Immediate Impact of The War
The season was almost over when war was declared on Sunday, 3 September and only ten first-class matches were cancelled. Four were due to begin on Saturday, 2 September but all were delayed due to the emergency and then cancelled after the declaration of war. Two earlier games involving the West Indian tourists had already been cancelled. Four remaining games, including Gentlemen v Players, were due to begin on different days during the following week and all were cancelled.
The final matches played before the war were six County Championship games that began on Wednesday, 30 August and were completed on or before Friday, 1 September, the day the Wehrmacht invaded Poland. Three of these games were completed with a result on the second day. Two more were ended as draws by agreement on the Friday morning after news of the invasion was reported.
The last match to be completed was Sussex v Yorkshire at Hove. From an overnight position of 330–3 in the first innings, chasing a Sussex score of 387, Yorkshire continued on the Friday morning and totalled 392 all out. Sussex collapsed in their second innings and were all out for only 33, whereupon Yorkshire made 30–1 to win by nine wickets. That ended the 1939 season and also marked the end of first-class cricket in England until the first of the Victory Tests began on 19 May 1945.
The few remaining county matches were cancelled immediately and Birley comments that there was "none of the unfortunate disposition to linger over it as in 1914". Cricket in 1939 accepted the inevitable, summarised in the September 1939 issue of The Cricketer by Sir Home Gordon who found a suitable metaphor: "England has now begun the grim Test match against Germany".
The Third Test was the last match played at The Oval in 1939. Soon after war was declared, the ground was requisitioned and modified for use as a prisoner-of-war camp, but no prisoners were ever held there. Lord's was prepared for a similar fate but the authorities decided against it and Lord's was able to stage many games throughout the war to raise money for charity.
H. S. Altham wrote in 1940 about a visit to Lord's in December 1939 as "a sobering experience; there were sandbags everywhere and the Long Room was stripped bare with its treasures safely stored below ground". Having painted a bleak picture thus far, Altham ended on a note of defiance: "but the turf was a wondrous green, Old Father Time on the Grand Stand roof was gazing serenely at the nearest (barrage) balloon and one felt that somehow it would take more than totalitarian war to put an end to cricket".
Read more about this topic: 1939 English Cricket Season
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