There are several conflicting versions of what happened on the field in the Middlesex game. On the morning of 19 August, replying to suggestions that he was drunk, Peel spoke to a newspaper reporter and stated: "Before I went on the ground at Sheffield—I don't blush to say it—I had two small glasses of gin and water. At luncheon time I had nothing". Peel said that he opened the bowling with Stanley Jackson and was eventually rested without a word being said to him. He stated that he later slipped twice while fielding, but the cause was that the spikes on his boots were broken. That evening, when he went to collect his wages at the end of the game, the Yorkshire secretary, Joseph Wolstenholme, informed him of the suspension on the grounds that his play was "unsatisfactory", and when pressed by Peel for an explanation, he told him: "You have had a glass too much".