Lives in Cricket No 5 - Rockley Wilson

first-class cricket again was to see for myself the changes in the game caused by swerve and googlies.” 67 If this sounds a trifle unlikely, it needs to be remembered that Rockley Wilson was a serious student of the game. More to the point perhaps, he must have been keen to establish if his obvious talent was enough for him to succeed in the first-class game before advancing years ruled that out. And he would have been flattered to be sought after by his native county. Now 34, Wilson returned to the Yorkshire side in 1913 in the school summer vacation, playing in six successive Championship matches and one other first-class match. He took six for 89 off 35.2 overs in his first game against Warwickshire, when Hirst and Haigh were unable to bowl because of injury, and made a useful 31 in Yorkshire’s first innings batting at No.8. In his fourth match, against Essex at Bradford, which Yorkshire won by an innings and 48 runs, Rockley turned in one of his most remarkable performances. Batting at No.9, he and Major Booth put on 126 for the eighth wicket, Rockley finishing with 104 not out, when the Yorkshire innings was declared closed at 512 for nine wickets. He spent only one hour and 50 minutes at the crease, hitting two sixes, a five and thirteen fours. It is doubtful if he would have played so venturesome an innings – one of his sixes was a skied hit over the wicketkeeper’s head and over the boundary fence – had he not spent the preceding ten years playing club cricket: and, it has to be said, he was never again to bat with such abandon in a first-class match. This was to be Rockley Wilson’s only century for Yorkshire: in all first-class matches he posted four hundreds. In neither of the following Championship matches did Wilson achieve anything of note. Yorkshire were second in the Championship in 1913. As a result of his exceptional innings against Essex, Rockley finished second in the Yorkshire batting averages in Championship matches with 36.80 from eight innings, in three of which he was not out. In all matches his average was 32.00. As to bowling, Wilson took 14 wickets at 21.92 in the Championship and 18 at 19.66 in all matches for Yorkshire, finishing fifth in the Yorkshire bowling averages behind the professionals Alonzo Drake, Major Booth, George Hirst and Schofield Haigh, but above Wilfred Rhodes. Rockley’s other first-class appearance in 1913 was for Yorkshire Return to First-Class Cricket 62 67 Pullin, op. cit., p.232.