From The Archive: VE Day & Beyond

In 2020, what should have been the 75th consecutive season of first-class and Test cricket in this country has turned into something rather different and less pleasurable. Does the non-season (so far) offer any sense for those of us born since 1945, of what it was like to be deprived of top-level cricket during the Second World War? Perhaps to some extent, although there are differences.

The most significant of course is that that break lasted six long seasons from September 1939 until, on 11 May 1946, Hampshire took the field again at Southampton against Worcestershire. With 133 from Jim Bailey and 90 from debutant Neville Rogers, Hampshire won by 90 runs. Rogers’ debut came at 28, having spent one year on the staff pre-war qualifying by residence, and as far as we know, having spent much of the war with the British army in the far east, he had played just one match in all that time, back home in Oxford in 1942 for HT Lewendon’s XI against London Counties, where he played alongside his future captain Desmond Eagar and Hampshire’s ‘Lofty’ Herman.

The second key difference is that while almost all major cricket in England was suspended throughout the war, a lot of other cricket was played through those years, including league matches in the north of England, whereas at present, ‘social distancing’ has obliterated all prospects of play at any level.

Among the cricket by Hampshire players during the war, Hampshire’s ‘double international’ Johnny Arnold played a number of matches, mostly one-day, for a decent National Fire Service side. He scored 75 against the RAF in 1942, then on 7 August 1943 he appeared for a Hampshire XI at Southampton against an Empire XI – one of very few matches played at Northlands Road until 1945. The Empire XI consisted mostly of good club cricketers and it is perhaps unfortunate that they batted first in this single innings match. Herman 5-35, Knott 2-18, Boyes 2-39 and PA Mackenzie 1-25 dismissed them for 138, after which Mackenzie and Holt opened with half-centuries each, and once Hampshire had won by nine wickets they batted on to 232-7 in the 43rd over – each of which consisted of eight balls. Former captain Cecil Paris was 52*, and the last Hampshire wicket fell to a catch by 15-year-old Winchester schoolboy David Guard; he would play a few matches for the county post-war. Leg-spinner Percy Mackenzie had played for the county in the two pre-war seasons, but after a successful war flying in the RAF he pursued a flying career.

All-rounder Jim Bailey missed that game but he played during the war. At Clifton in 1942 he scored 71 for a Southern Command XI alongside Desmond Eagar, and from 1943 he played more regularly; at Bolton he scored 52 for the Rest against a Lancashire XI, then appeared in matches for Northern Command alongside Maurice Leyland, Maurice Tremlett, and Stan Nicholls. At Leeds in September 1944, Bailey played in a memorial match for fellow slow-left-armer Hedley Verity, killed in action in Italy. Verity’s final first-class match had been at Bournemouth in 1939, where his 6-22 helped the champions to an innings victory.  

Like Rogers, Gerry Hill served in the Army and played some cricket for Army sides in the summer of 1942. He had match figures of 9-113 in a two-innings, two-day match at Hove, against a combined Royal Navy and RAF side, and there were a couple of matches for Southern Command at Taunton and Cardiff. One of Hill’s regular team-mates was wicketkeeper-batsman Neil McCorkell, who had hoped to join the Royal Navy until his hopes of becoming a submariner were dashed when he confessed he could not swim. He went instead to work for Vickers Armstrong in Newbury, including a role as a firefighter. Despite being in England, there seem to be no records of him playing any significant cricket until 1945. In that first peacetime, but pre-first-class season, he played in the matches arranged by Hampshire and also represented the West of England, scoring 50 against New Zealand Services and 79 against Somerset, both at Glastonbury.

Arthur Holt worked at Vosper Thornycroft and was also a special constable in the Southampton area. He played in a number of mainly local wartime matches, including one for the Players against Lord Tennyson’s Gentlemen in a charity match at Winchester College in 1943, and there were games for Southampton Touring Club at Northlands Road, and in 1944 a two-day match for the British Empire XI at Coventry, where sadly Tom Godard dismissed him twice for a ‘pair’. One of the younger players Leo Harrison, who would become Hampshire’s wicketkeeper had made his debut towards the end of 1939, age just 17. He was late being ‘demobbed’, although he did appear in Hampshire’s sides in 1945.

‘Lofty’ Herman played in a number of matches through the war, including a two-day, two-innings match for South against North, and he played for Coventry, a West representative side, his native Oxford City, London Counties, and even Sussex, against Australian Services at Chichester in the first peace-time summer of 1945. We have no records of his pace-bowling partner George Heath playing during the war.

Hampshire’s outstanding spinner Charlie Knott played in a number of local matches during the war, including for Tennyson’s Gentlemen v Players at Winchester College. For the British Empire XI in 1945, he took 46 wickets at 10.73 each; among those matches, was one at Bournemouth when Knott played for the opposition, Southampton Touring Club, taking 4-32. On the following day the British Empire XI travelled the short distance to Lymington and other Hampshire players in those two fixtures were Arthur Holt, Lloyd Budd, and Jack Andrews. When the British Empire XI met the Army at Westcliff in June, the Army side included Hampshire’s Captain RH Moore and Corporal Len Creese.

VE Day came on 8 May 1945 and almost immediately Hampshire were able to issue a single sheet, blue membership card, listing six matches, beginning on Whitsun Bank Holiday at Southampton and running to 25 August. Only one of those matches, at Hove, was away from home, and three were against other counties. They were friendlies and one-day, single innings matches. On the Bank Holiday, they beat Southampton Police by five wickets (Knott 4-34), and on 9 June beat Sussex at Southampton by eight wickets (Herman 5-39, McCorkell 68, Harrison 44). Sussex had the best of the return at Hove, dismissing Hampshire for 87 (Harrison 38) declared on 183-2 enabling the start of a Hampshire second innings, when they struggled to 47-3.

Herman took 5-24 as Northamptonshire were bowled out for 85 in late July at Southampton as Hampshire won by eight wickets again (McCorkell 56*), then there were three matches through August. The first, for which no scores exist, was at home against Southampton & District, then, on 18 August, three days after VJ Day, came a defeat by 93 runs to Aldershot Services for whom R Halton scored 119 and took 7-31. That was an extraordinary man-of-the-match performance, yet we know nothing more about him. Finally, on 25 August Hampshire went back to Bournemouth for the first time in six years, beating the RAF by 125 runs (Holt 50, Knott 4-26 and Boyes 4-18), Stuart Boyes took more than 1,000 wickets for Hampshire between the wars but had taken up a coaching post by that happy day when county cricket resumed in May 1946.

Boyes was one of the pre-war Hampshire’s cricketers who played no more at first-class level, but found posts as coaches or groundsmen. Sadly, two men who played for the county in 1939 did not return: Donald ‘Hooky’ Walker was 28 when killed on a bombing raid over the Netherlands in 1941; three years later, John Blake (26) of the Royal Marines, was killed in action in Yugoslavia.