Empire Cricket Booklet

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GEORGE LOHMANN

farewell to friends and family in England. Mentally, however, he was alert enough to express lucidly, but diplomatically, opinions on the tour and its political background to an interviewer from the Daily Mail, 22 a publication with which he had been associated during the 'strike' of 1896 and again during his brief visit to his native land in 1897: FROM BATTLEFIELD TO CRICKET PITCH EXPERIENCES OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN ELEVEN The South African team of cricketers who have been in England some few days enter upon their fixture list at Southampton today. The tour has been promoted by the Hon J. D. Logan who selected the team - an amateur one - after

the team which would visit England under quite different Management to that which I had been led to anticipate. When I, the original guarantor promised my five hundred pounds it was on the distinct undertaking made of course with Mr Cadwallader that the very best team should visit England ... Hendricks ought to have been included in the team; he was their finest bowler, but they would not have him because he was a coloured man ... whether a man is white, black or yellow makes no difference to me nor does his particular trade or profession. What I want to see is the crack player and the crack sportsman. 21 Lohmann had a management role in both Lord Hawke's 1895/96 tour to South Africa, in which he

Lord Hawke led English teams to South Africa in 1895/96 and 1898/99

also played, and the later 1898/99 tour as the storm clouds of the South African War gathered. In 1901, his health now declining rapidly, he was assistant manager of Logan's South African tour to England when he undertook a spirited defence of the tour in the face of criticism from Dr Arthur Conan Doyle that it was inappropriate for men to be playing cricket rather than fighting for King and country. Lohmann was by this time a very sick man and must have known that this was a final opportunity to say a last

consultation with prominent Colonial cricketers, and who has accompanied them to England. George Lohmann who was so popular a member of the Surrey XI before he went out to the Cape some nine years ago, is acting as Manager for the team in conjunction with the captain, Mr Murray Bisset. In an interview with a correspondent of the 'Daily Mail' Mr Lohmann explained that the idea