All Ten: The Ultimate Bowling Feat

45 George Burton run-scorer. Burton’s successful debut was followed by a decade of steady wicket- taking, punctuated by a number of highlights. Although he never played Test cricket he appeared in five matches for Middlesex against the Australians with some success, notably in 1886 when he had match figures of fourteen for 192 in a match that the visitors won by just one wicket. Burton’s all-ten was the high point of the most successful season of his career. His county’s reliance on him was particularly marked and is illustrated by the fact that he took 87 wickets for them in 13 matches, whilst the next most successful bowler, pace man James Robertson, took just 28. In his first match of the season for Middlesex, at Lord’s, he had second-innings figures of seven for 18 in 17.2 overs as Yorkshire were skittled for 43 to lose by nine wickets in two days. Two months later Burton took his all-ten against Surrey. Since Edward Barratt’s all-ten there in 1878 facilities at The Oval had improved, with concrete embankments around the ground making viewing easier. The Championship was not formally organised until 1890. Before then champions were ‘proclaimed by the press’. Wisden lists Surrey as unofficial champions in 1888, and with 12 wins out of 14 there really were no other contenders, and so Burton’s feat was especially meritorious. Wisden’ s reports of Surrey matches at The Oval in 1888 were curiously variable in length: some reports ran to over a page of detailed text, others were much shorter. Unfortunately for Burton, the report of the Middlesex match fell into the latter category and he got little more mention than the fact that his taking of all ten wickets was ‘a great feat’. He was the only professional in a Middlesex team that batted first and scored 161. Although the Middlesex captain, Alexander Webbe, went quickly, steady scoring by James Walker (43), Stanley Scott (60) and Tim O’Brien (37) had left them well placed at one point at 149 for three. Walker wasn’t one of the famous Southgate Walkers, but a Scot from Glasgow. Surrey batted for a few overs at the end of the first day and Burton quickly dismissed the prolific Bobby Abel to leave them 12 for one at the close. Abel’s previous match had been his Test debut at Lord’s, and earlier in the season at the same venue Burton had dismissed him six short of his century, in a match that followed Abel’s 160 against a Cambridge University attack which included Sammy Woods, the next bowler to take an all-ten in England. Rain prevented play on Friday, the scheduled second day, and left the pitch in a ‘treacherous’ state for what proved to be an exciting last day. Surrey captain John Shuter, who would play his one and only Test later in the summer at The Oval, resisted for a while before becoming the only one of Burton’s victims not to be caught. Seven of the first eight Surrey batsman were, or would be, Test cricketers, but it was the eighth, Kingsmill Key, going in at number five and scoring 51 before being caught at long off by Edward Hadow, who was the only one to pass 30. Middlesex (and Burton) would have been glad to see him go. The previous season, in the second of two first-class matches played at Chiswick Park, he had made 281 for