Cricket 1888

A P R IL 12, 1888. CRICKET: A WEEKLY HECOBD OF THE GAME. 57 P a v ri and Gagrat enjoy high reputa­ tions among the Parsi cricketers as bowlers. The former took eight of the ten wickets in one innings against the Bombay Gymkhana, in 1886, and in the last Gymkhana match Gagrat did good service both with bat and ball, getting three wickets in one over, besides making 44 runs. One of the very best bats among the Parsis, according to all accounts, is D. S. Mehta. Against the Ceylon team he made 32runs by somegood hard hitting, and on one occasion against Poona obtained 50 runs in very creditable style. N . 0. Bapasolo obtained last year the highest score (51) that has yet been got by Parsis against the Bombay Gymkhana, and then was unfortunately run out. Billimoria, too, succeeded in scoring the highest number of runs, 40, in the match against the Poona Gymkhana. The players have been selected from most of the principal Parsi clubs in Bombay, and are practising at present with much zeal and assiduity. They will start on the 7th May, as I have already intimated, by the Austro-Hungarian steamer “ Poseidon.’’ T he grand performance of the great Australian batsman, H . Moses, in the last Intercolonial match, as was only to be expected, was not allowed to go un­ rewarded. Opportunity .was taken during the interval on the second day of the return match between Mr. Vernon’s team and New South Wales in February, to present him with a valuable gold chrono­ meter, valued at eighty pounds, in recog­ nition of liis phenomenal scoring. The presentation was made by Mr. Angus Cameron, one of the vice-presidents of the New South Wales Association. The City Club, of which Moses is a member, it is said, also intend to present him with a valuable diamond pin, to remind him of his innings of 297 not out against Victoria. T h e public dearly loves a big hitter. Fast scoring is, indeed, much more popular than a rapid downfall of wickets, the scientists who are so anxious to prove that the batsman is unduly favoured under the existing rules, and that the grand old game suffers in consequence, to the con­ trary, notwithstanding. Cricketers of this inferior order may, however, shake hands across the sea over a rare instance of tall run-getting, recorded by the Truro Club of South Australia on the 18th ofFebruary. The game was played on the Truro asphalte pitch, and the local team,who went in first, in four and a half hours amassed the fine score of 507. They thus scored at the rate of about 113 runs per hour, and established a record for South Australia. T h e previous highest in the Colony, according to the Adelaide Observer, was 500, made in 1885 by the Prince Alfred College boys against the repre­ sentatives of St. Peter’s. The heroes of the Truro innings were W. Bennett and B. Lanyon. They got together with the score at 24 for 2 wickets, and 284 more were realized before Lanyon left. Bennett continued to smite until he had made 216, the third highest score ever made in the colony. Neither he nor Lanyon gave an easy chanoe, although both had lives. The highest score made for the fall of a wicket in South Australia was in 1886, when Hiscock and Simpson got 291 for the first wicket against the Advertisers. Five scores of over 200 have now been made in South Australia, viz., 252 by J. Darling for P.A.C.; in 1885, 220 not out by E. Stephens against Clare in the last Christmas holidays ; Bennett 216, 209 not out by George Giffen against the Kensingtons in 1884; and 203 by the same batsman against Mr. Vernon’s team at the beginning of the present season. His Eminence the Archbishop of West­ minster, whom the Pall Mall Budget of last week fittingly describes as a “Wonder­ ful Old Man,” was, it is not generally known, a Public School cricketer of no small merit over sixty years ago. In the scores of the day his name erroneously appears as E., instead of H. E. Manning, and hence some of the best-informed masters of cricket lore have doubted whether it was the Cardinal or not. As a matter of fact, as I have reason to know from information most kindly furnished a few weeks since by himself, it was, and it is interesting to know that he still main­ tains a hearty sympathy with the game in which, as a boy, he played a conspicuous part. T h e Cardinal, who was born at Totteridge, in July, 1808, was, I am in­ formed by the Earl of Bessborough, nick­ named “ the General” during his Harrow days, presumably on account of his skill in placing the field. He was a con­ temporary of the Earl of Verulam, then Lord Grimston, in the Harrow eleven, and played with him in 1825 for Harrow against both Eton and Winchester. The latter was the first meeting between Harrow and Winchester, and it was on the second night of the match that the Pavilion at Lord’s was burnt down, to the great detriment of the game, much valuable information in the shape of records being lost in the fire. The Cardinal also represented Harrow against Winchester at Lord’s in 1826, another memorable match, though in a different way, from the fact of W. Mey- rick’s innings of 146 not out for W in­ chester. C a r d in a l M a n n in g ’ s early association with the game will be news to many C r ic k e t readers, and the paragraph from the Budget to which I have referred will, I am sure, be read with interest as evincing the extraordinary vitality and mental activity of one of the most prominent men of the day:— Cardinal Manning on Sunday, at the Pro- Cathedral, Kensington, performed another of those astonishing tours de force which render it difficult for his flock to believe that he is really an older man than Mr. Gladstone. The Cardinal, attired in full pontificals—cope of cloth of gold, and jewellea mitre, held in his left hand his gold Crozier or episcopal staff during his long sermon, which lasted exactly fifty-five minutes. He held his congregation also, which was even more remarkable than the holding of his crozier. Another old man, Prince Bismarck, has celebrated his seventy- third birthday. It is not, however, until men get into the eighties that they are really old. Since the German Emperor died, Cardinal Manning is almost the oldest of the illustrious elders of our time, and yet in sympathy, in intelligence, and in active interest in the affairs of this world he puts to shame the youngest among us. K . B u r n , who played for the coming Australian team in the first oftheir matches against Shrewsbury and Lillywhite’s eleven at Sydney, but does not seem to have been included in the final selection for England, appears to be a batsman of no mean capacity. Identified, as I learn from the Sydney Referee , with the Wellington Club at Hobart Town for the last five or six years, his averages have been very much above the ordinary, and, indeed, during his connection with the Wellingtonians he had an average for the five seasons of between forty and fifty runs an innings. Against Mr. Vernon’s team this winter he made 22 and 99, and it was his brilliant per­ formance on this last occasion which gained him a place in the preliminary fixtures of the home-coming Australian team. He had, at the time the last mail left Australia, determined to settle in Melbourne, and his first innings against fifteen of the Uapulet Club for the Melbourne Club, with whom he has cast his lot, was an excellent display of batting to the tune of 79 not out. The Sydney Sporting Life states that Mr. W. W. Bead declared Burn to be the fourth best bats­ man in Australia, and quite fit for any Aus­ tralian eleven. He is, besides, a fine field as well as a change bowler, and was the best footballer in Tasmania last year. The Tasmanians are much exercised, and apparently with reason, that there is no representative of their tight little island in the Sixth Australian team. G e o r g e G if p e n ’ s exceptionally fine performances during the season just over m Australia, only tend to aggravate the feeling of disappointment which cannot fail to be general here, that for reasons of his own, he has determined not to ac­ company the Australian cricketers to England this summer. It is not often that a batsman is able to score over a hundred in successive innings, more es­ pecially in matches of importance, and Giffen, who followed up his 203 against Mr. Vernon’s team on the Adelaide Oval with 166 for South Australia against Victoria on the same ground, is thus entitled to the distinction of a rare feat. In four first-class matches just lately in Australia he made 493 runs for four innings, and took besides thirteen wickets for 341 runs. As an all-round cricketer there is a consensus of opinion among Australian critics that Giffen has not a superior in the world at the present time. And on his form of this last winter I am inclined to think that no one will dispute the claim.