Devon Cricket Board - Don't miss our WW1 week of stories

Don't miss our WW1 week of stories - starts Monday

Injured soldiers recovering at the VA Hospital at Instow watching a match at North Devon

FROM baronets to baker’s boys and cart driver’s sons to teachers, they played cricket for Devon in the golden age before World War One.
One hundred years ago on Monday (August 4) Britain declared war on Germany and cricket stopped overnight.
Many cricketers in Devon were already in the Territorial Army – the Devonshire and Wessex regiments as a rule – and marched off to war.
When cricket resumed in 1919 many of the names in the scorebooks of 1914 were being etched on war memorials from Egypt to India and Ypres to Mesopotamia.
And it wasn’t just players who didn’t survive the war, some clubs disappeared without trace too.
Teignbridge CC, formed in 1823 and one of the four oldest cricket clubs in Devon, never played again after World War One.
The bishops, lords, members of parliament and theatrical impresarios – Richard d’Oyly-Carte had played for them - no longer had the time for leisurely county house cricket on balmy summer days. Pictured below is a 19th Century watercolour of the Teignbridge pavilion.
Twelve past or current Devon county cricketers didn’t come back in 1918.
News editor Conrad Sutcliffe has been looking into their stories, and those of other cricketers who went off to war.
His series of six articles looking back at the fascinating stories of Devon cricketers who went to war starts on Monday – don’t miss it!

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