All Ten: The Ultimate Bowling Feat

79 season with a pair against the South Africans, bowled both times by Ernie Vogler, the next bowler to take an all-ten. At least the Bristol public were impressed with Dennett’s bowling, a collection around the ground raising over £25. Dennett’s figures are still a county record, and beat the nine for 34 taken by the fast-medium Huggins against Sussex at Bristol two years previously. Gloucestershire went in after lunch and scored 173 in just 43 overs. This healthy rate of scoring was due to the home side’s captain Gilbert Jessop who scored 75 in 95 minutes before he was caught and bowled by Douglas. This would be a laudable rate of scoring for a conventional batsman, but was slow for a batsman who in recent years had four times reached 200 in less than 150 minutes. The great Jessop wasn’t in particularly good form in 1906, but his rate of scoring illustrates the continuing difficulty of the conditions. There was still an hour and three quarters left on the first day; time for Essex to lose four more wickets for 63 runs. Dennett took three of these, having Douglas caught for 25 and tempting both of the ‘Twins’ into being stumped by Board. The match was over by lunch on the next day. Although the wicket showed some improvement Essex could only get as far as 127, leaving Gloucestershire an easy task. Dennett took another five wickets to finish with fifteen for 88 in the match. Only Walter Turner (37) and the Reverend Frank Gillingham (20) resisted for long. The Reverend was an interesting character. Born in Tokyo, dying in Monaco, he scored just over 10,000 first-class runs and played his last match in 1928 aged nearly 53. He is perhaps most famous for making the first wireless cricket commentary in England: Essex against the New Zealanders at Leyton in 1927. He was later to fill in time during a rain delay at The Oval by commenting on the advertisements around the ground. The BBC’s puritanical Director-General John Reith was not impressed! Dennett had bowled unchanged in the match with fast bowler Francis Roberts who, wicketless in the first innings, was rewarded with five for 69 in the second. Roberts was an amateur playing only his second match for Gloucestershire since leaving Cambridge. He was only available to play in August, but was a regular until the First World War, which was to claim his life in February 1916 aged 33. This was his only five-wicket haul, but he was a useful bat, scoring five centuries for Gloucestershire. He always played in glasses. Dennett had served in the Boer War and was commissioned from the ranks in the First World War. Still serving in India he couldn’t return to cricket until 1920. Although Charlie Parker had now completed his post- war switch from fastish left-arm to slowish left-arm and begun to take wickets in vast numbers, there was still a place in the Gloucestershire side for Dennett. By the time he played his last match in 1926 at the age of 47, he had taken 2,082 wickets for the county, a total only exceeded by Parker and Tom Goddard. He became coach at Cheltenham College. In later years he suffered from Parkinson’s Disease and he died at Cheltenham in 1937. George Dennett