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Seventeen members of Worcester County Cricket Club (WCCC), including 10 first team players, died in World War One.

Legend has it that the players went to sign up en-mass after a match in August 1914, and the county championship was postponed until the end of the war. The club鈥檚 scorebook from the period says simply 鈥減lay suspended due to war鈥�.

In 1919, WCCC couldn't field a county championship team due to the loss of so many players and staff so they didn鈥檛 play first class cricket again until 1920. The pictures of the time show a squad of players who are mainly in their 30s, and some even older as many of the younger players had died.

Amongst the first team players who lost their lives was William Beaumont Burns who played more than 190 games for Worcestershire and scored more than a 1,000 runs in three seasons. He still holds the three-wicket partnership record for the club. He signed up with the Canadian forces in 1914, then resigned and was commissioned into the Worcestershire Regiment in 1915. He was killed on the Somme in 1916 and has no known grave.

The Isaac brothers, Arthur Whitmore and John Edmund Valentine were both killed in action. Their family home, Boughton Park, was the home ground of Worcestershire until the team moved to New Road in 1898.

A letter from his commanding officer says Arthur, a bombing officer, was seen to fall in June 1916 as if hit by machine gun fire when running across the open. He was never seen again.

John, who had also fought and been wounded in the Boer War, was killed during an attack on a German trench in 1915.

The club鈥檚 World War One memorial has been restored with help from local schools and is due to be re-hung in the pavilion in the summer of 2014.

Location: New Road, Worcester WR2 4QQ
Split image shows the cricket ground before WW1, courtesy of Tim Jones, compared to now

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