[5] Realising the gravity of the international crisis, the West Indian tourists cancelled their four remaining fixtures and sailed for home.
Yorkshire won the title for the third successive season, playing 30 matches with 20 wins and 2 defeats to produce a points average of 9.286.
The team had five batsmen who all scored more than 1,000 championship runs: Len Hutton (2,167), Wilf Barber (1,388), Herbert Sutcliffe (1,230), Maurice Leyland (1,191) and Arthur Mitchell (1,087).
[8][9] Runners-up Middlesex were well served by Test batsmen Bill Edrich (1,948 runs), Denis Compton (1,853) and Jack Robertson (1,562).
[citation needed] Noted bowlers elsewhere were Reg Perks (Worcestershire) and Doug Wright (Kent), the only others to take more than 130 championship wickets.
Other leading batsmen were Wally Hammond, Denis Compton, Bill Edrich, Joe Hardstaff junior and John Langridge who all scored more than 2,000 runs.
[15] Among the first-class debutants in 1939 were future England players Alec Bedser, Godfrey Evans, Cliff Gladwin and Willie Watson.
[citation needed] 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.
[citation needed] The few remaining county matches were cancelled immediately and Derek Birley commented that there was "none of the unfortunate disposition to linger over it as in 1914".
[19] 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".
[20] In the 1940 edition of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack, author R. C. Robertson-Glasgow reviewed the 1939 season and remarked that it was "like peeping through the wrong end of a telescope at a very small but happy world".