[2] The County Championship was not immediately abandoned, the MCC issuing a statement that "no good purpose can be saved at the moment by cancelling matches" on 6 August, but attendances plummeted.
[2] News of casualties suffered by the British Expeditionary Force in Belgium was already turning the public mood against "business as usual" and on 27 August a letter written by W. G. Grace was published in The Sportsman in which he declared that "I think the time has arrived when the county cricket season should be closed, for it is not fitting at a time like this that able-bodied men should be playing cricket by day and pleasure-seekers look on.
"[2] The last match played, twenty five years and a day later, before the abandonment of first-class cricket due to World War II saw the same teams facing each other on the same ground.
[2] W. G. Grace, who had called for the early abandonment of cricket in his letter to The Sportsman, was reputed to shake his fist at the Zeppelins floating over his South London home.
Grace had played his second-last match, at the age of 66, for Eltham against Grove Park on 25 July 1914, scoring an unbeaten 69 out of 155 for six declared.
The Australians played a game in view of the Turks to give the impression of normality and confidence while the entire force was being secretly evacuated from the beach area.
Robert Graves recounts a game between officers and sergeants at Vermelles in France in 1915, when a bird cage with a dead parrot inside was used as the wicket.
The game was abandoned when German machine gun fire at an aeroplane caused falling bullets to land dangerously close to the pitch.
A game involving an English XII against an Indian team held at the Bombay Gymkhana in December 1915 for war relief was watched by 40,000 people.
The only first-class cricketer to be awarded the Victoria Cross was John Smyth, for conspicuous gallantry with the 15th Ludhiana Sikhs in India in 1915.
Herbert Strudwick, the Surrey wicket-keeper, worked in a South London munitions plant alongside teammate Razor Smith.
Other cricketers helped in the recruitment drive, with Gilbert Jessop, promoted to the rank of captain in the 14th Service Battalion, Manchester Regiment, making speeches encouraging men to join up.
Jack Wilson played 9 matches for Yorkshire County Cricket Club, and a couple for HDG Leveson-Gower's XI in 1912 and 1913.
A few days later, on 21 June, the Admiralty announced that HM King had been graciously pleased to award the Distinguished Service Cross to both Wilson and Mills 'for their services on 7 June 1915, when after a long flight in darkness over hostile territory, they threw bombs on the zeppelin shed at Evere near Brussels, and destroyed a zeppelin which was inside.
At the Yorkshire AGM in 1916, Lord Hawke said of Wilson, "May he continue his splendid work, and be with us when we again resume hostilities on the cricket field:" In the county yearbook for that year there is a photograph of him dressed in naval uniform.
pilots could be counted in hours, Wilson was promoted to major, survived the war and died on 3 October 1959 in Tickton, Beverley, Yorkshire.
British and Empire soldiers were instructed to throw the Mills bomb, a hand-held fragmentation grenade using a technique similar to that of bowling a cricket ball.