SECOND (XI) HELPINGS
Harold Larwood’s rise to the Nottinghamshire First Eleven was pretty rapid. He played one game for the Notts Club and Ground in 1923 and eight Second Eleven matches in 1924, before making his First-Class debut in the last home game of that season.
(The 100th anniversary of that First-Class debut has been celebrated here and in the Winter 2024 edition of Covered, the Notts CCC members’ magazine).
Larwood was to play three more times for the Seconds in 1925 but once he was established in the first team he never returned to that level of cricket.
Those few games in 1924 do, though, produce a couple of stories to intrigue and tease Larwood fans and cricket historians.
In that era, some First-Class counties fielded their Second XIs in the Minor Counties Championship, which meant games against the first teams of Lincolnshire, Wilstshire and Bedfordshire…and Staffordshire.
Which is where it gets interesting.
Colt v Curmudgeon
At home – well, at the Crown Farm ground in Mansfield – the 19-year-old Larwood gave clear notice of his promise, taking 6-70 in Staffordshire’s second innings; an impressive return after he had gone wicketless when the opposition batted first, giving 6-92 as match figures.
But he was matched, indeed just pipped, by a famous name from cricket’s recent past – none less than the great SF Barnes. By now 51 (though still a decade or more away from finishing his playing days), Sydney Barnes took 3-43 and 4-48 for matches figures of 7-91.
Larwood’s reputation was always as someone a little shy and diffident about his own prowess – though the intervention of Arthur Carr’s rumbustious approach to life and to cricket changed that in later years.
Barnes was anything but. He knew his own worth and valued it highly, and he was not shy of confrontation. As a consequence, he has relatively little Test or County cricket to burnish his reputation – he preferred the better financial rewards of League cricket to the uncertainties of the county game.
A look at his figures shows just how remarkable a bowler he was and what England, and the counties, missed. In 27 Tests, he took 24 five-wicket hauls and had ten wickets or more in a match seven times. If you’re not sure how that matches up, Nottinghamshire’s Stuart Broad – one of the all-time great English bowlers – managed 20 five-wicket tallies and three ‘ten-fers’ in 167 Tests!
(Larwood had four ‘five-fers’ and one ten wicket haul in his 21 Tests)
For Staffordshire, Barnes took almost 1400 wickets at the barely credible average of 7.99. In 1911–12, he helped England to win the Ashes when he took 34 wickets in the series against Australia. In 1913–14, his final Test series, he took a world record 49 wickets in a Test series, against South Africa, a record that still stands.
What might the tyro from Nuncargate have learned from being on the same pitch as a master of the bowler’s arts like Barnes?
He had the opportunity twice, as Barnes was also in the Staffordshire side that Notts Seconds met in the return match at Wolstanton.
Once again, Larwood had a good game, taking 4-61 in the home side’s first innings; once again, he was out-bowled by the veteran, Barnes took 5-36 and 3-43.
We can never know what, if anything, was said between these two greats of English cricket but it is fascinating to speculate on conversations between the colt and the curmudgeon.
But that’s not all…
Even that is rivalled by another conundrum from Larwood’s short spell in the Seconds.
Dismissal Dilemma
At the Seedhill Ground, Nelson, Harold got the first wicket to fall in a match against Lancashire Seconds. Nothing untoward there, he was to get top order batters out almost at will for the next decade.
But the scorecard reads: G Rogerson, st Wheat, b Larwood 8
Yes – stumped!
How would even a young Larwood possibly get a stumping off his bowling?
This oddity came to light when our book conservation team were working on editions of the pamphlet editions of The Scorer, produced by the Association of Cricket Statisticians (ACS). Intrigued by the photo of Larwood on one cover, the conservator delved deeper and found a short article on this very dismissal.
The author had some conjecture on the how and why Larwood might have got a ‘stumped’ wicket and their thoughts prompted our Heritage team to probe further.
Firstly, they confirmed the facts – at least three other sources, including a contemporary local newspaper column, read ‘st Wheat, b Larwood’, so it must be true.
The Scorer offered the thought that Rogerson might have ‘given the charge’ to Larwood or, equally likely (or unlikely) that he was backing away so keenly that he left his ground.
To that we can add the possibility that Wheat and Larwood had contrived a set of signals that would bring the keeper up to the stumps; or Larwood was experimenting with off breaks; or maybe Rogerson had ‘done a Bairstow’ and wandered out of his ground.
Giving the charge? Well there is nothing in George Rogerson’s cricketing career to suggest that he was of a reckless mind. In his dozen First-Class games he had a top score of 47no and in Lancs Seconds did slightly better with two half-centuries in 38 innings, 75 being his highest knock. Neither did he seem to have a particularly high ratio of stumpings across those innings.
If he wasn’t guilty of bravado, was it the opposite and he had backed away too far and too far forward? We have no way of knowing but it is worth remembering that at this early stage of his career, even the Notts Committee referred to Larwood as ‘fast medium’, not something to terrorise an opening batter.
Did Larwood and Wheat have a set of ‘secret’ signals? Unlikely as they were both new to this level of cricket and Wheat had only kept to Larwood once before, in the immediately previous Second XI fixture, so they’d hardly had time to devise a cunning plan.
If Arthur Wheat was brave enough to stand up to the stumps, it is not recorded anywhere in his records at Notts and his record of 22 stumpings from 174 First-Class victims does not suggest an unusual facility behind the stumps. Indeed, in proportion his return of stumpings is similar to that of his contemporary and rival at Notts, Ben Lilley.
Had Rogerson wandered out of his ground? If so, it is more likely that the dismissal would have been ‘run out’ rather than stumped (ask Jonny Bairstow).
Off breaks from Larwood? This seems the least likely of all the permutations. As a raw young pace bowler, he would surely not be experimenting with other styles of bowling just five games into his county career.
So we will probably never know how this most singular dismissal took place. And it really was singular…back to the ACS pamphlet to explain:
‘By the time Larwood finished his career in 1938, 743 of his 1,427 First-Class dismissals had been bowled, 606 caught, 71 were leg-before and there were seven hit wickets. Not a single stumping…’
And certainly there were no more stumpings in his time with Notts Seconds. So, despite his moderate batting record, George Rogerson has one unique claim to fame – the only batter to be stumped off the bowling of Harold Larwood!
November 2024
Larwood's career stats can be seen here