Double Headers

29 to the AGM report from twelve months previously, the report of the 1910 AGM in the Surrey Mirror makes no direct reference at all to the Oxford University match. After recording that it was reported to the AGM that £38-19s-2d had been spent in the year on “special improvements” to the pavilion and ground, and that Reigate Priory CC thanked Surrey CCC for their £10 grant towards this expenditure, the newspaper report continued: “The President [Sir Jeremiah Colman] remarked that he thought there was evidence ... that the gentlemen who were associated with county cricket were taking an interest in the organisation [i.e. in Reigate Priory CC]. Mr Leveson Gower had been very good in bringing teams down to Reigate, and the club owed him a debt of gratitude for doing so. As a member of the Surrey County Committee he could say that the committee did what it could to encourage cricket in the county, and the Reigate club had received some of that encouragement.” Surrey Mirror , 22 April 1910 And that’s all. The silence on the Oxford University match is deafening, and the rest smacks to me rather of damning Surrey CCC with very faint praise. When Surrey produced their accounts for the 1909 season, the disappointing financial return from the double-header – and particularly from the Reigate match – was there for all to see. The receipts from their home matches against the other 15 counties, all at The Oval of course, ranged between about £38 for the game against Gloucestershire (when there was play on the third day only) to £639 for the August Bank Holiday game against Notts, with an average of just under £213-14s. Receipts from the Lancashire match at The Oval were a reasonable-enough £274-1s-6d. Only the Middlesex and Notts matches earned more, and of course the Lancashire game only lasted two days. But the receipts from the Oxford University game at Reigate were a mere £15-5s-6d. 25 These were far and away the lowest receipts from any of Surrey’s first-class matches in 1909, and were closely on a par with those from each of the four Second Eleven matches played at The Oval (receipts from these four games totalled £61-0s-6d, the equivalent of £15-5s-1½d each). In terms of the balance-sheet, the expenses of £135- 3s-2d incurred for the Reigate match meant that the fixture lost the club almost £120. Three home county matches during the season lost more: the Gloucestershire game lost £139, that against Derbyshire – played when Surrey’s stars were involved in the Edgbaston Test against Australia – lost £127, and the Worcestershire game – when there was no play on the second day – lost £122. But none incurred so high a loss for so little income. Perhaps by 1909 the Universities were not such a big draw as most county sides, but at least when Surrey had played them at The Oval in recent years the financial returns had been nowhere near as poor as they were from the Reigate fixture. The table below shows that between 1898 and 1908, Surrey’s ten home fixtures with Oxford University had brought in receipts of between around £52 in 1907 (a rain-spoiled draw, with little play on 25 This is the equivalent of 611 paying customers over the three days of the game, assuming entry to be at a uniform 6d per person. Members of the Surrey and Reigate Priory clubs were admitted free. Surrey in 1909