All Ten: The Ultimate Bowling Feat

21 George Wootton 180 for Nottinghamshire. Most MCC matches were played at Lord’s where conditions for batsmen still left much to be desired. It was suggested that nobody ever bowled so many shooters there. However, Wootton still needed to bowl accurately to take advantage of the conditions; wide shooters don’t get many wickets, and a high proportion of his victims were bowled. Wootton’s all-ten was however not taken at Lord’s but at Bramall Lane, Sheffield for the All-England Eleven against a Yorkshire side not yet the power it later became, and weakened by the absence of five leading players because of a dispute. The exact nature of the dispute is a little unclear, but it seems to be related to their earlier refusal to play against Surrey. It clearly affected Yorkshire’s season. Using 25 cricketers they played nine matches, losing seven and drawing two. The All-England Eleven had a full programme of fixtures, almost exclusively all non-first-class. They had just come from playing Longsight (Manchester) and after Sheffield would move on to play Burton-on-Trent, in each case defeating teams of 22. Wootton had got close to an all-ten earlier in the season, taking nine for 37 for MCC against Oxford University, but Nottinghamshire team-mate James Grundy had nipped in and spoiled the party. And three years later Grundy’s only wicket of the innings (admittedly the first) again prevented a Wootton full house, this time for MCC against England. (Grundy himself took nine wickets in an innings once. Who took the tenth? George Wootton!) This was Bramall Lane’s tenth first-class match; having been laid out in 1854 the first match (Yorkshire versus Sussex) had taken place the following year. The ground was also used for other sporting purposes, notably for football beginning in December 1862 when the first match was played there (Hallam versus Sheffield FC). Six years later the ground staged the world’s first floodlit football match. Going in first against Yorkshire a strong All-England side, captained by George Parr, made 524, the then first-class record score. Progress was slow: the innings lasted 320 four-ball overs. The crowd was small, but those present were no doubt pleased to see as much as possible of the stars who, despite batting well into the second day, had still left themselves just enough time to dismiss the home side twice. Everybody got double figures, with chief contributors the Cambridgeshire pair Thomas Hayward and Robert Carpenter (according to Wisden for some seasons ‘by general consent the two best bats in England’) who both scored centuries. As already mentioned, Hayward would be the uncle of Surrey great Tom Hayward, whilst Carpenter’s son Herbert would be a future Essex stalwart. In reply Yorkshire failed twice, losing 19 wickets on the third day. Wootton wasn’t really needed in the first innings, the Nottinghamshire pair under- arm bowler Cris Tinley and paceman John Jackson, who took nearly 1,000 first-class wickets between them, doing most of the work. The last wicket to fall was Ike Hodgson. Batting eleven for good reason, he was run out for two. Having already bowled 98 overs in taking five for 127 he was probably a bit tired. Bowling round arm, he was first in the line of successful Yorkshire left-arm spinners. He died from consumption two years later aged 39.