Can't open it...oh well.
That's odd. I can open it ok. Maybe something to do with it being in pdf format? Have you got Adobe Reader?
Anyway, here's a copy of the text only (a pity because the pics are very good):
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.
48
www.ecb.co.uk 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-yearold
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. .
#ENGvIND 49
world war I
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
Hit hard: the Great
War took its toll on
Hampshire CCC,
which lost 24 men
“By the end of the long
conflict, 289 men whohad played first-class
cricket had given
their lives in service
of their country”
“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
50
www.ecb.co.uk 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,
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
david frith COlleCtiOn david frith COlleCtiOn
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
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.”
andrew renshaw is editor of wisden on the Great war:
the lives of Cricket’s fallen 1914–1918
for more on this subject visit
www.ecb.co.uk/ww1 #ENGvIND 51
