Lionel Robinson and the Australian Imperial Forces

Martin Chandler | 8:46am BST 16 July 2023

Published: 2023
Pages: 52
Author: Musk, Stephen
Publisher: Red Rose Books
Rating: 3 stars

After John Broom and Anthony Condon’s recent book on the Australian Imperial Forces tour of 1919 appeared, 104 years after the event, the odds must have been extraordinarily long on another book appearing on the same subject just a few weeks later, but here we have it.

Do the books cover the same ground? By definition the answer to that is yes, but whilst From Darkness Into Light gives a full account of how the tour came to take place at all, the tourists themselves and the cricket they played, the focus of Musk’s book is just a single match, the very first of the tourist’s schedule.

The AIF’s opponents for that fixture were a side raised by and named after Lionel Robinson. Having forged a successful career on the Australian stock exchange Robinson had relocated to the UK at the turn of the century. He had purchased Old Buckenham Hall near Attleborough in Norfolk and developed his own cricket ground there.

The match extended over three days and, unusually, ranks as First Class despite being twelve a side. It was a game that ebbed and flowed, finally ending as a draw. The visitors took a first innings lead of 80 before Robinson’s side recovered and set the AIF a victory target of 283. Time ran out with them nine runs short with two wickets in hand.

A few years ago, back in 2014, Musk’s biography of Robinson was published in the ACS Lives in Cricket series, so he is ideally qualified to write an introduction that looks at why such an important fixture came to Old Buckenham Hall. Central to the narrative is, naturally, an account of the match itself, but there are also some interesting short biographies of the members of both teams. For the Australians that is an exercise that is carried out twice, once dealing with their lives up until the AIF tour, and then again to give some detail as to what became of them subsequently.

Inevitably there is some overlap here with From Darkness Into Light, but certainly not enough to render Musk’s research anything other than a valuable addition to his already impressive body of work on the subject of Norfolcian cricket, and there is absolutely no reason why anyone whose primary area of interest is the AIF tour overall should not invest as well.

Lionel Robinson and the Australian Imperial Forces is available directly from the publisher, and in addition copies are on their way to Roger Page in Melbourne. Prospective purchasers have two options, the first a paper wrappered booklet at £12 including UK postage, alternatively a hardback which is being sold in an edition limited to 20 signed copies, at £40.