frequently arose but, in Wisden's view, Hawke was "the greatest help in giving wise counsel towards their solution". At the Yorkshire club's Annual General Meeting in 1925: Hawke made a famous statement that has often been both quoted and misquoted: Pray God, no professional shall ever captain England. I love and admire them all, but we have always had an amateur skipper and when the day comes when we shall have no more amateurs captaining England it will be a thousand pities. This outburst was in response to an article in the Weekly Dispatch newspaper by Lancashire off-spinner Cec Parkin, described by establishment figures as a "cricketing Bolshevik", in which Parkin argued that the professional Jack Hobbs should captain England instead of the establishment amateur Arthur Gilligan. It was an embarrassing incident which Pelham Warner, as editor of The Cricketer, did his best to explain away. Coldham maintains that what Hawke really meant to say was that it would be a pity if there was no amateur good enough to play for England. He excuses Hawke by asserting that he was accident-prone with "a talent for tripping himself up" by speaking too impulsively; and so "could behave like a complete ass in public". In fact, Hawke was incorrect when he said England had "always had an amateur skipper". The convention of having an amateur captain effectively began with himself in the 1890s but, before that, England had been captained by James Lillywhite, Alfred Shaw and Arthur Shrewsbury: all professionals, but only on overseas tours, so it is possible that Hawke was referring to the captaincy in home Tests. Hawke did not live to see Len Hutton become the next professional England captain but he did see Wally Hammond, a former professional, turn amateur so that he could captain England, and Hawke reportedly supported Hammond's appointment. Yet Hawke had a different view about the captaincy of Yorkshire as, in 1927, he advocated the appointment of the professional batsman Herbert Sutcliffe to the post. A controversy arose and Sutcliffe declined the offer with the result that William Worsley, another amateur, was appointed instead. Controversy was not Sutcliffe's only reason as he could see that a professional captain would not be given the freedom to lead the team as he wished. Sutcliffe had been very disappointed a few years earlier when Jack Hobbs had refused the England captaincy and he subsequently told Bill