Lives in Cricket No 5 - Rockley Wilson

sometimes bordering on the frivolous. The handsome surroundings, and the good company, the hospitality and the entertainment to look forward to when stumps were drawn, added to the pleasure. 60 As Rowland Bowen put it, “an amateur cricketer of merit could spend a happy August staying in one great house after another playing good class cricket all the time and well housed and fed and wined – paying no more than his travelling expenses and suitable tips for the staff.” 61 As “an amateur cricketer of merit” plenty of invitations to country house cricket weekends came Rockley’s way, enabling him not only to enjoy the cricket and hospitality, but also to widen his circle of influential Winchester 55 “The social side of country house cricket”, rarely better illustrated. Sadly the place and date are not known. Rockley Wilson is third from the left in the front row. 60 In his artful essay on country house cricket in Cricket, the Country Life Library of Sport, 1903, H.D.G.Leveson Gower puts decidedly more emphasis on the social side of country house cricket: “a bevy of nice girls are needed to keep us civilised.” There will be dances, songs and games and “boy and girl alike know they may never meet again, but they won’t waste time meanwhile” (p.347). He does not favour champagne lunches but rather “some big pies, cold chickens, a fine sirloin of English beef and a round of brawn washed down by good ale and luscious shandy gaff.” (p.348). If this was typical lunch-time fare one can be sure the afternoon’s play would be rather leisurely. 61 Cricket: A History of its Growth and Development throughout the World , op.cit., p.143.