When FE Woolley Scored a Century for Lancashire
Martin Chandler |Published: 2003
Pages: 12
Author: Rosenwater, Irving
Publisher: Private
Rating: 3 stars
I have to wonder what it was that caused Irving Rosenwater to happen upon the subject matter of this one. The FE Woolley in question is indeed the illustrious Frank of Kent and England, scorer of more First Class runs than anyone other than Jack Hobbs, the only man to take more than 1,000 catches and, if that weren’t enough, has more than 2,000 wickets to his name with his left arm spin bowling.
But no one ever moved counties in Woolley’s day, and loans were a century away, so how can it be the same man? The answer in many ways is the obvious one. Woolley, like every other professional cricketer of his era, lost four summers to the Great War. Eventually, after the Army rejected him, the Royal Navy did accept Woolley but before that, like a number of others, he spent 1916 playing cricket in the still functioning Northern leagues and it is for that reason that Woolley found himself on one summer’s day playing for a Lancashire XI captained by JT Tyldesley, against a Yorkshire side led by George Hirst.
League cricket in the Great War has never struck me as a particular interest of Rosenwater’s, so I can only assume he must have stumbled across a reference to the game when studying something else and felt the need from there to thoroughly research a curiosity that appealed to him. In any event for those who have an interest in any of Rosenwater, Kent, Lancashire, Woolley or cricket during the Great War this one is certainly worth reading.
This one was produced by Rosenwater himself in a limited edition of 50 copies, so it is one of his easier publications to track down.
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