Lives in Cricket No 45 - Brief Candles 2

96 Chapter Six The oldest of them all Radnorshire in central Wales was never one of the most noticeable of Welsh counties, even before it was absorbed into the new county of Powys in 1974. Third smallest in area of the Principality’s 13 counties, its population was barely half that of the next least populous county. Today it is home to around 25,000 people, and has only three towns with a population in excess of 2,500, the largest being Llandrindod Wells at around 5,300. 69 So it is not surprising that it has never been a significant force in cricket in Wales. Yet Radnorshire has produced, and been the long-term home to, a first- class cricketer who holds a record that will surely never be broken. For in his only first-class match, Alfred Green-Price 70 was already more than six months past his 59th birthday - making him the oldest first-class debutant in British cricket, and the third oldest in the world. Cricket is a game that some can play contentedly into their ninth decade, or even later. But to be playing your first, first-class match when less than six months short of your 60th birthday? Even WG had given up the first- class game by that age. So how on earth can any side justify picking such a ‘mature’ cricketer to make his debut at first-class level? Now read on … He came from distinguished stock. The story of the Green-Price family began with the marriage in 1799 of George Green, ‘gentleman’, of Knighton (second largest of Radnorshire’s towns), to Margaret Price, daughter of the MP for Radnor and a member of one of the county’s oldest landed families. The Greens, and later the Green-Prices, had a reputation for ‘marrying into land’, and this marriage was no exception. George and Margaret’s second son, Richard, was born in 1803, and until 1861 he and his ever-growing family continued to live in Knighton. But in that year Margaret’s father died, and his estate at Norton, just north of Presteigne (Radnorshire’s third largest town), was bequeathed to Richard. He promptly moved to Norton Manor and changed his surname to Green-Price in honour of his late uncle. By this time, Alfred - born as plain Alfred Green - was around one year 69 Source: 2011 UK census; a population of 25,000 is roughly equivalent to that of Workington, Huntingdon or Bognor Regis. The position was little different 90 years earlier, closer to the date of particular interest in the present chapter. The county’s population in 1921 was 23,500, while Llandrindod Wells (4,600) was then the only settlement with a population over 2,500. 70 To judge from documents that he himself signed, Alfred did not hyphenate the two barrels of his surname. But later generations of the family certainly do so, and for consistency I here hyphenate it throughout.