Empire Cricket Booklet

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KEITH BOOTH

of bringing over the team originated before the commencement of the war; but in consequence of the serious aspect which the position at the Cape assumed, the trip was postponed. 'We were sorry not to fulfil our engagements,' said Mr Lohmann, 'but we felt that the English supporters of the game would understand why we didn't come. This year we thought we could be spared.' 'But, of course, whether you came or stayed away, you scarcely expected to please everybody,' suggested the interviewer, in reference to the strictures passed on the members of the team by Dr Conan Doyle for having left South Africa before the war has been finished. 'Are you all very angry about it?' Apparently, Mr Lohmann for one was not angry. He merely said that Dr Conan Doyle seemed to be labouring under the mistake of imagining that the members of the team had seen no service on the battlefield, whereas most of them had served many months in some capacity or other. A member of that party was Jimmy Sinclair, Lohmann's protege at the Wanderers. He was South Africa's leading all-rounder and it was from Lohmann that he learned the art of change of pace, the 'hanging ball'. He was to represent South Africa for a number of years and was part of the team that in 1906 won its first Test match. Lohmann had been in his grave for four years at the time, but could claim some credit both for Sinclair's success and that of this adopted land. Lohmann and South African Society Lohmann was a sportsman rather than a politician, but could not be immunised against the political, social and military context in which he played his cricket. His family background was Liberal, his father being active in that party, and Lohmann and his younger brother Stewart once ruined what was presumably intended to be a social game of cricket between the Liberal and Conservative Clubs in 1883.

Laburnham House [sic] v Beaconsfield Club [sic]

A match between the above clubs (repre sentatives of the Liberal and Conservative parties) took place on Saturday afternoon (8th Sept) on the match ground, Battersea Park. The Beaconsfield who were the first to bat were all disposed of for 12, G Lowman [sic] taking seven wickets for five runs. The Liberals obtained 235 runs, S Lowman scored 101, G Lowman 55, extras amounting to 29. 23 Lohmann was semi-active in British politics and was associated with the Clarion, a satirical, left-leaning newspaper. It was an attitude, however, which did not transfer easily or directly to a different society. As Edgar Wallace pointed out, British politics were much simpler than the South African version. Home politics I understand. There were two parties in England - Conservative and Liberals. If the Liberals came in you had Home Rule [for Ireland], and if the Conservatives came in you didn't ... in South Africa politics were racial. On the one hand you had the psalm-singing, coffee drinking Dutch, on the other hand the true-born Englishman with his inalienable right to do as he damn' pleased in any country at any time. 24 The shared belief of the two white tribes, English and Afrikaans-speaking, in their superiority over the others did nothing to draw them together and it was to a more multi-dimensional society divided on the basis of race rather than class to which George Lohmann was obliged to transfer and adjust his liberal philosophy. Newspaper and magazine evidence reveal him to be a sociable person who related easily to others and his standing in the cricket world enabled him to rub shoulders with some influential people, such as James Logan and Abe Bailey, as well as the Joel family and the early Randlords. He was a guest at the Music Hall in the company of the governor of Lourenc;o Marques, a sure sign that he was accepted in the upper echelons of Johannesburg society. His meeting with Solly Joel in Bloemfontein following Woolf Joel's murder is the mark of a humane man, not merely a business associate.