Double Headers

30 Surrey in 1909 the second day) and £167 in 1898, with an average of about £103. So the drop to not much more than £15 in 1909 was very striking. And over the same period, the ten fixtures had brought about five net profits, ranging between £3-7s and over £81, and five net losses, ranging between about £4-10s and almost £45. The net loss of almost £120 on the Reigate fixture in 1909 - on an expenditure that had climbed steeply compared with that of the preceding years - was surely not what had been looked for. Surrey v Oxford University: Expenses and receipts for matches in Surrey, 1898-1909 Expenses Receipts Profit/Loss £ s d £ s d £ s d 1898 86 3 0 167 10 6 + 81 7 6 1900 67 13 0 72 7 2 + 4 14 2 1901 148 19 4 133 5 10 - 15 3 6 1902 129 12 10 90 9 0 - 39 3 10 1903 146 16 4 101 16 8 - 44 19 8 1904 67 5 6 115 1 0 + 47 15 6 1905 91 10 0 94 17 10 + 3 7 10 1906 89 3 0 121 7 8 + 32 4 8 1907 86 2 9 51 17 6 - 34 5 3 1908 86 5 0 81 15 10 - 4 9 2 1909 135 3 2 15 5 6 - 119 17 8 As with Reigate Priory CC before them, when the report and accounts for 1909 were placed before Surrey’s AGM early in 1910, there was a deafening silence in the Secretary’s Report about the Reigate and double- header ‘experiments’. It is probably not unreasonable to surmise that both ventures – that is, the decision to play a home match away from The Oval, and the separate but overlapping decision to play two matches at the same time – were now seen as something of an embarrassment, best passed over hastily in the review of the year. Whether that surmise is true or not, when it came to deciding on the fixtures for 1910 there is no suggestion in the surviving records that Surrey ever contemplated repeating either venture. And although it had hosted one Second Eleven match in each season between 1905 and 1909, Reigate had now even lost its primacy in looking for grounds for Second Eleven matches – indeed, it was no better than sixth choice: “It was decided to play Second Eleven matches at Croydon, Guildford and Horley in 1910.” Minutes of SCCC Match Committee meeting of 21 October 1909 ... supplemented a month later by: “It was decided to play Second Eleven matches on the grounds of the Merton and Richmond clubs, or failing either of these, on the Reigate Priory ground.” Minutes of SCCC Match Committee meeting of 30 November 1909 26 26 The inclusion of Croydon, Merton and Richmond in these lists for 1910 indicates that it was no longer - if it ever had been - a priority that fixtures that could not be accommodated at The Oval should be played away from metropolitan Surrey.