As Europe descended into war over the summer of 1914, cricket in England continued as it had for the preceding few decades. Counties continued with their championship programme, clubs in the North and Midlands maintained their league and cup rivalries whilst less competitive clubs elsewhere enjoyed friendly matches. However, voices were soon raised in criticism of this business as usual’ approach -most notably that of cricket’s Grand Old Man, W.G. Grace. Names became absent from first-class and club scorecards as players left for military service and by the end of the year it was clear that 1915’s cricket season would be very different. And so it would continue for four summers. Rolls of honour lengthened as did the grim lists of cricket’s dead and maimed. Some club cricket did continue in wartime Britain, often amidst bitter disputes as to its appropriateness. Charity matches were organised to align the game with the national war effort. As the British Empire rallied behind the mother country, so cricket around the world became restricted and players from far and wide joined the sad ranks of sacrifice. Cricket emerged into the post-war world initially unsure of itself but the efforts that had been made to sustain the game’s infrastructure during the conflict ensured that it would experience a second golden age between the wars.
AUTHOR: After graduating in History from the University of Sheffield in the early 1990s, John Broom pursued a career in teaching, firstly in his chosen subject and latterly with children with autism. A chance inheritance of family papers eleven years ago prompted his interest in the spiritual and ethical issues of the twentieth-century world wars. John is a lifelong cricket fan who traces his love of the game back to day-long Test Match Special coverage at home in the 1970s, trips to the Scarborough Cricket Festival and the Circle Ground at Hull, and his first visit to a Test match
a certain occasion at Headingley in 1981. John has been awarded a PhD on Christianity in the British Armed Services by the University of Durham, and is the author of seven published books: Cricket in the Second World War: The Grim Test (Pen & Sword, 2021), Reported Missing in the Great War: 100 years of searching for the truth (Pen & Sword, 2020); Faithful in Adversity: The Royal Army Medical Corps in the Second World War (Pen & Sword, 2019); Opposition to the Second World War: Conscience, Resistance and Service in Britain, 1933 45 (Pen & Sword, 2018); A History of Cigarette and Trade Cards (Pen & Sword, 2018); Fight the Good Fight: Voices of Faith from the Second World War (Pen & Sword, 2016); Fight the Good Fight: Voices of Faith from the First World War (Pen & Sword, 2015).