Cricket 1890

“ Together joined in cricket’s manly toil.”— Byron „ E eg lsto°a for^knsmiMion'^jroaa. THURSDAY, JULY 31, 1890. P R IC E 2j m r . j . M c C a r t h y BLACKHAM. ‘ Other times other manners.’ Opinions may, and no doubt do, differ on the relative merits of the great masters of oricket of yesterday and to*day. The late Tom Lookyer, according to many and good judges familiar with the heroes of the past as with those of the present, wasinmanyrespects superior to the best wicket-keeper of this or any other age. But to institute a true com­ parison requires circum­ stances of similar character. It is not possible to adjudge the relative merits of players who have graduated under conditions altogether differ­ ent. To Mr. Blackham, though, essentially belongs the credit of a school of wicket-keeping which could not have come into vogue in the days when grounds were not so carefully tended as they are now, and longstop was one of the necessities of a cricket-field. It was he who first dispensed with that now almost obsolete functionary, or, at least, first brought the new theory forcibly before the notice of cricketers. Those who have taken interest in this paper from the first do not need to be reminded that this is not the first time that the counterfeit present­ ment of Mr. John McCarthy Blackham has been intro­ duced to C r ic k e t readers. This though is the first attempt, as far as we are aware, in any paper to repre­ sent the prince of stumpers as he really is on the field. Nor can there be the smallest difficulty in identifying the figure. There he is in the position familiar to every­ one who has followed at all closely the doings of the seven Australian Teams which have visited this country. Standing well up to the stumps without the semblance of hesitancy how­ ever fast the bowling, un­ nerved however apparently hopeless the game, he has in him every qualification for the most responsible of all places in the field. To see Mr. Blackham on his mettle is, we venture to think, the perfection of wicket- keeping. He is a “ workman,” to use a favourite phrase of a well-known contributor to this paper, Robert Thoms, every inch of him. Time cannot wither nor custom stale his infinite variety, to use a hackneyed quotation. rJhough in his thirty-sixth year he is as hard and his hands are safe as when he burst on the British public twelve years ago as a member of the first Aus­ tralian team. To our mind he is the greatest wicket­ keeper the cricket world has ever seen. Our portrait, we may add, is from a photograph by Messrs. Hawkins & Co., of 108, King’s Road, Brighton.