Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

31 Never a run By the early 1930s, Harry was an establishedmember of the Town team. The Northamptonshire county side, sadly, was entering an extremely barren period (they finished last, or last but one, in the County Championship in every season bar one from 1930 to 1948), with what strength they had mainly focused on their batting. From 1928 they began playing one, and sometimes two, of their home games at the Town Ground in Peterborough 20 , and in 1931 one of the matches scheduled for the ground was against the touring New Zealanders, starting on Saturday, 20 June. No doubt with an eye on increasing the gate, the county selected two players from the Peterborough club for this match, both of whom would be making their first-class debuts on their home ground (and both of whom, coincidentally, were or had been pupils at The King’s School). One was 17-year-old batsman Alex Snowden, at the time the fifth youngest cricketer to play for Northamptonshire in a first-class match. The other was Harry Wilson, just a month past his 26th birthday. Commenting on his selection, the Northampton Daily Chronicle noted that he had recently [actually on 28 May] taken six wickets for 14 for the Town club against Radcliffe-on-Trent. These two replaced respectively batsman Allan Liddell and bowler Reg Partridge from the team that had drawn the county’s previous match, against Middlesex. There is a little bit of mystery about Wilson’s selection. Although Northants’ correct starting eleven was named in the Northampton Daily Chronicle on 19 June, the same day’s editions of the Peterborough Advertiser and the Peterborough Standard both listed different squads from which, they said, the county team was to be selected - and Wilson was in neither of them. The Standard went on to mention that earlier in the week there was said to be a possibility of several local players being included in the county eleven - but Wilson was not one of the three players they named in this context either. So perhaps his selection was very much a last minute thing. But when the New Zealanders won the toss on a fine summer Saturday and put the county in to bat, Harry Wilson was safely in the eleven, and his position as a first-class cricketer was secured. The tourists eventually won the match on the third day by six wickets. The county began with 334 (Fred Bakewell 109), but conceded a 12-run first- innings lead thanks to 80s from Lindsay Weir and skipper Tom Lowry; Vallance Jupp took five for 99. In their second innings Northants were bowled out for 166, with Bakewell carrying his bat for 83 not out (one man retired hurt). John Kerr, with 73 not out, was the main contributor in the New Zealanders’ successful pursuit of the 155 needed to win in the fourth innings. New bowler Harry Wilson was asked to bowl the last over of the first day - the third of the three overs that the New Zealanders faced on that day. It wasn’t perhaps the most impressive over that he had ever delivered: 20 They had played first-class matches against Warwickshire on this ground in 1906 and 1907, but then none until 1928. They continued to play one match a year at the Town Ground until 1966, after which for three seasons they played a match at the Baker Perkins Sports Ground in the city. There have been no further first-class matches at Peterborough since 1969.