Lives in Cricket No 5 - Rockley Wilson

But it was at cricket that he particularly made his mark, benefiting from the coaching of Tom Emmett, the old Yorkshire fast bowler. 10 According to Rockley, Emmett “could bowl so well it was easy to imagine how good he must have been in his prime and he had a horrible ball which came with his arm in a most bewildering manner.” 11 Cricket at Rugby was at a low ebb when Emmett was appointed coach in 1889, but his relaxed yet perceptive style of coaching soon led to an improvement. In Rockley’s time Rugby played only one of the other leading public schools, Marlborough, in a fixture which dated from 1855: a second inter-school match against Clifton was only established in 1909. The public schools’ varied fixture lists and the lack of regular matches between them made it difficult to assess their relative merits; among other sides that Rugby habitually played were a number of Oxford and Cambridge colleges, Free Foresters, Old Rugbeians, Rugby Town, Liverpool and MCC – who usually included at least a couple of county cricketers in their sides. However, W.J.Ford, in his annual review of public school cricket in Wisden rated Rugby among the top six school sides in all the years that Rockley was to play for the school. School and University 19 Rugby at Rugby. Rockley Wilson, third from the left in the back row, in W.G.Michel’s House XV in wintry weather, 1896. 10 Pelham (later, Sir Pelham) Warner was a pupil at Rugby School from 1888 until 1892, Rockley Wilsons’s first year at the school. A chapter in his autobiography Long Innings, George G. Harrap and Company, 1951, describes Pelham Warner’s own cricket experiences at the school. It was at Rugby that Pelham Warner came to be known as “Plum”. 11 Interview in Cricket, 6 July, 1905.