History of Bucks CCC

the best ever match analysis for the county. This came in 1897 when he bowled unchanged in both innings against Oxfordshire on the County School Ground at Thame, recording figures of: 26.3 10 46 8 24.3 9 28 8 With Mat Wright conceding only 46 runs in the two innings Oxfordshire were hustled out for 84 and 54 leaving Bucks as victors by 110 runs. If George Nash’s record was truly outstanding, his contribution pales beside that of Mat Wright, his fellow coach at Eton. Wright, who had played just once for Nottinghamshire in 1889, had taken part in a few Bucks matches in the early1890s. His championship debut in Bucks’ first match of 1895 came shortly before his 37 th birthday and he continued to play for the county until the end of the 1913 season. During this time Bucks played 150 championship matches and Wright took part in 143 of them. Measured just as a bowler his record is that of a titan: 811 wickets at 14.28. It was not until the sixth match of the 1899 season that he knew what it was to bowl through an innings without taking a wicket. On no fewer than seven occasions he took eight wickets in an innings and an equal number of times he took seven, most of these successes coming when he had lost the support of George Nash to spearhead the attack from the other end, and by which time he was taking well over 40% of the wickets that fell. But this is only half the story for Mat Wright was an all-rounder, regularly batting at number four in his early days. Though his performances with the bat tailed off towards the end of his career, he could still point to a tally of 4,762 runs at an average of 22.25 with four centuries, the best of them 148 against Hertfordshire at Aylesbury in 1900, which was to remain the highest score by a Bucks batsman until surpassed by Dr E Weaver-Adams nine years later. The differential between Wright’s batting and bowling average is 1.57, a measure of an outstanding all-round contribution in any company, bettered in the first-class game by a few of the immortals, but matched by no post-war English cricketer apart from specialist batsmen who occasionally bowled. The image one has of Mat Wright bowling is of the easy rhythmic approach and unerring accuracy of a Derek Shackleton. With an action honed by long hours in the nets at Eton, his bowling was generally described as medium-paced and he was invariably able to keep a tight rein even though runs may have been flowing from the other end. It is confirmation of his accuracy and modest pace that throughout his career Wright gained victims through stumpings, and here he was fortunate to be supported in his early years by the skill of Charles Cobb and in his last three seasons by the genius of Walter Franklin, both of them keepers who were happy to stand up for him. 25 The first professionals Mat Wright