ON LOAN TO MCC FROM THE ANDREW BROWNSWORD FOUNDATION. PHOTO REPRODUCED COURTESY OF MCC 48 www.ecb.co.uk 49 #ENGvIND WORLD WAR I ➥ The calm before the storm: Colin Blythe bowling for Kent against Lancashire at Canterbury in 1906, painted by Albert Chevallier Tayler CRICKET’S SACRIFICE When war struck 100 years ago, cricketers young and old signed up to fight. Andrew Renshaw counts the cost O ne hundred years ago, events unfurled rapidly as the world stood on the brink of the Great War. Monday 3 August was a bank holiday and a crowd of 15,000 basked in the sun at e Oval and watched Jack Hobbs hit 226 off a perspiring Nottinghamshire attack, for whom opening bowler William Riley toiled in taking four for 153. Just across the ames, Sir Edward Grey, the foreign secretary, rose in the Commons to give the government’s first response to the crisis. e next momentous day, when the ultimatum was issued to Germany, there was a complete change of mood, and police were called to eject impatient spectators who barracked the Notts batsmen. Although cricket carried on until early September, there were immediate repercussions. e War Office requisitioned e Oval and Hobbs’s benefit match the following Monday was switched to Lord’s where it ended inside two days. In Kent, the matches planned for Dover were moved to Canterbury, and in Hampshire, games were switched away from Portsmouth. e matches were poorly attended. But it took a letter from WG Grace to e Sportsman magazine on 27 August to concentrate minds. He wrote: “e fighting on the Continent is very severe, and will probably be prolonged. I think the time has arrived when the county cricket season should be closed, for it is not fitting at a time like the present that able-bodied men should play day after day and pleasure-seekers look on. ere are so many who are young and able, and yet are hanging back. I should like to see all first-class cricketers of suitable age, etc, set a good example, and come to the help of their country without delay in its hour of need.” By the end of the long conflict, 289 men who had played first-class cricket had given their lives in the service of their country. eir number included a dozen Test cricketers of whom the most celebrated was Colin Blythe. Wisden was in no doubt that his loss was “the most serious that cricket has sustained”. Blythe, sensitive and shy, suffered from epilepsy and was not always fit to play for England, for whom he took 100 wickets in 19 Tests. But he readily volunteered and was deemed fit enough to die for his country, hit by shell fragments while working on a railway line at Passchendaele in November 1917. Two wallets, pierced by shrapnel, were recovered from his body, and are displayed at Canterbury – surely the most poignant of cricket’s relics. Blythe’s match figures of 17 for 48, including 10 for 30, all taken in one day for Kent at Northampton in 1907, remain a county championship record, and are bettered only by Jim Laker’s 19 Ashes wickets in 1956. Another record that still stands is the highest individual score of 628 not out amassed by 13-year- old AEJ Collins in a house match at Clifton College in 1899. Capt Arthur Collins, of the Royal Engineers, was killed in action on 11 November 1914; his two brothers were also later killed.
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48 www.ecb.co.uk 49#ENGvIND
world war I
➥
The calm before the storm: Colin Blythe
bowling for Kent against Lancashire at
Canterbury in 1906, painted by Albert Chevallier Tayler
CRICKET’S
SACRIFICEWhen war struck 100 years ago, cricketers young and old signed up to fight. Andrew Renshaw counts the cost
One hundred years ago, events unfurled rapidly as the world stood on the brink of the Great War. Monday 3 August was a bank
holiday and a crowd of 15,000 basked in the sun at The Oval and watched Jack Hobbs hit 226 off a perspiring Nottinghamshire attack, for whom opening bowler William Riley toiled in taking four for 153.
Just across the Thames, Sir Edward Grey, the foreign secretary, rose in the Commons to give the government’s first response to the crisis.
The next momentous day, when the ultimatum was issued to Germany, there was a complete change of mood, and police were called to eject impatient spectators who barracked the Notts batsmen.
Although cricket carried on until early September, there were immediate repercussions. The War Office requisitioned The Oval and Hobbs’s benefit match the following Monday was switched to Lord’s where it ended inside two days. In Kent, the matches planned for Dover were moved to Canterbury, and in Hampshire, games were switched away from Portsmouth. The matches were poorly attended.
But it took a letter from WG Grace to The Sportsman magazine on 27 August to concentrate minds. He wrote: “The fighting on the Continent is very severe, and will probably be prolonged. I think the time has arrived when the county cricket season should be closed, for it is not fitting at a time like the present that able-bodied men should play day after
day and pleasure-seekers look on. There are so many who are young and able, and yet are hanging back. I should like to see all first-class cricketers of suitable age, etc, set a good example, and come to the help of their country without delay in its hour of need.”
By the end of the long conflict, 289 men who had played first-class cricket had given their lives in the service of their country.
Their number included a dozen Test cricketers of whom the most celebrated was Colin Blythe. Wisden was in no doubt that his loss was “the most serious that cricket has sustained”. Blythe, sensitive and shy, suffered from epilepsy and was not always fit to play for England, for whom he took 100 wickets in 19 Tests. But he readily volunteered and was deemed fit enough
to die for his country, hit by shell fragments while working on a railway line at Passchendaele in November 1917. Two wallets, pierced by shrapnel, were recovered from his body, and are displayed at Canterbury – surely the most poignant of cricket’s relics.
Blythe’s match figures of 17 for 48, including 10 for 30, all taken in one day for Kent at Northampton in 1907, remain a county championship record, and are bettered only by Jim Laker’s 19 Ashes wickets in 1956.
Another record that still stands is the highest individual score of 628 not out amassed by 13-year-old AEJ Collins in a house match at Clifton College in 1899. Capt Arthur Collins, of the Royal Engineers, was killed in action on 11 November 1914; his two brothers were also later killed.
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“By the end of the long conflict, 289 men who had played first-class cricket had given their lives in service of their country”
Gunner Riley, that Notts bowler who toiled against Hobbs, also holds a joint record, but as a batsman: he shared a last-wicket stand of 152 when Ted Alletson struck a whirlwind 189 in 40 minutes against Sussex in 1911. Riley’s contribution was 10 not out from 19 deliveries: his contribution was greater when he gave his life in Belgium in August 1917. Big-hitting Alletson, like Riley, also served in the Royal Garrison Artillery, but survived the war.
In February 1915, Norman Callaway made his debut for New South Wales against Queensland and scored 207. The Sydney Morning Herald predicted he would “rise to great heights”. But it was to prove his only innings. In the other team, George Poeppel was also playing in his only first-class match: soon they would be on the same side, and two years later both were dead.
While remembering the massive contribution by men from all the Dominions, it is appropriate to record that some 74,000 Indian soldiers lost their lives during the war.
With its military and naval connections, it is no surprise that Hampshire lost more men (24) than any other county club. Arthur Jaques had a remarkable summer in 1914: he took 112 wickets at 18.26 in Championship matches, using his height (6ft 3in) and employing an early version of leg theory, targeting the leg stump and outside. A year later, on 27 September
1915, he was killed in action in France, aged 27; his elder brother Joseph fell on the same day in the same action. Both are commemorated at the Stoneham War Shrine, just six miles from the Ageas Bowl.
Another local memorial lists four brothers who fell. Hampshire-born Corporal William Twynam had emigrated but responded to the call to arms and served in the Canadian Infantry: his obituary in the 1916 Wisden records that “he was well-known in Canadian cricket circles”. His name, along with three brothers, is to be found on the village war memorial at Soberton.
One of the first victims within a fortnight of the outbreak of war was Major Arthur Hughes-Onslow, who had played cricket for Eton. A noted horseman,
mentioned in despatches five times before being killed in May 1918, aged 39.
Forster’s message to his two children at the family home in Winchester, conveyed in his will, sums up why so many men were prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice. “Claim my war medals,” he told them, “and then my sons will have something to remind them of their father’s glorious death in fighting so that they may live in dear old England as free men.”
Free spirit: the Stoneham War Shrine in Hampshire (above) was built to honour men like Major Harold Forster
Dreaming of home: a British soldier brandishes a bat
Ground troops: geese mind the pitch at Lord’s
Hit hard: the Great War took its toll on Hampshire CCC, which lost 24 men
andrew renshaw is editor of wisden on the Great war: the lives of Cricket’s fallen 1914–1918for more on this subject visit www.ecb.co.uk/ww1
world war I
he rode the winner of the Grand Military Steeplechase at Sandown three times. In August 1914, he volunteered to work again with horses but, according to Wisden, “while engaged as remount officer at Southampton was taken fatally ill”. The truth is that he shot himself on the troopship going over to France: having served in the Sudan and South Africa, he could not face the horrors of taking horses into battle again.
The most decorated cricketer who fell in the Great War was Major Harold Forster. A career soldier, he played five games for Hampshire in 1911, taking nine wickets in his first match against MCC at Lord’s. He was twice awarded both the DSO and MC, and was
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