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England vs India 2014, 3rd Test at Southampton: Teams pay tribute to cricketers who lost their lives in World War I

Colin Blythe was one of four England cricketers to die in action during the War.

The players stood in silence for a minute. Photo courtesy: Arunabha Sengupta
The players stood in silence for a minute. Photo courtesy: Arunabha Sengupta

By Arunabha Sengupta

Southampton: Jul 29, 2014

At 10:56 on the third morning of the third Test at Ageas Bowl, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and Hampshire Cricket commemorated the cricketers who lost their lives in World War One.  The commemorations went through a minute’s silence. The descendants of the former Kent and England left-arm spinning great Colin Blythe were in attendance for the occasion as a special guest.

Blythe was one of the four England cricketers to die in action during the War. In 19 Tests he had captured 100 wickets at 18.63 apiece and was just 38 when he passed away. In 2009, the England team laid a specially crafted stone cricket ball on his grave at the Oxford Road cemetery near Ypres. The other three cricketers to meet their fatal end in the Great War were Yorkshire’s Major William Booth, Leonard Moon of Middlesex and Kenneth Hutchings of Kent. In all 289 First-Class cricketers lost their lives in the conflicts.

The Hampshire County Cricket Club will be providing 1000 tickets for servicemen in partnership with Help for Heroes, Tickets for Troops and Rewards for Forces. BBC TV’s ‘Great British Bake-off’ winner Frances Quinn will serve up slices of a ‘Trench Cake’ — baked according to an original wartime recipe — to the members of the media.

According to Brian Havill, ECB’s Acting Chief Executive, “At a time when the entire nation will be marking the outbreak of World War One, it is important that cricket recognises the enormous human cost of the conflict and in particular the hundreds of First-Class cricketers who gave their lives in service of their country. We will be asking everyone attending Day Three of the Test match to show their respects to the fallen and we trust this will form a suitable and fitting commemoration to all those soldiers and civilians who died.”

Hampshire Chief Executive David Mann added, “Hampshire has always had very strong links with our Armed Forces and we are extremely proud and humbled to have the opportunity to mark this occasion and remember the sacrifice of millions of soldiers not just from our county, but from across the country and indeed around the world.”

(Arunabha Sengupta is a cricket historian and Chief Cricket Writer at CricketCountry.He writes about the history and the romance of the game, punctuated often by opinions about modern day cricket, while his post-graduate degree in statistics peeps through in occasional analytical pieces. The author of three novels, he can be followed on Twitter at http://twitter.com/senantix)

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