Double Headers

71 Items of interest from these matches: •The game at Oxford in 1959 was Keith Miller’s final first-class match. He took 1-52 in the University’s first innings (his last victim being the future star of the Indian 1959 touring team, Abbas Ali Baig), but played no further part in the game after pulling a calf muscle and retiring hurt for 0 in his only innings. •West Indian Rudi Webster, who later played for Warwickshire, took 7-56 and 4-44 on his first-class debut when playing for Scotland in the match at Greenock in 1961, including a wicket with his first ball in each innings (but dismissing a different batsman each time). First-class double-headers by other club sides Over the years, a number of wholly or largely amateur clubs in addition to the MCC have made fleeting appearances in the first-class fixture lists, notably I Zingari (17 first-class matches between 1866 and 1904), the Orleans Club (four matches between 1878 and 1883), the Harlequins (four matches between 1924 and 1928), and the Lyric Club (one match in 1890), But by far the most durable, in terms of their first-class appearances, were the Free Foresters, who played 83 first-class matches between 1912 and 1968. All 83 were against either Oxford or Cambridge University, both of whom they met in first-class matches in each season from 1912 to 1962 inclusive 59 , with two further and final first-class matches in 1964 and 1968. The Free Foresters was (and still is) very much a ‘gentlemen’s club’, in the sense that all its players are amateurs. Founded by Rev W.K.R.Bedford as a wandering club in 1856, its membership was originally limited to gentlemen from the Midlands - though this term was defined rather widely, as the permitted source of Foresters’ players extended as far north as the southern parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire, and as far south as Hertfordshire and Buckinghamshire. In 1892 the residential qualification was lifted, as later were restrictions on the total number of club members: it became open to all-comers “provided the Committee considered that they had the right qualifications” 60 [no further comment needed!]. By the late 1920s the Foresters’ annual fixture list included around 100 matches, with anything up to six matches on the same day (though none on Sundays: the club had been founded by a clerical gentleman, after all). Then as now, their opponents consisted entirely of “county, university, college, schools, regimental XIs and recognised clubs in desirable localities”. 61 From around 1906 they began to field particularly strong sides against the two principal Universities, and from 1912 their matches against these two opponents were recognised by MCC as being of first- class status. With a large player-base, and the expectation that few club members would play more than a few matches for the Foresters each year, it became 59 Except that the 1946 fixture against Oxford was not first-class because it was played 12-a-side 60 Philip Whitcombe and Michael Parsons: The Free Foresters 1856-2006, Free Foresters CC, 2006 61 Taken from the Club History page for the Free Foresters at www.ukcricket. org/freeforesters Other instances in the British Isles