Lives in Cricket No 5 - Rockley Wilson

was in print but, as “I certainly do know your name and have seen you play on more than one occasion,” he was pleased to loan Rockley a copy of the Eccleshill Record Book . Unfortunately copies of the letters sent by Rockley have not survived and we cannot know why he was interested in that particular club at that time. Of more curiosity interest among the correspondence is a letter dated 24 December, 1944 from Colonel Douglas Clifton Brown, then Speaker of the House of Commons and later Viscount Ruffside. In thanking Rockley for the gift of an unusual print of Speaker’s House and St Stephen’s Chapel, the Speaker comments that they had not met since their Trinity College days and asks “I wonder if you still play cricket” adding “I’m afraid I gave it up many years ago.” But then few of Rockley Wilson’s contemporaries could match the span of years over which he continued to play the game at a serious level. Blessed with an exceptional memory, Rockley Wilson was a walking encyclopaedia of cricket facts and statistics, always ready to put his knowledge to others’ use. In the Wilson papers there is a letter dated 15 June, 1941 from Raymond Robertson-Glasgow seeking Rockley’s help with an article that Robertson-Glasgow was intending to write for Men Only on “On Making 0.” Recalling an occasion when King Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, made nought when playing for I Zingari in a match at Sandringham, bowled by “a probably insane and intoxicated opponent,” Robertson-Glasgow adds “but could you, if you have a moment, of your lore and store let me have some news of famous noughts in any class of cricket.” 36 Sadly there is no record of Rockley’s reply to the request. In a more serious vein, in August 1952, Douglas Jardine bombarded Rockley “as the infallible source” with questions to prepare himself for a debate at Lord’s on the issue of covered wickets. In Wilson’s company, “ Wisden was a waste of space.” 37 Rockley Wilson was a stylish writer and the pity is that he wrote so little on the game. He wrote occasional articles for The Cricketer , the editor of which was his friend Plum Warner. These articles were invariably on historical or literary subjects, for example, his articles Early Cricket at Rugby in The Cricketer Spring Annual , A Singular Man 44 36 The match was I Zingari against the Gentlemen of Norfolk in 1866 and the Prince of Wales was persuaded to play for I Zingari “bedecked in the full IZ array.” See R.L.Arrowsmith and B.J.W.Hill, I Zingari: the Club, the Cricket, the Characters , updated by A.S.R.Winlaw, JJG Publishing, 2006, p.16. 37 Peter Thomas, Yorkshire Cricketers, 1839-1939 , Derek Hodgson Publisher, 1973, p.234.