say that “Poole was 12th Man for the Minor Counties v Oxford University, but as he was not required he went on to Nottingham to play for Bedfordshire against Sir Julien Cahn’s XI. Against the bowling of R.W.V.Robins and I.A.R.Peebles he played innings of 21 and 81.” Now this is a little odd, for the game against Cahn’s XI (and the Minor Counties’ first-class match against Oxford University; yes, the dates did coincide) was early in the season, starting on 5 June - nearly two months before the start of Poole’s record-breaking Minor Counties season. It must have been that innings of 142 at the end of the previous season that had caught the selectors’ eye. Near the end of the 1935 season - on 4 September - a representative Minor Counties side took on the visiting South Africans at Skegness, and after his successful county season (all his four centuries came during August) you might have thought that Poole was a contender for a place in their side. But the side was actually announced on 22 August, by which date he had scored only two of those four centuries, and although a couple of last-minute changes were eventually needed to the Counties’ line-up, to replace a bowler and an all-rounder, the selectors decided to go for two bowlers rather than a more like-for-like pair of replacements. So no chance for Poole; perhaps it serves the selectors right that their side eventually lost by eight wickets! He had not been forgotten altogether. The Minor Counties representative side had two first-class fixtures in the following season, against Oxford University in The Parks starting on 10 June 1936, and against the Indian tourists at Lord’s a week later. Again, this was before the start of the Minor 6 In fact the feat of scoring four centuries in a Minor Counties championship season had only been achieved three times previously: by N.V.H.Riches (Glamorgan) in 1911, by A.P.F.Chapman (Berkshire) in 1922, and by F.C.de Saram (Hertfordshire), who scored his fourth century of 1935 just 11 days ahead of Poole. So close