Lives in Cricket No 5 - Rockley Wilson

at The Oval Rockley took four for 92 and five for 29, at one stage bowling for an hour without conceding a run, but could not prevent Surrey winning by 31 runs. In the final Championship match, Hampshire were beaten by an innings and 235 runs. Percy Holmes and Herbert Sutcliffe put on 347 for the first wicket, finishing with 302 and 131 respectively in Yorkshire’s mammoth total of 585. Rockley Wilson then chipped in with five for 20 off 25.1 overs in Hampshire’s first innings. Rockley Wilson’s value to the team did not rest just on the wickets he captured. His remarkable accuracy alone could be invaluable to his side – over the whole season he conceded only 1.59 runs per over. Neville Cardus had this to say about Wilson’s bowling in the Roses match at Old Trafford: “Wilson, who bowled better than anybody else, got no wicket. ... Wilson is slow to medium and as fine a length bowler as we have in the game today. ... Wilson was always turning the ball. He varied his flight craftily, dropping a foot shorter without altering the upward trajectory. After lunch, in one spell of work, he sent down eight overs for three runs only.” 75 Here the master of cricket prose acknowledges a master of the art of slow bowling. As to his batting, Rockley averaged only 8.87 in the eight Championship matches and it was becoming very clear by this season that large scores could no longer be expected from him. However, he did figure in some useful stands in the lower order. In a low scoring and fluctuating match against Middlesex, Yorkshire required 198 to win on the final day but slumped to 140 for 8, with Roy Kilner ill and unable to bat. Rockley Wilson and Abram Waddington took the score to within four runs of victory when Waddington was bowled – by G.T.S Stevens, a nineteen year old Oxford University student, an indignity Waddington was never to forget – leaving Wilson 39 not out, his highest score of the season. Another last-ditch stand led to some controversy – it was not to be the last such occasion. In the match against Leicestershire on the August Bank Holiday weekend, a rain-curtailed match was destined to be decided on a one innings basis. It was important to Yorkshire’s remaining hopes of winning the Championship that they were not dismissed for less than the Leicestershire score in their one innings. As the Championship points system ignored matches where no first innings decision had been reached, a “no First-Class Cricket After the War 74 75 Neville Cardus, The Roses Matches, 1919-1939 , Souvenir Press, 1982, p.54.