Brian Sanderson yet again produced one of his amazing never been seen before photographs recently in telling the story of Frank Smailes, the Yorkshire and England cricketer. The picture immediately fascinated me as I recognised many of the players who appear and I could not for the life of me work out who they were playing for. So once again I went to work on the wonderful cricket archive site to try and find what this wartime game at Lord's was.
The trick was to look up Frank Smailes and find the list of games he played, which includes only a handful during the war years at Lord's, where a surprising number of games were played. Having done that and knowing he was in the Army, I first of all looked at all the Army XI games but none of them had all the players shown in the picture.
Almost as a last resort, I looked at a game just after the war had ended in August 1945 and sure enough there it was, a Lord's XI against the Central Mediterranean Forces with all the players I had recognised plus a few more I had never heard of. There are twelve cricketers on the picture and I feel fairly sure that one of them actually played for the Lord's XI in the shape of Patrick Vaulkhard, who captained Derbyshire in 1950 (2nd from left on the back row).
My deliberations bring me to the following conclusions. Back row from the left, Bill Merritt (Northants and New Zealand), Vaulkhard (Derbyshire), Tom Pritchard (another New Zealander who joined Warwickshire), Frank Smailes, Arthur Wellard (Somerset), George Emmett (Gloucester), Tom Dollery (Warwickshire), then the scorer and an Army officer, with finally Arthur McIntyre (Surrey).
The four blazered gentlemen on the front row took a little more working out, but the Oxford University sweater of the player on the left indicated that he was Denis Moore (Oxford University & Gloucester), next I assume is the captain A.G. Hazlerigg who captained Eton in 1929 and Leicestershire in 1934. The moustached player is J.W. Martin (Kent) who played one game for England in 1947, which leaves R.E. Henty, who had played for Surrey 2nd XI, the Club Cricket Conference etc etc.
The match itself was a two day game which ended in a one wicket win for the Lord's XI, which included no less than six future county captains. These were R.J.O. Meyer (Somerset), E.D.R. Eager (Hampshire), F.R. Brown (Northants). Vaulkhard (Derbyshire), D.B. Carr (Derbyshire) and T.E. Bailey (Essex). It had been a low scoring game with C.M.F. making 167 all out in the first innings with skipper Hazlerigg, soon to become the second Baron Hazelrigg, top scoring with 45. The Lord's XI were dismissed for 138 (Pritchard four wickets) and then C.M.F. 163 all out in their second innings.
This left the home side requiring 193 to win, which they just managed to get, despite four wickets each for Smailes and Merritt, with the last pair together. Rather surprisingly the last pair were D.B. Carr at number ten and who else but a very young Trevor Bailey at number eleven. One final item to round things off as we approach the 75th anniversary of VE Day.
A few weeks earlier, on 30th June 1945, six of the Central Mediterranean Forces side were engaged in a cricket match in the Italian Adriatic port of Bari between East Italy and West Italy. The two innings game was eventually drawn but Arthur McIntyre, who was wicket keeper for Surrey during their great days of the 1950s, distinguished himself with a century before retiring hurt. All interesting stuff and as they say every picture tells a story (or two).
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