Summer Times is the Journal of the Old Scarborians Association

played for an Oxford University team against
some of the major public schools. At Radley,
for instance, I remember there were four large
cricket fields, with pitches good enough for
test matches. At Wellington, there were about
20 nets. All we had was the rather rough track
perched atop Oliver’s Mount and the even
rougher net wicket cut in the coarse grass of
the outfield.
Consider, too, the standard of coaching. True,
we had dedicated masters such as Rossington,
Stoddard, Hovington, Roxburgh and Haigh,
who gave unstintingly of their time, umpiring
and giving up their Saturdays to take us to
away matches. However, I do not remember
being coached by any of them. Indeed, when
there were no practice facilities worthy of the
name it would have been impossible, so we
had to look elsewhere.
Eric Dixon’s experience makes the point. Like
me, he went to the nets at the Scarborough
Club ground every night of the season. On
one occasion, former Yorkshire and England
player Wilf Barber was visiting the Club and
someone suggested that Eric should have a go
at keeping in the nets to the bowling of Bill
Foord. And, of course, the lack of space meant
he had to stand up to the wicket to take Bill’s
considerable pace.
On the strength of this performance alone
Barber, who was then employed by the North
Riding County Council Education Committee,
invited Eric to play for his youth team against
the West Riding. Up to this time, Eric had
been playing for the school Under 14 team,
plus a few games with the 2 nd XI. Only now
that he had been recognised outside the
school was he chosen for the school 1 st XI to
give him some experience before the big
match.
Three other SBHS players were chosen for
Barber’s side: Hume, Newton and Horswood,
Hume as captain. Dixon remembers that
Brian Close was playing for the West Riding.
He also remembers that Horswood opened
the bowling and, in his first over, bowled
31
three or four beamers (dangerous head‐high
full ‐ tosses), which gave rise to some hostile
mutterings among the spectators. As he and
Eric crossed at the end of the over the embar‐
rassed bowler explained that he had never
had a new ball in his hand before and that it
just kept slipping out.
Even the once‐ or twice‐a‐season sessions on
Oliver’s Mount with Wilf Barber and his suc‐
cessor Maurice Leyland, which started after
1945, provided little benefit on their fleeting
visits
These deficiencies could account for some of
the astonishingly low scores recorded, par‐
ticularly during the war years. In 1943, for
instance, the School tied with Leeds Training
College with a score of 28, the batting aver‐
ages were topped by Boddy (8.4) and Geoff
Dennis topped the bowling averages with just
4.3. In the Colts, Horswood’s bowling average
of 2.5 got him only second place to Tindall at
2.48. Again, in a match in 1945, Vokes took 6
for 6 against Bridlington.
By contrast, about 500 feet down from the
Oliver’s Mount field, Scarborough College
had a lovely flat ground about 25 yards from
the back door of the school building, and at
different times they had Wilf Barber and then
Percy Holmes, another former Yorkshire and
England player, as full‐time coaches. The
benefits were made clear when the College’s
Brian Moor metamorphosed from gawky no‐
hoper into a batsman with one of the loveliest
swings you could ever wish to see send a
cricket ball rippling over the grass for four.
What compensated for our school’s shortcom‐
ings was the Scarborough Cricket Club, which
had good nets and a succession of profession‐
als to look after the coaching. And what also
must have helped was the fact that we were
able to watch and emulate the first class and
very good club cricketers who played there.
So although we did have a succession of very
good players, it is probably fair to say that
they emerged almost in spite of the school.