A History of Cricket at King Edward's School, BIrmingham

43 64 not out against King’s School Worcester enabled KES to declare at 157 for eight, whereupon Richardson took 4 for 23 and JC Dark 3 for 1 to dismiss King’s for 65. Dark made 82 not out against Warwick, in a drawn match. Pell did the hat-trick against Solihull. Otherwise, there were very few individual performances of note. Dark headed both the batting and the bowling averages with 215 runs and 24 wickets; Pell took most wickets, 33, and also scored 182 runs. Poole scored exactly 200 runs. AJ Lippitt, a young fast bowler, took 24 wickets, but Richardson did not progress as much as had been hoped. GA Pell enjoyed the first of two seasons as captain in 1945, when three matches were won but five were lost. The batting was weak: only twice did the side reach three figures, and Pell’s 47 against Repton A was the highest individual score. Two of the three victories were achieved by all-round effort: in the five wicket-win against King’s School Worcester, no batsman made more than GN Hackett’s 38 not out and no bowler took more than Lippitt’s three wickets. Lippitt and Pell each took four wickets and JT Murley two as Bromsgrove were dismissed for 94, and KES won by one wicket thanks mainly to 35 not out by Murley batting at number eight. Murley was responsible for the best bowling performances of the season, with figures of 6 for 12 against Solihull – the third match won – and 5 for 7 against a Combined King Edward’s Grammar Schools side. Strangely, apart from these three matches, Murley only took only two other wickets all season. Lippitt was the leading bowler with 26 wickets, and Pell took 22; PT Richardson did not play very much. Pell scored more runs than anyone else, but his aggregate was only 187, at an average of 17.00; PO Kendrick and GN Hackett were the only other batsmen to make more than a hundred. These facts reveal the weakness of the batting. Pell’s team played 13 matches in 1946, losing seven and winning only two. Several young batsmen showed promise, notably MGH Spencer, JG Harrison, JG Pardoe and AJ Homer, but totals were still generally low; Spencer’s 198 was the highest aggregate. JR Charlesworth emerged as a useful wicket-keeper. PT Richardson at last bowled well and took 22 wickets. The experience of Pell and Lippitt helped to build a solid bowling attack: Pell took 40 wickets with his leg-breaks, and played one match for Warwickshire later in the season. Good bowling was mainly responsible for the two victories. Lippitt’s 6 for 11, plus two wickets from Pell and two from Richardson, dismissed Bromsgrove for 30. Richardson took 5 for 25 and Pell 5 for 30 to have Solihull all out for 66; JT Murley made 56 not out and Pell 47 as KES batted on after winning. Pell took 6 for 49 against Combined KEGS, who declared at 126 for nine, but KES could only make 49 for seven, with JD Bannister, later to play with distinction for Warwickshire, taking 3 for 12. In the first Common Room match since 1941, JB Guy, opening the batting for the Common Room, made 56 (out of a total of 95 for eight) before retiring; earlier, KES had been dismissed for 61. So drew to a close a generally uninspiring period of 15 years. At least from 1939 onwards, something can be ascribed to the war and the movements of the School from one place to another, but nevertheless there was a shortage of real talent, and standards were not high. Yet there were good players – players of the calibre of TG Freeman, DC Hills, DB Thornton, BN Seymour, PAT Pinder, RWF Penny, TA Podesta, CF Figures and GA Pell. School cricket simply struck a very long bad patch. By 1946, there was some cause for optimism.