Lives in Cricket No 5 - Rockley Wilson

before. However, Rockley was well equipped for the task. He was respected at Lord’s and was acquainted with a number of the Middlesex amateurs and more aware than them of the sensitivities (or prejudices) of working class northerners, whether professional players or spectators. With a foot in both camps, as it were, and his personal qualities Rockley Wilson was able to bring about a restoration of relations, though not without the ploy of threatening that if Middlesex were to drop Yorkshire for one year, Yorkshire would drop Middlesex for fifty. 91 Whether or not this clinched the matter, the Middlesex threat not to play Yorkshire in 1925 was withdrawn. One consequence of the disturbances and disharmony that marred Yorkshire’s third successive Championship in 1924 was Geoffrey Wilson’s resignation as captain. He did not favour a “win at all costs” approach to the game and his own shortcomings as a player in a team of such obvious champions must have added to his discomfiture. Rockley Wilson liked the man and he would have had mixed feelings about his departure after three successive Championship wins. Rockley kept loosely in touch with Yorkshire cricket thereafter and made occasional journeys to Leeds to watch matches, visit his nephews and friends, and occasionally to speak at cricket functions. Bob Appleyard recalled being visited by Rockley in 1952 when Bob was seriously ill in Leeds Infirmary with advanced tuberculosis. 92 Rockley had a genuine concern for any cricketer who had suffered some personal misfortune. On a more social level, in October 1956, in what was to be the last year of his life, he travelled to Leeds for a reunion of the four Championship-winning sides of 1922-1925, organised by the Northern Cricket Society. He was not an official speaker but was asked by the Yorkshire President, Sir William Worsley, to say a few words. We can be sure Rockley would have kept his companions amused with his recollections and stories. In a letter to his nephew David Wilson, Rockley said that Sir William commented, “All agreed that yours was the speech of the evening.” Like any public speaker, Rockley liked to hear appreciation of his efforts. Rockley Wilson’s own career in first-class cricket may have been over after the 1923 season but he continued to play club cricket, as Later Years 99 91 As reported in E.W.Swanton, Follow On , Collins, 1977, p.192. 92 In conversation with the writer.