Lives in Cricket No 5 - Rockley Wilson

games involving any of the Wilson brothers, whether social, club or first-class matches, and also newspaper reports of several of the first-class matches in which Clem and Rockley played. 8 Clem’s scrapbooks of his trips to America in 1896 with an Oxford and Cambridge side and with Lord Hawke’s side to South Africa in 1898/99 were donated to MCC by his son, the late David Wilson. The surviving scrapbooks of cuttings in the possession of David Wilson’s family show what a remarkable amount of cricket the Wilson brothers played in careers which, taken together, stretched from the 1880s into the 1930s. They were assisted in this by personal circumstances – occupations and financial resources – that allowed them ample opportunities to engage in cricket, and also by the wide circle of acquaintances and contacts in the cricketing world which led, as we shall recount in the case of Rockley, to many invitations to play for clubs and sides up and down the country. To leaf through the scrapbooks, and a family album of photographs of Rockley, is to enjoy a glimpse of a long passed, more leisurely and more urbane age. The Wilson Family 16 Rockley Wilson did not think of his bowling as 'round-arm'. This picture, taken after the Great War, seems to suggest otherwise. 8 Sadly few of the cuttings show the year of the match and in later scrapbooks the cuttings are clearly not in date order, reducing somewhat their value as a statement of record.