Cricket 1888

A P R IL 19, 188a OEIOKET: A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. 73 with a view to make the necessary arrange­ ments, or at least to prepare the ground for the proposed tour. The party will, I learn, in all probability leave Chicago about the fifteenth of October, and after a seiies of farewell games in the States make tracks for San Francisco, thence to Sydney by the Pacific line. Mr. Spalding and Captain Anson, who are chiefly interested in the venture, are to be accompanied by nineteen or twenty players—twenty-two in all. They expect to reach San Francisco on the return trip about March 1, and will play a game or two on their return in the principal Cities of Chicago. This is a part of the programme which Mr. Spalding has sketched out in his inventive brain. But Mr. Spalding perhaps had better speak for himself: We shall rig up some kind of an arrange­ ment on shipboard so that our batteries oan keep in condition, and so that the teams may also practise a little cricket, for we intend to show the Australians that base ball is not the only game Americans can play. It is just 8,200 miles from ’Frisco to Sydney, and our first stop will be at Honolulu, the capital of the Sandwich Islands. We stop there from twelve to fifteen hours, and during our stay will manage to call upon K ing Kalakua and his court, and see a good bit of the country, and its famous sugar plantations. We shall stop but a few hours in Sydney, Melbourne being our objective point. Whether we will make the journey from Sydney to Melbourne overland or by steamer I do not know yet, but in either case we shall be given a royal welcome at the Melbourne end of the route. I can safely assure the boys of that. They may anticipate—for I shall reach Melbourne a month ahead of them—a banquet at the hands of the Australian oricket clubs, say the second night after their arrival there. We shall undoubtedly have all the invitations we can fill at the hands of the sportsmen’s clubs in the different cities we shall visit, and the boys will be able to tire themselves out, if they choose, at kangaroo shooting. We shall probably remain in Melbourne a fortnight, at the end of which we will depart for Adelaide, going thence to Burabura, Geelong, Ballarat, Sandhurst, Wagga, Orange, Bathurst, Sydney, New Castle and Brisbane, all of which are populous thriving cities. We shall then return to Melbourne and probably play a match game of cricket with a picked Australian eleven. We shall then leave for Tasmania, where we shall play in Launceston and Hobart Town. Then we sail for New Zealand, and play at Auckland, Thames, Hokatika, Christ Church, Wellington, and Dunedin. Leaving New Zealand we finally return to Melbourne, and before departing for Sydney to take our steamer for San Francisoo, will probably play a return game of oricket with the pioked eleven we played upon our previous stop there. “ Do’st like the picture F r o m what I myself know, though, of A. Or. Spalding, I can guarantee that the tour will be fully and properly carried out as far as he is concerned. Whether the Australians will, in face of recent events, look upon the trip with quite the same amount of ardour as its promoters, though, time alone can tell. In any case the tour is certain to be a most enjoyable one, and the public of Australia on their side can be assured that the whole arrangements will be conducted in a proper as well as a liberal spirit, and that the Ball players themselves will reflect credit on those who are introducing them to the sport-loving folk of Australia. S o m e scoring quite out of the common was recorded on Saturday, the third of March, on the Adelaide Oval, in a match between the Norwood, the premiers of South Australia, and the Gawler Clubs. Fifteen of Gawler were to have turned up, but only twelve were found on the field, and the three absentees, had as it happened, all the best of the deal. At least, they were spared an afternoon’s leather-hunting, which might have been even further prolonged had the two cracks of the Norwood Club, G. Giffen and J. J. Lyons, to wit, only been in the team on the occasion. W . Giffen and J. Mackenzie, who opened the batting for the Norwoods, got a hundred runs in thirty- five minutes, and in the three hours and a quarter during which the game lasted as many as 453 runs were totalled, or an average of about 140 runs to the hour. A t t e w e l l ’ s bowling for Mr. Vernon’s Eleven against the Sixth Australian team at Melbourne was so much out of the ordinary run as to deserve the distinction of full details. “ Felix,” the critic of the Australasian, was, unless his identity has changed, one of the batsmen who opposed Attewell on this occasion, and the follow­ ing remarks from the pen of so excellent a judge of the game may be regarded as only a fitting tribute to a great per­ formance :— Attewell’s bowling was the special feature of the match. In the first innings he delivered 312 balls, that is to say, 78 overs, of which no fewer than 61 were maidens. Only 33 runs were scored off him for five -wickets, and not one 4 hit is debited against him. His precision of pitch was perfect. He varied his pace skilfully, and got work on from both off and leg. You had, per­ haps, a notion that you could put him away to leg, but just as you were about to try, the slight curl from leg sold you; and similarly his offbreaks deceived you, when you were preparing for an off-stroke. In a tolerably long experience, I have never seen any bowling to surpass Attewell’s in this match, and his average of 6.6 runs per wicket is wonderfully fine considering the quality of the wicket. It was not an absolutely perfect wicket, but it was quite good enough to make any batsman feel thoroughly at home. In the second innings Attewell did what he liked with the ball (short of making it talk), and his figures are worth special mention, namely 84 balls, 15 runs, 14 maidens, 7 wickets, or an average of 2.14 runs er wicket. In all he sent down 99 overs (396 alls), 75 maidens, for 48 runs and 12 wickets, giving the splendid average of 4 rans per wioket. So much has baen written about the remarkable success of Turner, the great bowler of New South Wales, yclept “ The Terror,” that it may not be considered unfair to institute a comparison between his doings and those of the Surrey trundler, G. Lohmann. At the time the last mail left Australia, the averages in matches between first-class matches placed Lohmann far ahead of his Austra­ lian rival. The former had the very fine average of 10 rims per wicket, whereas Turner’s is 13.33; but the latter bowled over 1,000 balls more. Briggs had also a better average, but he only bowled about one-third the number of balls. Putting aside Wood, of whom I wrote recently that he was bound for Cambridge, who only played in one innings, Moses was still at the top of the tree in batting, with the excellent average of 62.9 runs per innings. Mr. Walter Bead came next with 52.1, and Shrewsbury was close up with 48.8. Of 815 runs Moses made 297, or more than a third in one innings. Shrewsbury, too, made 232 out of 536 in an innings, while Mr. Brann got 118 out of 176 in the same way. Percy McDonnell also owed 112 out of a total of 411 to a single innings score. A c u r io u s incident occurred in the match between Mr. Vernon’s eleven and the Sixth Australian team, at Melbourne. S. P. Jones, of New South Wales, well- known to English cricketers, was given out hit wicket, though there was a con­ siderable doubt as to whether the bats­ man had dislodged the bails in the act of striking, or in attempting a run. Phillips, the umpire at the bowler’s end, was appealed to, but he properly referred the case to the umpire at the striker’s end, Cotter, who gave Jones out, declaring himself certain that the wicket was broken in the act of striking. A c o r r e s p o n d e n t , referring to the remarks I made last week on Mr. S. Bichardson’scricket record forDerbyshire, calls my attention to an experience of his of a peculiar kind. He was playing for the Gentlemen of Derbyshire against the Gentlemen of Leicestershire, at Leicester in 1859, when the incident to which my correspondent alludes occurred.Thompson, bowling for the Gentlemen of Derbyshire, got a batsman with the first ball the latter received, and his successor hitting his wicket had also to retire the succeed­ ing ball. Before delivering the next, Thompson saw that the striker at his end was in too great a hurry to run, and just as he was apparently about to deliver the ball, ran the third batsman out. Three wickets in two balls ! T a s m a n ia has produced in the past more than one player above the average well known to English cricketers. Just now, the Colony seems to have by no means a lack of useful material to iudge from the records during the season just over. A notable performance by a Tasmanian cricketer has just come under my notice. For the Launceston Club against Esk on Feb. 25, W. L. Sidebottom scored 197 (not out), out of a total of 332 for 3 wiokets. He was credited with no fewer than 24 boundary hits, four of which, and afterwards five, were scored in succession. This score is the highest ever made in the north, G. Arthur previously holding the record with 177. The Tasmanian record