Double Headers

36 Surrey in 1909 last first-class appearance, and at 54 years and 134 days old on the final day, he is still the oldest player ever to appear for Surrey in a first-class match. Finally, Herbert Vigar continued as Strudwick’s understudy, playing occasional first-team games in that capacity until he left the county, and first-class cricket, after the 1911 season. Like Budgen, he died at the Earlswood Asylum, in his home town of Redhill. As for Oxford University , eight of the Reigate XI - all except Barley, Turner and Sale - went on to play in the Varsity Match at Lord’s a fortnight later, in which a delayed declaration left Cambridge an impossible target before rain brought the game to an early conclusion as a draw. The first two were destined never to win a cricket Blue, though Sale did so in 1910. In the match at Lord’s Evans made 79 and 46, and Salter made 53 in the first innings, while Gilbert took 6-52 in Cambridge’s first innings; but otherwise there were no particular heroics from the ‘Heroes of Reigate’. Perhaps Surrey allowed them to peak too soon. What became of their team from Reigate? Well, … AJ Evans wrote a best-selling book The Escaping Club about his escape from a German PoW camp during the First World War. He played a few games for Kent in the 1920s, and appeared in a single Test for England against Australia in 1921, in which, unhappily, the common consent is that he was out of his depth. Following his 53* at Reigate in his maiden first-class innings, Philip le Couteur scored 57 in his next innings (against Sussex at Hove), and thus aggregated 110 runs before being dismissed for the first time in his first- class career. His real moment of glory came in the 1910 University Match when he scored 160 and took 6-20 and 5-46 in Oxford’s overwhelming victory. He later returned to his native Australia, where he made three unremarkable appearances for Victoria before settling for the academic life at the University of Western Australia. Arnold Seitz also returned to Victoria, for whom he played 15 matches between 1910/11 and 1912/13, scoring two centuries (in separate matches) against South Australia in 1911/12. He was President of the Victoria Cricket Association from 1947 until his death in 1963, but his greatest achievements were in the field of education. He rose to become the Director of Education for Victoria from 1936 until 1948, and the following year he was made a Companion of the Order of St Michael and St George (CMG). 33 Of the other Oxford players, Malcolm Salter, Charles Hooman, Chris Hurst, Richard Sale and Humphrey Gilbert all had relatively brief county careers (Gilbert’s 72 appearances for Worcestershire being comfortably the 33 To prove that there is nothing new under the sun: “Above all, he has the essential quality of a first-class batsman: resource. A right-handed bat, he sometimes astounds slow leg-break bowlers bowling leg theory by making a right-about-turn when the ball is in the air, and executing a left-handed leg shot to the off side, where there are no fielders.” Not a recent description of Kevin Pietersen, but a description of the batting style of Arnold Seitz from Cricket , 25 November 1911.