Lives in Cricket No 5 - Rockley Wilson

comment was: “I think we will win the Ashes, but we may lose a Dominion.” Rockley Wilson was in charge of cricket at Winchester for twenty years, ten before the First World War and ten after it. During that time, thirty nine of his pupils went on to play first-class cricket, including twenty Blues, sixteen at Oxford and four at Cambridge. Two of Rockley’s pupils went on to play for England, Douglas Jardine, and A.J.Evans who played in a single Test against Australia in 1921, though a number of others might well have achieved that distinction if they had been able to find more time in which to play first-class cricket. Hubert Ashton, for example, a dashing batsman who played for an all-amateur (and victorious) England XI against the Australian tourists in 1921 and periodically for Essex between 1921 and 1939, might well have been capped by England if the demands of his business career had not absorbed most of his time. Club Cricketer Rockley did not neglect his own game while at Winchester. As Lord Hawke had been advised, he enjoyed regular country house and club cricket in the years up to the outbreak of the First World War. There were plenty of opportunities for men who had learned their cricket at the great public schools and who had the necessary social connections – and occupations which allowed plenty of leisure time – to continue to enjoy the game. Many were sufficiently talented that they could have made their way in the first-class game had they chosen to do so. Despite the inroads of the programme of first-class cricket, country house cricket was still an important feature of the cricket and social landscape in Edwardian England. The landed gentry and the nouveaux-riches were keen to host cricket weekends, even cricket weeks, at their country houses. The participating teams included the great touring cricket clubs such as I Zingari, Free Foresters and Incogniti, school-based clubs such as the Old Wykehamists, Uppingham Rovers, Eton Ramblers and Harrow Wanderers, Oxford and Cambridge college sides, and teams from the armed services. 59 Some of the leading cricketers of the day might be involved though matches were played in an informal manner, the informality Winchester 54 59 The Wilson papers include an invitation to Rockley to play against the Royal Artillery in 1913, advising “You will be housed and victualled in a respectable fashion.”