Cricket in World War I

At least 210 first-class cricketers are known to have joined the armed forces,^[1] of whom 34 were killed. The obituary sections of Wisden between 1915 and 1919 contained the names of hundreds of players and officials of all standards who died in the service of their country.

Abandonment of first-class cricket

With war looming in August, cricketers with military commitments, such as

News of casualties suffered by the British Expeditionary Force in Belgium was already turning the public mood against "business as usual" and on 27 August a letter written by W. G. Grace was published in The Sportsman in which he declared that "I think the time has arrived when the county cricket season should be closed, for it is not fitting at a time like this that able-bodied men should be playing cricket by day and pleasure-seekers look on. I should like to see all first-class cricketers of suitable age set a good example and come to the help of their country without delay in its hour of need."^[2]

The remaining matches in the Championship were abandoned "in deference to public opinion"^[2] while the MCC closed the Scarborough Festival as "the continuation of first-class cricket is hurtful to the feelings of a section of the public".^[2] The last match to be completed, on 2 September, pitted Sussex against Yorkshire at Hove. "The men's hearts were barely in the game", the periodical Cricket reported at the time, "and the match was given up as a draw at tea."^[2] The last match played, twenty five years and a day later, before the abandonment of first-class cricket due to World War II saw the same teams facing each other on the same ground.^[2]

First World War; 28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918

No first-class cricket in  Australia; 19 February 1915 – 26 December 1918

No first-class cricket in  England; 2 September 1914 – 12 May 1919

No break in first-class cricket in  India

No first-class cricket in  New Zealand; 2 April 1915 – 25 December 1917

No first-class cricket in  South Africa; 11 April 1914 – 18 October 1919

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1914

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1915

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1916

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1917

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1918

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1919

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1920

While first-class cricket had been cancelled in the major cricketing nations, cricket itself continued around the world. In England, the Oval and Lord's hosted a number of matches between representative services sides, Army regiments and other service units.^[3] Club cricket continued, especially in the north of England, where the Lancashire League played in each summer without a break.

Geese were kept on the grass at Lord's while the pavilion at Old Trafford was transformed into a Red Cross hospital. In four years, 1,800 patients were treated there, with beds occupying every possible space, including corridors and stairway landings.

Anzac soldiers played improvised games cricket under shellfire on Shell Green in Gallipoli in 1915. The Australians played a game in view of the Turks to give the impression of normality and confidence while the entire force was being secretly evacuated from the beach area.

Robert Graves recounts a game between officers and sergeants at Vermelles in France in 1915, when a bird cage with a dead parrot inside was used as the wicket. The game was abandoned when German machine gun fire at an aeroplane caused falling bullets to land dangerously close to the pitch.

Cricket was played overseas, often in fund raising matches. A game involving an English XII against an Indian team held at the Bombay Gymkhana in December 1915 for war relief was watched by 40,000 people. J. G. Greig scored 216 and Frank Tarrant took 9 for 35.

The only first-class cricketer to be awarded the

Cricket raised funds in other ways.

Some cricket was still played in England, with the Australian Imperial Forces, featuring Charlie Macartney, playing an English Army XI at Lord's in July 1917. Lord's was also the scene for a baseball match between American and Canadian teams watched by 10,000 with the proceeds going to the Canadian Widows and Orphans Fund. Club cricket continued to the extent that it could, with large crowds attending the matches.

With the war drawing to a close

.

"Doing their bit"

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210

A few days later, on 21 June, the Admiralty announced that HM King had been graciously pleased to award the Distinguished Service Cross to both Wilson and Mills 'for their services on 7 June 1915, when after a long flight in darkness over hostile territory, they threw bombs on the zeppelin shed at Evere near Brussels, and destroyed a zeppelin which was inside. The two officers were exposed to heavy anti-aircraft fire during the attack' (London Gazette 21 June 1915).

At the Yorkshire AGM in 1916,

In a conflict when the average survival time for R.F.C. pilots could be counted in hours, Wilson was promoted to major, survived the war and died on 3 October 1959 in Tickton, Beverley, Yorkshire. His other claims to fame include winning the Grand National on 'Double Chance' in 1925.

Cricket in war art

Cricket was used as a theme in

A Punch cartoon depicted the Germans in more lighthearted manner in a cartoon which showed a German plane flying over a cricket match. The game continues, even as the plane drops its bombs, with the fielders chasing a ball to the boundary. The caption, playing on the German misunderstanding of cricket, shows the German airman's report as saying "We dropped bombs on a British formation, causing the troops to disperse and run about in a panic stricken manner".^[4]

The fear of

Grenades and bowling techniques

British and Empire soldiers were instructed to throw the

Test cricketers

• Despite his
  Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1904. He is buried at Oxford Road Cemetery in Belgium and his shrapnel punctured wallet rests in the pavilion at Kent's St Lawrence Ground in Canterbury
  .
• Albert
  Negev desert, 2 miles south of Beersheba
  .
• Two of the famed South African 'googly quartet' fell in the fighting.
  German South-West Africa (now Namibia) been wounded twice in action and fell victim, at 43, to the influenza epidemic which swept through a war ravaged world. He was a major in the King's Royal Rifle Corps and had won the Military Cross
  .
• Second Lieutenant
  Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1914, the last season before hostilities. After joining up, he had been commissioned as a Second Lieutenant and first served in Egypt in 1915 before being assigned to the Western Front. He was killed near La Cigny on the Somme on 1 July 1916, while serving with the 15th (S) Battalion, The West Yorkshire Regiment (Prince of Wales's Own), also known as 'The Leeds Pals'. He was buried at Serre
  Road Cemetery.
• Oxford University
  , as did his brothers.
• Lieutenant
  Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1907. Remembered as one of the most graceful batsmen of the Edwardian age, he helped Kent win the County Championship 3 times and scored 126 at Melbourne on England's 1907/08 Ashes tour
  .
• Bill Lundie was killed on 12 September 1917 on the killing fields of Passchendaele in Belgium. He was a South African cricketer who had played in one Test in 1914 against England, at Port Elizabeth, when he bowled 46 overs into a strong wind, taking 4 for 106.
• Second Lieutenant
  Cambridge University from 1897 to 1900 and Middlesex
  from 1899 to 1909. He played four Tests for England against South Africa in 1905–06.
• Private Claude Newberry died 1 August 1916 aged 27, and is buried at the Delville Wood Cemetery, Somme, France. He played four Tests for South Africa in 1913 and 1914.
• Corporal Arthur Edward Ochse died 11 April 1918 aged 48, he was killed in action on the Western Front. He appeared in South Africa's debut Test match against England in 1889.

First-class cricketers

• Norman Callaway made his first-class debut at the age of 18 in February 1915 for New South Wales in Sydney against Queensland. Coming to the wicket with the score on 17 for 3, he reached his fifty in an hour and reached his century just half an hour later. He was finally dismissed the following day after for 207. First class cricket was then abandoned in Australia until the end of the war by which time Callaway had been killed in the Second Battle of Bullecourt in France in 1917. By dint of his only innings, he has the highest first class average on record.
• Henry Keigwin was a batsman who scored heavily for Peterhouse College while at Cambridge and played 11 first class matches for Essex and others. He played for the Gentlemen against Surrey in W.G. Grace's last first class game in April 1906, scoring 77 and 27. He left England for Africa but returned at the outbreak of war to serve with the Lancashire Fusiliers and was killed in action on the Western Front.
• Second Lieutenant William Burns of the Worcestershire Regiment was killed in action at Contalmaison in France in July 1916 aged 32. He had been a fine batsman in 217 matches for Worcestershire, scoring 196 in a stand of 393 with Ted Arnold at Edgbaston in 1909, and a ferocious fast bowler who took 214 wickets with a rather dubious action.
• fact or opinion?] bowl just once, in a match against Gloucestershire at Cheltenham
  on 22 July 1913.
• Lieutenant
  Lancashire CCC
  and Argentina was among the first cricketers to volunteer in 1914.
• Second Lieutenant William Odell, MC, of the Sherwood Foresters, was killed in action in October 1917 aged 31 at Passchendaele in Belgium. He had been a fine medium-pace bowler for Leicestershire and London County Cricket Club who twice took 8 wickets in an innings in his 193 first-class matches.
• Cecil Abercrombie was killed on 31 May 1916 at the Battle of Jutland while serving on HMS Defence. A right-handed batsman and right arm medium pacer, he had played for Hampshire County Cricket Club in 1913. He averaged over 40 and scored 4 first class centuries in just 16 matches with a highest score of 165 against Essex. He also played for the Army and Navy in 1910 and the Royal Navy in 1912 and 1913. He was awarded his county cap and died at 30 years old.
• R.G.A. was killed in action near Maissemy, France, aged 39 in October 1918. He had been a useful batsman for Lancashire, scoring 234 against Somerset in 1910, his best season. He is one of the few county cricketers
  to have been born in the US, in New Orleans.
• New Zealander
  George Wilson
  , a left-arm spinner for Canterbury who played just 6 matches and yet twice took 10 wickets in a match, died in Flanders on 14 December 1917 at the age of 28.
• Battle of Aubers Ridge
  .
• fact or opinion?] Captain of the Clifton College XI in 1913 and 1914 he had made 259 not out against Liverpool and was killed a month before the end of the war, serving with the Royal Flying Corps
  .
• company. He took part in the Second Battle of Ypres and was killed on 22 May 1915 on a reconnaissance mission after stopping to dig a man out of a collapsed trench.^[7] He is commemorated on the Menin Gate.^[8]
• Charles Bassett Fleming played one match for Derbyshire in the 1907 season. He died at Grévillers, France on 22 September 1918.
• Mentioned in Despatches on 1 January 1916. He served continuously until his death on 9 April 1917 at the Battle of Arras. He was mortally wounded by a piece of shell after advancing about 6000 yards, and died at Faimpoux, Arras, Belgium before reaching the dressing station.^[9]
• Chesterfield F. C. and Rotherham Town. He served in the First World War in the 7th Bn King's Own Yorkshire Light Infantry as a lieutenant and was killed in action at Fleuraix in France on 27 December 1915. He was buried at Y Farm Military Cemetery, Bois-Grenier.^[10]
• Oxford and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry as a temporary captain and was killed in action near Le Sars during the Battle of the Somme on 7 October 1916.^[11]
• Guy Wilson played one first class match for Derbyshire in 1902 and one in 1905. He was killed in action during the Battle of Cambrai on 30 November 1917.

Additional losses

• Menin Gate Memorial in Belgium. His younger brother Herbert, a lieutenant in the 24th Battalion of the Manchester Regiment
  and a fellow old Cliftonian. was also killed in action, on 11 February 1917, aged 27. Collins's wife, Ethel, lived as a widow for over fifty years.
• Rifle Brigade, who had captained Harrow School's first XI in 1915, was killed in action on 18 August 1916. A memorial seat
  was placed overlooking the Harrow School Cricket ground, its inscription reading 'To love the game beyond the prize'.

• Maharajah of Cooch Behar and was booked to sail to India on the S.S. Nyanza. At the last moment his passage was switched to the Nagoya: the Nyanza was torpedoed just out of Plymouth. He went on to play 437 first-class games and a Test match for England, against South Africa at Johannesburg
  in February 1931.
• off breaks in 1913 and scored 924 runs in 1914 with a best of 178 against Essex, hitting 4 sixes of England captain Johnny Douglas. As an umpire, he always counted the balls with six small pebbles picked up from his mother's garden at Bushey
  before he stood in his first match.
• Jack Massie, son of Hugh Massie, had been a promising left arm fast bowler tipped for Test honours before the war, with Johnny Moyes considering him the finest of the type he had ever seen. He took 99 wickets in 16 first-class matches for New South Wales from 1910/11 to 1913/14 but was seriously injured in action. He was decorated for 'conspicuous ability, initiative, resourcefulness and devotion to duty.
• Gallipoli Campaign and was discharged as a result. He returned to Somerset
  for the 1919 season, but only managed one match in the following summer of 1920 and, badly trouble by the effects of his wounds did not play any further cricket.

• 1915 to 1918 English cricket seasons
• Cricket in World War II

References

Bibliography

• Frith, David (1987). Pageant of Cricket (1987 ed.). Macmillan.
  ISBN 0-333-45177-5
  .

• Cricinfo
• Cricket Archive
• Spartacus School Net
• National Army Museum
• Worcestershire Roll of Honour
• Lord's – MCC HIstory – First World War – Roll of Honour