STRAIGHT AFTER facing South Africa, Percy Jeeves returned to club duty for Moseley’s home game with Birmingham League leaders Walsall. Moseley were happy to be back at their Reddings home, having just sorted out a new lease, but did not have a happy day. They were flattened by the champions-elect.
After the visitors made 192 (Jeeves 18-1-51-1) Moseley reached 12 without loss then imploded to 20 all out. Fast bowler Gordon Hawley, having returned from holiday to play in the game, took 7-12, six of the runs conceded coming from one blow by Frank Stephens. Jeeves was bowled by veteran medium-pacer Billy Brammer for five. “Moseley’s return to their old home at the Reddings has so far been attended with disastrous results,” observed the Post. “It is evident the players will take time to get accustomed to the ground which has, in days gone by, been the scene of some exhilarating cricket.”
On 8 July Jeeves was back at Edgbaston to play for Warwickshire Club & Ground against Eighteen of Parks Association. He took two wickets and two catches in the Parks Association’s 119 and scored 18 as the match was tied. Two days later came a visit to Camp Hill School for WG Quaife’s XI v Samuel Talboys’s XI, a benefit match for Talboys, who had been coach and groundsman at the school for 16 years. Aged 39, Santall seized the chance to get among the wickets with 11.1-8-3-10 in Talboys’s XI’s 36 all out while Jeeves neither batted nor bowled.
Back in the Birmingham League Jeeves took four wickets for 68 to help his side to victory at Dudley before, on 19 July, came his first, very brief, experience of County Championship cricket. When Northamptonshire visited Edgbaston, the match sped along and the visitors ended the second day on the verge of defeat. Chasing 463 for victory, they were 158/9 in their second innings but, cricket being cricket, rather than finish the match, the teams played for the allotted amount of time and then promptly left the field. Everyone had to return next day for what could only be a matter of minutes, possibly seconds.
On the third morning, wicketkeeper Tiger Smith was injured so Charlie Baker took the gloves and Jeeves was called upon to field as a substitute. At half past 11, out he went with the Warwickshire team for the first time on championship business. That business was brisk. From the sixth ball of the day, Quaife had ‘Fanny’ Walden caught at short leg. Jeeves’s first session of championship cricket lasted two minutes and was watched by almost no one.
The summer remained rain-affected but Jeeves continued to issue reminders that, come 1913, he would be a serious contender for regular first-team cricket. Against West Bromwich Dartmouth at Edgbaston he bowled through the innings for 16.3-1-46-6. When Aston Unity visited the Reddings, the saturated ground was unfit for play but a start was made as it was a benefit match for veteran professional Riley. In near darkness, with players barely able to keep their feet, Jeeves collected 33 with “spirited hitting”. For Warwickshire C&G against Sutton Coldfield, he took the last three wickets, as so often, all bowled. When Sydney Santall’s XI visited AW Barnes’ XI at Lichfield he demolished the hosts with 7-19. But he saved his best until last.
On 31 August, in the final league game of season, Smethwick were skittled for 62 at The Reddings: Jeeves 14.2-7-17-6. On the same day, Walsall beat Handsworth Wood by six runs to clinch the Birmingham League title. Their achievement set up the inaugural Champions v Rest of League game, a week later. Unbeaten in the league all season, Walsall had a superb team – powerful, experienced and full of swagger. But Jeeves demolished them with a display of all-round brilliance.
The champions batted first and Len Taylor took guard. When E.J.A. Cook wrote The Gorway Story in 1958, the left-handed Taylor was still rated “probably the most brilliant batsman Walsall has ever produced” but his stumps were demolished by Jeeves’s second ball. Jeeves then bowled Greaterex to have Walsall 14/2 and, “keeping a capital length”, bowled captain Billy Preston and trapped Brammer lbw with successive balls. He bowled star all-rounder Clarence Eaton to make it 30/5 and when Norman Hewson, having counter-attacked for 20, lifted a catch to point, thoughts were turning towards a ten-for. That wasn’t to be but Jeeves took 7-19 as Walsall, having carried all before them that season, were ignominiously all out for 48.
Jeeves had not finished. After the Rest of League’s reply dipped to 34/4, he first played carefully to see his team to victory and then, batting on in the showpiece match, climbed into the champions’ bowling for an unbeaten 74 (including two sixes, nine fours and a three) out of 172. It was a stunning all-round performance from the modest Yorkshireman.
Jeeves finished his first season in the Birmingham League placed third in the competition’s bowling averages with 44 wickets at 10.48 runs each. He was 14th in the batting list with an average of 25.20 which was more impressive than the relatively low figure suggests. Runs were rarely easy to acquire on difficult, uncovered wickets and only seven batsmen in the league ended the season averaging over 30.
Jeeves’s bowling figures of 150.2-17-461-44 were built by performances of consistently high quality but never more vividly was his talent displayed than on that sunlit September day in the dying embers of the 1912 season when his second delivery demolished the wicket of the classy Taylor. Jeeves and Taylor – two fit, happy, talented young sportsmen with towering futures. Nobody in the big, high-spirited crowd watching at Gorway had the faintest inkling that, within four years, both men would be dead.