Double Headers

69 The table reveals some patterns in these fixtures. Almost all of the double- headers featured a game against one or other of the first-class Universities; only the second instance in 1885 featured two matches against county sides. The great majority of the games were played in May or early June, reflecting the fact that the majority of the MCC’s first-class matches, and all of the Universities’, were generally played in the early part of the season. The Whitsun Bank Holiday also fell in this part of the year, but none of the double-headers took place over the holiday itself (when the counties were usually fully engaged against their regular Bank Holiday opponents), although - coincidentally, so far as I can tell - they were frequently held in the week immediately before or the week immediately after the Bank Holiday. With Lord’s as MCC’s only home ground, it is no surprise that all of the double-headers featured one home match and one away from home. Of the 20 instances where play took place in both matches, the MCC side won both games on just three occasions (1880, 1885, 1907) and lost both on two occasions (1895, 1913). There were nine instances when MCC won one and lost one, and six when one or both games ended as draws. Here as in later chapters I offer some items of statistical interest that occurred in some of these games: •Future Test cricketer Charles Leslie made 111* for Oxford University on his first-class debut in the game at Oxford in 1881. •The game at Southampton in June 1885 was the first ever first-class match played at the county ground at Northlands Road. George Davenport (101* for MCC) made the first first-class century at the ground, while Notts and England batsman Billy Gunn, playing for MCC, took 5-37 and 6-48 - the only two 5WIs of his first-class career . •As the list shows, the scheduled MCC v Yorkshire match at Lord’s in May 1891 was abandoned without a ball bowled. So was the reverse fixture in the same season, which was due to be played at Scarborough on 27- 28-29 August. •Frederick Martin of Kent took four wickets in four balls for MCC against Derbyshire in the match in May 1895. •The match in Dublin in May 1895 was MCC’s first-ever first-class match outside Great Britain. •Frank Druce was left stranded on 199* in Cambridge University’s innings in the game at Fenner’s in June 1895. (See photo on page 94.) •Cuthbert Burnup was dismissed for 95 and 93 for Cambridge University in the game in 1896, being out to the bowling of Ranjitsinhji in both innings. This was the first-ever instance of a player making two 90s in the same first-class match. Burnup’s previous highest score had been 92, so by the end of the game he had made three first-class 90s without yet reaching three figures. (He finally reached his maiden first-class century against the Australians about two months later, without any other intervening 90s.) •J.T.Hearne took 9-54 and 6-56 for MCC at Oxford in 1897 - and still finished on the losing side. Other instances in the British Isles