Lives in Cricket No 5 - Rockley Wilson

Douglas’ place as vice captain. In the event, they handed that honour to Rockley Wilson. Percy Fender might have seemed the more logical choice as he had had a very successful first season as Surrey’s captain, but Fender was never a favoured son of the cricket establishment, and was not much admired by his captain, Johnny Douglas. 78 The consequence of all this was that if Douglas had fallen under a bus, or over the side of S.S.Osterley on the long voyage to Australia, then Rockley Wilson would have found himself the captain of England, and of a party which included such giants of the game as Wilfred Rhodes, Jack Hobbs, Frank Woolley and J.W.Hearne, as well as two other Yorkshire colleagues, Abram Waddington and Arthur Dolphin, the reserve wicket keeper. In the event, of course, no such calamity befell Douglas, and Wilson captained the side only in three up-country matches of little significance from a cricket point of view, even if important to the host communities. His greatest contribution as vice-captain was to relieve Douglas of some of the Australia and After 78 MCC party and supporters setting off in the rain from Tilbury to Australia, aboard S.S.Osterley in September, 1920. The picture includes from left to right: E.H.Hendren, F.E.Woolley, A.Dolphin, H.Howell, A.Waddington, W.Rhodes, J.W.H.T.Douglas, P.F.Warner, E.R.Wilson, J.W.Hearne, P.G.H.Fender, J.W.H.Makepeace, F.C.Toone. 78 As recounted in Richard Streeton, P.G.H.Fender: a Biography , Faber and Faber, 1981, p.97. Streeton commented that the two men were “poles apart in manner and outlook.”