All Ten: The Ultimate Bowling Feat

51 Sammy Woods four years at Cambridge, and was twice bowled by Samuel Butler in the match in which Butler took his famous all-ten. His eleven played an annual match against Cambridge until the turn of the century. He had assembled a reasonably strong team with seven amateurs to do the batting, a professional to keep wicket and three more to bowl. (At the end of the season Johnny Briggs, Arthur Mold and Walter Wright would be among the season’s top ten wicket-takers.) Wisden commented that some of the batsmen were likely out of practice; unsurprising given that the season had only just started. Wisden thought that the 1890 Cambridge eleven was the best for at least a decade. Five of the side at Fenner’s were making their first-class debuts, including the redoubtable F.S.Jackson, Ledger Hill who would go on to score a Test century, and Digby Jephson who would take six for 21 bowling lobs for the Gentlemen against a strong Players’ side at Lord’s in 1899. On a damp pitch 26 wickets fell on the first day. The visitors’ first innings lasted for just an hour and a half, Woods taking five for 19 and the medium pace first-class debutant Edward Streatfeild five for 41. The tall Charterhouse-educated Streatfeild would play in all four University matches between 1890 and 1893 (and also obtain two soccer Blues). Cambridge replied with 130. Woods hadn’t yet shown much indication that he would go on to be a useful batsman and was stumped for a duck by Nottinghamshire’s John Carlin off Briggs. Carlin had a curious career. For most of it he played a handful of matches each season, sometimes keeping wicket, and then finished with two fairly full seasons at the start of the 20th century. Wicketkeeper Gregor MacGregor top scored with 36. Not yet 21 he was already a Scottish rugby international and would make his England cricket debut later in the season. Thornton’s XI began their second innings disastrously, Woods quickly bowling Thornton for a duck. Briggs though showed some resistance. An outstanding slow left-arm spinner, the first bowler to take 100 Test wickets, he could bat a bit and had a Test hundred to his name. However, he left just before the close, which came with the score 29 for six. By the early 1890s Woods was at his peak as the most successful amateur bowler of the time. He was a fearsome proposition: over six feet tall, well-built, bowling fast with a deadly yorker and a deceptive slower ball, and apart from a catch by MacGregor, fearlessly standing up, he hadn’t so far needed any other help in disposing of the opposing batsmen. It was traditional at Cambridge for the captain to entertain the opposition, and on the second morning Thornton and the other amateurs sat down to the perhaps dubious pleasure of a lobster and beer breakfast (although more traditional fare was also available). Perhaps not surprisingly after such a start to the day, the visitors quickly lost George Vernon when play began. Vernon was also a rugby international as well as having played one Test. A Cambridge victory seemed imminent. However a partnership of 63 between Middlesex captain Alexander Webbe and county colleague Percy de Paravicini, who compensated for a first-innings duck by making the highest score of the match, meant that Cambridge would be left a tricky target. De Paravicini (Old Etonians) would later gain three England soccer