Empire Cricket Booklet

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KEITH BOOTH

There was a possibility of a further tour there in 1890/91. The initiative came from James Lillywhite, and Lohmann was mentioned as team manager when Lillywhite, while seeking a guarantee of £3 000, suggested to the South African cricket authorities that his would be a much stronger team than Major Warton's had been. In the event, the tour was postponed because of the political situation in South Africa, Rhodes having occupied Mashonaland to pressurise the Transvaal. 6 Recent events in the Transvaal have led to the definite abandonment of the proposed trip to South Africa which James Lillywhite was negotiating in the interests of George Lohmann for the coming winter. I am given to understand, however, that the project is only deferred. There is every intention to arrange such a tour at the end of 1891. 7 The intention was fulfilled, but without Lillywhite and Lohmann. Overseas touring sides had a novelty value for the cricket-following public, and experi ences of tours to and from Australia and Major Warton'searliertourtoSouthAfricahaddemonstrated the profits to be made from them. Cricketers from both hemispheres were keen to reap the benefits. Lohmann would have been an obvious choice for that tour had he not opted to go to Australia for a third time, on this occasion with Lord Sheffield's party. Earlier in 1891, it had looked unlikely that a tour of South Africa would take place; Lord Sheffield's tour was by now a fairly firm arrangement and George Vernon, the Middlesex amateur who had headed the parallel tour of Australia in 1887/88, was planning to repeat a tour of India and Ceylon he had undertaken two winters earlier, in 1889/90. It was at this time suggested that Lord Sheffield's team should call at the Cape either on the way to Australia or on the way back. 8 In the event, the Vernon tour did not take place and the trip to South Africa went ahead under the management of Edwin Ash and the captaincy of Walter Read. In an era when qualification rules were less tightly drawn, the team included the Australians, John Ferris, later to die from enteric fever during the South African War, and Bill Murdoch.

That, however, was probably exceptional; the more usual pattern for professionals like Lohmann was to play every possible match. In the six years from the beginning of the 1886 season to the end of the 1891/92 tour of Australia, he had bowled somewhere near the equivalent of 1 500 six-ball overs a year in first class cricket alone, to say nothing of his contribution to non-first-class matches both in England and Australia. Professional bowlers were not exempt from performing in the up-country non-first-class matches against XVs, XVIIIs, XXs and XXIIs of here, there and everywhere. It was the expectation and, for many, paid as they were on a match-by-match basis, to decline to play had a direct and immediate effect on their income. Lord Harris, in an interview with the Daily News in 1885, said: we should not forget that the spring and autumn work of cricket is hard on the professional. The grass is often wet and he has not his patron's army of boots and shoes to fall back on. Also he becomes very hot with the exertion of bowling and has not a servant as we have to bring us an overcoat after an easy morning's shoot. Consequently pulmonary disease attacks the professional cricketer who rarely makes old bones. Popular as the game is it offers no substantial reward for excellence. 5 His Lordship's opinion may tell us more about the class system than medical science, but it does give an indication of the vulnerability of professional cricketers to long-term health problems. So it was that Lohmann's first visit to South Africa was not for the purpose of playing or coaching cricket, but in quest of an improvement in health. His relationship with South Africa was a mixed one. It was the scene of some of his most spectacular cricketing performances and also of his convalescence and premature death. He might have toured on three possible occasions before he actually did so. Major Warton took a under-strength team there in 1888/89. Lohmann was a possibility for the tour, but eventually withdrew on medical grounds. Lohmann Arrives in South Africa