Double Headers

11 Surrey in 1909 fixture. Even if Oxford had been prepared to break with tradition and play this away game during (or even before) their normal home season, or to play it after the University Match, there were no realistic slots available in Surrey’s and The Oval’s programmes. The only such slot theoretically available was 12-14 July, during the Lord’s Gentlemen v Players Match. But not only would this be unlikely to have been much of an attraction to the paying public, given the much more attractive (on paper at least) fixture on the other side of the Thames, it would also have been a full week after an already-late University Match, and as such unlikely to have been a great attraction to the leading University players. So the unavoidable conclusion was reached that the only way for a fixture to be arranged in Surrey between the county and Oxford University in 1909 was for it to be doubled up with an existing fixture. Quite why the county club chose to follow this option is unclear. Their pre-season aim had been to play home and away fixtures with both Oxford and Cambridge “if possible”. In the event they played Oxford twice but Cambridge not at all. In view of the difficulties in arranging the second Oxford fixture, it is very surprising that the county club decided to pursue it – after all, if they were prepared to give up the matches against Cambridge in this crowded season, was the second Oxford fixture really so essential? Unfortunately there is nothing in the surviving records that even addresses this question, let alone answers it. So we can only speculate. Did the fact that Surrey’s captain, H.D.G. ‘Shrimp’ Leveson Gower, was an old Oxford man have any influence in deciding that the second Oxford fixture was “possible” despite the apparent practical difficulties in fixing it? Or was it just that those deciding on Surrey’s fixtures were unwilling to arrange only a single match against the Universities, regardless of the implications – after all, Surrey had played at least two matches against Oxford and/or Cambridge in each year since 1898? Or was it perhaps that the second fixture was agreed as something of a trial effort, to see if there was support for taking the occasional county match away from The Oval? On this last point, some contemporary reports of the games in 1909 refer to the double-header as “an experiment”, as if Surrey were trying out the idea of playing two games simultaneously to see if it might be worth pursuing on other occasions (two such reports are quoted on page 28). Although there is nothing explicit in the surviving records to confirm whether this is the case – the Surrey minutes are surprisingly silent on the consequences and significance of the decision to play the home match with Oxford at the same time as a Championship Match, and of the attitude of the Committee Members towards doing so – this may perhaps be closer to the truth of the situation. Summing up So no, it wasn’t an error, a muddle, or a mix-up that led to Surrey playing two simultaneous first-class matches in June 1909. It was the choice consciously made by the county club as a result of trying to fit too many matches into too tight a schedule, in a fixture list made more than usually crowded for Surrey by the visit of the Australians.