Alfred Atfield

Alfred John Atfield (3 March 1868 – 1 January 1949) played first-class cricket in England and South Africa and was also a Test match umpire and an influential cricket coach.^[1] He was born at Ightham, Kent, England and died at Caterham, Surrey.^[2]

A right-handed lower-order batsman and a right-arm medium-pace bowler, Atfield played for Kent's second eleven before qualifying for Gloucestershire, for whom he played three first-class matches in 1893.^[2] Those were the only competitive first-class games of his career and in the third of them, batting at No 10 in the match against Kent, Atfield scored 45, which was his highest first-class score.^[3] He was then recruited to play as a professional by the mill-owning cricket patron W. H. Laverton, who ran his own country-house cricket team at Leighton House, Westbury in Wiltshire. Over the next few years, Atfield played in many non-first-class games alongside some of the leading amateur players of the time: Laverton himself was the father-in-law of Lionel Palairet, for example, who was often included in Laverton's teams.^[2] While employed by Laverton, he also played regularly in Minor Counties cricket for Wiltshire in the early seasons of the Minor Counties Championship.^[4]

From 1897 onwards, Atfield divided his time between playing, coaching and umpiring commitments in England and South Africa.^[2] In the 1897–98 South African cricket season, he was a professional in Durban club cricket and played a single first-class match for Natal in that season.^[5] By 1900, he was back in England playing for W. G. Grace's London County team and the following year he became a professional for the Marylebone Cricket Club at Lord's, appearing in a couple of first-class matches in the 1901 season.^[2] In the second of these games, for MCC against London County, Atfield took his only first-class wickets; his first victim as a bowler was Grace.^[6]

Atfield began umpiring first-class matches with MCC from 1902 and by 1905 he had graduated to umpiring in County Championship matches in the English first-class season, remaining on the first-class umpires list in England until 1924 and thereafter standing in occasional matches through to 1932.^[7] He continued to spend his winters in South Africa, and in 1906–07, in a series of three matches between Transvaal and Border he umpired two games and played for Transvaal in the third: his final first-class appearance as a player.^[8]

Most of Atfield's time in South Africa was spent as a coach and he was credited as an influence in the development of Bob Catterall at Jeppe High School for Boys in Johannesburg.^[9] He umpired only occasional first-class matches in South Africa, but was called on as an umpire for four Tests on each of two successive tours of South Africa by England teams – the 1909–10 tour and the 1913–14 tour.^[10] He acted as umpire in England in Gentlemen v Players matches and in a Test trial match in 1927, but was not picked to umpire any Tests in England.