Julien Cahn - Love of Cricket

Love of Cricket

Although privately formed, such was the strength and quality of the various teams that he assembled that several of their matches were accorded first-class status - thus allowing him in Kingston, Jamaica in March 1929 he made his first-class debut. Here he captained a team which included no less than eight Test cricketers - including Lord Tennyson and Andrew Sandham. Many years later, when his grandson visited the island he was introduced to an old Jamaican who, as a boy, had carried Cahn's bags and had been so taken with him that in his honour, he had changed his name to 'Julien Cahn'!

Although he was a first-class cricketer, he was also was a hypochondriac who in later life would often use his electric wheelchair in preference to walking. He would think nothing of using his own private train to bring Lord Horder (the King's doctor) to Stanford Hall to attend to him.

Cahn was a poor cricketer and fearful of the ball, so as a result, he batted in specially made and inflatable pads which had to be inflated by his chauffeur. His umpire John Gunn is recorded as never having given him out by LBW - no doubt in a bid to keep the fixture.

It is recorded by Jim Swanton that "...the pads were very large, and the ball bounced readily off them for leg-byes, which the umpires conveniently forgot to signal". Also another player to appear at Stanford Hall, Philip Snow recalls playing there once when Cahn's pads deflated, "He'd no sooner come out to bat than there was a loud hissing noise. I liked him but he was a real autocrat, a martinet. He stalked off the pitch, sacked his chauffeur on the spot and declared the innings."

Cahn was also a keen bowler, throwing the ball high in the air - this often meant relying on the boundary fielders to take catches. One commentator said of his bowling style, "His bowling was not so much up and down as to and fro."

By the mid-1930s Cahn's cricket philanthropy had included support for the financially troubled Leicestershire. He also arranged for Stewie Dempster, the New Zealand batsman, to work as his business store manager in Leicester to allow him to captain the county. "At that time," Philip Snow remarks "Dempster was regarded as the best player of slow bowling in the world. He was incredibly quick on his feet."

Whilst Dempster was undoubtedly successful in playing for Leicestershire, scoring 4,659 runs at an average of 49.04 in 69 matches for the county, Cahn had the habit - irritating to many - of requiring him to play for his own team which greatly reduced the number of appearances he was able to make for Leicestershire. In 1938, for example, Dempster played 14 of Leicestershire's 26 games in the County Championship. A similar thing was also experienced with Jack Walsh, who managed to take 216 wickets for Cahn's XI in 1938, but who in the same year was only released four times for county matches.