Evershed won the toss and opened the innings with Wright. Runs came freely, although Wright was troubled by the lob bowling of Quinton, yet another army officer. By lunch the score was 186 for two, with Wright and Storer in the middle. Wright went on to 134, Storer 100 and by the close of play the score was 477 for four, with Chatterton and Davidson together on 103 and 34 respectively. Next morning, before another crowd of 2,500, runs came quickly and Derbyshire reached 645, which remained their highest total until 2005. Chatterton, 142, and Davidson 108, added 176 for the fifth wicket which must have allowed some common ground for conversation. Evershed had asked Davidson to get out as quickly as possible as he felt there were already sufficient runs on the board but instead of hitting out the batsman continued gradually towards his century. Quinton emerged from the carnage with five for 93 and then completed an undefeated hundred as Hampshire followed on. Davidson, six for 42, had made early inroads during the first innings before Poore’s unbeaten 121 enabled them to reach 240 and they easily saved the match. Poore shredded county bowlers in 1899 but Derbyshire got off relatively lightly: he did not play at Whit and made 79 and 53 not out in an easy Hampshire victory at Derby. More often than not the games became confrontations of the lowly. In 1903 and 1905, for example, the Whitsuntide match brought Hampshire their only victory of the season, Hesketh Hesketh-Prichard, traveller, writer and fast bowler, taking ten wickets in the first and thirteen for 78 in the second. The August Bank Holiday week of 1908 saw one the most significant developments in Derbyshire’s history, when on the second day of the Hampshire match at Derby (Tuesday 4 August) Will Taylor was appointed as secretary - a post he was to hold for 51 years. After 1908 Derbyshire’s opponents until the outbreak of war were Essex, friendship and fixtures having been restored in 1895. Their bowlers, still with nightmares about Percy Perrin’s unbeaten 343 at Chesterfield in July 1904 in a match Derbyshire won, suffered further torture at Leyton in 1912 when Essex declared at 609 for four. Perrin (245) and Charles McGahey (150) dominated Whit Monday with a partnership of 312 for the third wicket. Essex had the better of these encounters and the last holiday game before the war was barely a contest. Derbyshire made only 31 and 94, Bert Tremlin, who performed a hat trick, and Johnny Douglas bowling unchanged. Bowlers had tended to dominate Essex’s earlier holiday matches against Leicestershire from 1894 to1900, Walter Mead, Pickett (all ten at Leyton in 1895), Kortright and Leicestershire’s Pougher taking plenty of wickets. Kent then provided more local opposition for Essex, Perrin making two hundreds in 1901 and Essex winning by an innings at Leyton in 1902. Hampshire engaged in derby games against Sussex in 1909 and 1910 and Kent in 1911-12 before meeting Middlesex in the last two pre-war seasons. There was time for Jack Hearne and Patsy Hendren to delight the Southampton crowd in August 1913, whilst the following year’s Lord’s fixture at Whitsuntide saw play start on the Saturday. Joining the Party 49