Peter Eckersley: The Flying Cricketer

Martin Chandler | 8:53am GMT 17 March 2024

Published: 2024
Pages: 143
Author: Lorimer, Malcom
Publisher: Max Books
Rating: 4 stars

The first question for many will be to dredge their memories to try and work out who Peter Eckersley was. Some Lancashire supporters, by which I mean those with an interest in the county’s history, will recognise it, but probably not too many others.

That is a little sad because, given what he did achieve it may well be, had his life not been cut short at the age of just 36, that Eckersley’s name would now be an instantly recognisable one, and well beyond the game of cricket.

As a cricketer Eckersley’s performances were relatively modest. A specialist batsman his career average is just a shade under 20, and he was certainly not an all-rounder, only ever taking a single wicket in England.

Although such a record would not suggest it Eckersley’s cricketing legacy nonetheless remains a significant one. As an amateur he was elevated to the Lancashire captaincy as a 25 year old in 1929, taking control of a group of professionals who had won the County Championship each year between 1926 and 1928.

Despite his relative inexperience and lack of cricketing talent Eckersley proved himself to be an excellent man manager, inspiring completely loyalty amongst a group of professionals many of whom had strong personalities and were not the easiest men to handle. But in addition to his people skills Eckersley was a fine tactician, so much so that he led the team back to the top in 1930 and then, with a largely new team, a further title in 1934. It would be 77 long years before Lancashire won the Championship outright again.

Outside of the game Eckersley’s life was a notable one. His father was a successful businessman so there was backing for Eckersley to play cricket as an amateur and to enable him to pursue a passion for flying that began at an early age. Eckersley’s cricket career ended in 1935 following his election to Parliament as Conservative MP for the Manchester Exchange constituency.

Being a member of parliament gave Eckersley a reserved occupation, but he was keen to use his flying skills to help the war effort and he joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve. On 13th August 1940 he was piloting a training aircraft which, seemingly through mechanical failure, crashed near Winchester killing him and the Naval Airman who was with him.

And then the name of Peter Eckersley slipped into history, until in 2021 his grandson turned up at Old Trafford with a large box of memorabilia including photograph albums, scrapbooks and other documents. Fortunately he was greeted by Malcolm Lorimer, a member of the Heritage Team at Lancashire, and this project began to take shape.

Sadly there were no diaries within the box and, given that his two sons were aged just 7 and 5 when Eckersley died, his grandchildren didn’t know him, nor is there anyone alive now who did. Against that background Peter Eckersley: The Flying Cricketer is not a full biography, but it is certainly as thorough as it could have been, something evidenced by Lorimer having gone so far as to track down the current owner of a Bentley that Eckersley purchased in the late 1920s and going on to include a brief history of the car as one of the book’s appendices.

The two aspects of Eckersley’s life that are well chronicled in the press are the cricket he played, and what he did in politics, so the extended look at those aspects of his life are only to be expected. Both generate enough from the writings of others to give insights into Eckersley’s personality, and of particular interest is the 1934 Championship success. Lancashire began their last four games knowing that as long as they achieved a first innings lead and avoided defeat in all four the Championship would be theirs.

It is clear from earlier seasons that when it suited him Eckersley could be imaginative, both as batsman and captain, but in those four games Lancashire prioritised first innings points and avoiding defeat. At the time even Neville Cardus was critical of that approach and Lancashire made few friends in taking the title that summer. Author Lorimer, like myself and I fancy most other followers of the Red Rose who endured a large part of the 77 years of hurt that followed, are not going to judge Eckersley harshly on that one.

Although Eckersley was not a good enough player to ever be considered for a Test side he did go on a number of tours. On three of them First Class matches were played. The most significant was when he joined a strong MCC side to India in 1926/27, and he also visited Jamaica with a side led by Lionel Tennyson and a Julien Cahn raised party that went to Argentina. There were other lesser overseas trips as well. These are duly noted, and there is a good deal on the Indian trip but disappointingly the passage of time means that no light can be shed upon Eckersley’s motivation on joining the tours. The nature of his relationship with Cahn is one that, given his later political career, would have been of particular interest.

It has taken a while to appear but Malcolm Lorimer deserves a great deal of credit for writing and publishing this fitting, thorough and long overdue tribute. He has produced a decent finished product as well, printed on good quality paper and with some excellent photographs. The book appears as a paperback at £12 including UK postage and packing and there is also a limited edition of 50 hardbacks, individually numbered and signed by Lorimer himself, Stephen Chalke (who provides a perceptive foreword) and the grandson whose collection inspired the book. That version is available for a modest £21 including postage. Both versions of Peter Eckersley: The Flying Cricketer can be obtained directly from the publisher or, for those in the Southern Hemisphere, I believe copies are on their way to Roger Page.