Dimming of the Day

38 innings. Middlesex and Worcester started on 27 May and Frank Tarrant scored 200 as the county piled up 477-6 on the first day. As he was fresh from scoring 250* against Essex at Leyton, this was quite a feat. The next day The Times reported a speech by Sir Edward Carson in Wales – a speech in which he referred to the arms now held by the Ulster Unionists. Carson was sailing close to the wind here, and most of the Tory party was sailing with him, having given at least tacit support to the mutiny at the Curragh which made it clear that the Army could not be relied on in Ulster. Armed defiance of the law was clearly on his agenda: The Times , need it be said, was cheering him on. In London Dr M.A.Low demonstrated the new wonder of the age, transmitting pictures by wire and forecasting that it would be possible to send pictures wirelessly. The Times was capable of believing many things, but this was a step too far, surely. A letter from “NCK”, addressing the problems of county cricket, put them down to averages and the insistence on a championship. His solution was the abolition of the championship, fewer matches, and more amateurs. Mind you, there were tougher sports than cricket. The 1914 Giro d’Italia is regarded as the hardest cycle race of all time, with 400 kilometre stages in appalling weather; 81 started and 8 finished. The British press took no notice (as would be the case for nearly 100 years). Mr C.E.S.Rucker achieved a hat trick for Oxford University against MCC, the second of five first-class matches he played for the University in a short career. Charles Rucker returned after the war as secretary of the club, but had lost a leg in the war and his cricketing days were over. The paper on 1 June was full of the loss of the Empress of Ireland , sunk in fog in the Saint Lawrence on her way from Quebec to Liverpool after a collision with a Norwegian collier with the loss of over a thousand lives. The loss of life was on the same scale as that of the Titanic but the passenger list was less distinguished. Legend has it that the ship’s cat, Emmy, refused to board her and could not be coaxed aboard, watching her leave from the roof of Pier 27. Against Warwickshire on 29 May Jack Hobbs made 183 in 170 minutes, and Frank Foster’s 29 overs cost him 149 runs, though he did eventually clean bowl Hobbs. Percy Fender made 140, also at better than a run a minute, and Surrey on the second day scored 494 in under five hours on the way to winning by an innings and 197. On the same day Kent dealt out much the same treatment to Leicestershire, adding 408 in less than four and a half hours, including three centuries. Lancashire had been playing Essex at Old Trafford and Alfred Hartley, an amateur who had played fairly regularly until 1912, and had even been one in Wisden ’s five in 1911, played his only county match of the season. Hartley, born in New Orleans, died in France in October 1918. Opening Moves