Cricket 1891

SEPT. 17, 1891 CBICKET 2 A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME; 481 Times Most in Inns. not oat. Runs. an Inns. Aver. 11 ... 1 ... 385 . . 88 ... 38-50 10 ... 1 ... 192 . . 70 ... 2133 8 ... 0 ... 157 ... 37 ... 19 62 10 ... 1 ... 162 . . 43 ... 18 3 ... 1 ... 36 . . 31 ... 18 12 ... 3 ... 134 . . 33 ... 14 88 12 ... 0 ... 126 .. 41 ... 1050 7 ... 1 ... 46 .. 15 ... 7-66 5 ... 0 ... 36 .. 20 ... 7-20 5 ... 0 ... 26 .. 15 ... 6-20 6 ... 0 ... 25 .. 18 ... 416 . 5 ... 8 .. 7 .. 5 ... 350 4 ... 1 ... 7 .. 4 ... 2-33 5 ... 1 ... 9 .. 3 ... 2-25 DERBYSHIRE. Matches played, 6 —won 3, drawn 1, lost 2. BATTING AVERAGES. Chatterton L. G. Wright S.H.Evershed Davidson Hall ... Storer ... W. Sugg Bagshaw Hulme ... E. Evershed Malthouse Porter ... Thorpe... Rayner... The following also batted;—F. R. Spofforth 32—10* R. G. Tomlinson 22—16,* W . L. Shipton 32-2, G. G. Walker 5—0, W . Myton 4—2, W. S. Eadie 1—0, R. Wright 1—0. BOWLING AVERAGES. Overs. Mdns. Runs. Wkts. Aver. Porter................. Hulme .......... Davidson.......... Malthouse W .Sugg .......... Raynor .......... Chatterton F. R. Spofforth The following also b ow led T h o rp e 5—1 S.H.Evershed 6—1—11—0, Bagshaw 9—5—12 G. G. Walker 7—2—16—0, R. Wright 7—0—23—0, and Hall 4—1 -1 3 -0 . Davidson delivered two no-balls, Raynor one, and Chatterton a no -ball and a wide. 121 . . 56 . . 163 . . 17 . . 958 140 . . 48 . . 234 . . 21 . . 11-14 294 . . 127 . . 431 . . 33 . . 1306 27-2 . . 9 .. 63 . . 4 . . 17 53 . . 17 .. I ll . . 6 . . 18-50 59 . . 19 . . 131 . . 6 . . 21-83 66 .. 29 . . 116 .. 3 . . 38-66 41 .. 10 .. 106 .. 2 . . 53 -14- THE CRICKET MATCHES FICTION. OF [Reprinted by permission from B aily' Magazine of July.] “ I f there were dreams to sell,” there would be but few buyers; for we see our own visions we dream each of us his own dreams. No sohoolboy, proud of scoring a dozen in a school match, but pictures to himself as he lies afterwards on the grass, his first appearance for his county, wherein, in anticipation, he triumphantly oompiles a hundred, and hits Lohmann, Briggs, and Attewell all over the field. He sees himself later in the day, when he goes on to bowl, in his first over sending Mr. Grace’s leg-stump out of the ground. He does this reluctantly, for Mr. Grace is his hero; but the sense of duty is strong in the cricketer. These feats are such stuff as dreams are made of; but no novelist could tell a tale which that schoolboy would find half so fascinating. Yet it is strange that cricket—the most popular of games—fills so small a space in fiction. Of sporting novels there are plenty their heroines have enjoyed many a run— more successful, perhaps, than the books But the Great Cricket Romance, like the Great American Novel, is yet to come, unless Mr. Hutchinson’s new book be thought to fill the vacant place. Of such records of cricket as are contained in novels, not all denote very profound knowledge of the game. The cricket is the cricket of a novelist, rather than the novel the novel of a cricketer. The match best known in fiction, to wit, the terrific combat between Muggleton and Dingley Dell, is farce rather than history. The rules ob served were certainly not those of the M.C.C . and one could well have supposed the author to be an intelligent foreigner, whose acquaint­ ance with the game was but an hour old. “ The umpires,” we aretold, “ were stationed Alii'nil +Via minl/ofa ” and tVii’a r^rtoikinn Tnr\st of behi d the wickets,” this positio must have added considerably to the difficulties the umpire at the batsman’s end. Long-stop is, of all men, least able to judge if a batsman is out of his ground; and, when the valiant Podder was—as is recorded—adjudged to have been “ stumped out,” he was most probably dissatisfied with the decision. Mr. Luffey, the bowler, however, is a sketch from life. He retired a few paces behind the wicket, and applied the ball to his right eye for several seconds. . . . ‘ P lay!’ suddenly cried the bowler.* The ball flew hard, straight, and swift towards the centre stump of the wicket. ' Stump of the wicket’ seems tautological.] The wary Dumkins was on the alert; it fell upon the tip of the bat, and bounded far away over the heads of the scouts, who stooped low enough to let it fly over them.” This passage is a little obscure. The ball was evidently a fast full-pitch. Mr. Dumkins did not meet it with the full force of the bat, for it “ fell on the tip; ” yet it “ bounded far away over the heads ” of the fieldsmen. How was this ? The only possible explanation is that the batsman tried to pull the ball round, and it went, by a fluke, over long-slip’s head Yet that is improbable; for it went, we are told, "straight towards the centre stump of the wicket.” One would think the reporter must have been in error; or, perhaps, he was in the refreshment booth, giving more attention to Mr. Jingle’s diverting stories than to the play. This difficulty, however, is as nothing to what (follows. Muggleton, we read, had scored 54 for two wickets; the game had been fast, and could barely, therefore, have lasted an hour. And as Dingley Dell had not been in, it is not so surprising as the author seems to tthink that their score was “ a blank.” There follows this passage— “ In vain did the eager Luffey and the en­ thusiastic Struggles do all that skill and ex- ;jerience could suggest to regain the ground Dingley Dell had lost in the contest;—it was of no avail, and in an early period of the win­ ning game Dingley Dell gave in, and allowed the superior prowess of All-Muggleton.” What ground had been lost ? What is meant by “ an early period of the winning game ? ” Why did any team abandon the match in the first innings, and that before a change of bowling had been thought necessary? The only reason that occurs to the reader is that the Dingley Dell men were justly dissatisfied with the umpires. The suggestion that eleven cricketers abandoned a match in any stage would have been incredible but that a similar incident is recorded by Miss Mitford in “ Our Village.” But, in that case, an innings on each side had been finished when “ the B. men ” refused to play on. Miss Mitford’s sketch differs from the Pickwick match comedy from farce. It breathes the very air of village cricket. The reader feels a spectator’s vexation at the showers that in terrupt the game. True the cricket is the cricket of a generation or two ago, for the practice is on Sunday evening; the rival parishes play each other for “ honour and supper an d a half -a -crow n a man the teams appear in a “ set of ribands,” the “ gift of the publican;” aud “ the gentleman cricketer” is declared an anomaly. Cricketers have long been accustomed to boast that their sport levels ranks. “ The Earl, the Marquis, and the Dook, The Groom, the Butler, and the Cook, They all shall equal be.” Sometimes, Miss Mitford admits, an old Etonian retains his skill; yet she prefers the country lads. “ Your blacksmiths are capital hitters.” But, in essentials, the game might be one played last summer; the good cricketer is still—so we flatter ourselves—“ commonly the most industrious man in the parish.” How “ the B. men ” went in and were out for 22, and how our side scored 167, is narrated with a spirit and knowledge of the game which dis prove the common slander that no woman understands cricket. But nothing is better than the description of the eleven :—“ Joel Brent, labourer, excellent.” “ George Harris, slow but sure. I think the proverb brought him in.” “ Tom Coper—oh, beyond the world Tom Coper!—the red-headed gardening lac whose left-handed strokes send her . spinning a m ile;” and James Brown, the blacksmith Lothario, the unrivalled batsman the deserter who failed to appear at the match, and was sent to Coventry for his desertion, till it was found he had been summoned, on a twelve mile walk, to play for his old parish by the one lady who had resisted him. Mary Allen, the prettiest girl of M., had sent him thisepistle:—“ Mistur browne, this is to Inform you that oure parish plays bramley men next Monday is a week, i think we shall lose with­ out yew, from your humbell servant to com ­ mand, Mary Allen.” Even without the blacksmith, our village gained a complete victory. “ What a glorious sensation,” says the authoress, “ it is to be for five hours together winning, winning, winning! always * This, by the way, was the umpire’s duty. feeling what a whist-player feels when he takes up four honours, seven trumps.” Most schoolboys must have wondered why this feeling was denied to the Rugby eleven when Tom Brown captained them against the M.C.C. Yet how boys have gloated over that match, and how unanimously they have skipped Tom ’s conversation with the master on Greek plays, to hurry on to the result! It would be presumption to doubt the author’ s familiarity with the game; but there are some details in his account of the match which read strangely now that more than thirty years have passed. The men from Lord’ s “ in­ spected the ground, criticising it rather un­ mercifully,” and difficulty was found in choos­ ing a pitch. No modern ground-man would stand that. The school, “ with the usual liberality of young hands,” put their adver­ saries in first. Modern young hands are less accommodating. The fashion of throwing the ball “ high above the rook trees ” at the fall of each wicket has left first-class cricket. It is odd to hear that, after the mid-day lunch, the players sang “ the most topping comic songs” and made speeches. The captain who allowed that deserved to lose the match, did Tom Brown, for want of time to finish the second innings. Jack Raggles, too, the scorner of pads and gloves, is found now only on village greens ; and his hit, which sent an off ball to leg for five—though it would, as Mr. Lyttelton allows, rejoice the natural man—would cause groanings from the devotees of style at Lord’s. The cover-point, who stood “ very deep, in fact almost off the ground,” would hardly have been expected so long before Mr. Walter Read had perfected his favourite stroke. Even more unconventional was it for the captain to be in alternate overs bowling and keeping wicket. But these are trifles, and these apait the critic will find no flaw. The eleven have the cricket-lover’s jealous humour, which will allow no rival to stand beside their game. “ It’ s more than a game,” said Tom, stoutly, “ it’ s an institution.” It is a pity that, when that hero went to Oxford, he did not happen to belong to the same set as Mr. Verdant Green ; he would have made a better cricket coach than little Mr. Bouncer. Under that gentleman’s tuition, we see Verdant batting with only one pad, and no gloves, on a wicket where there is no crease marked, and with a round-shoul­ dered club for a bat, which is, perhaps, depicted merely to give verisimilitude to the wicket-keeper’s expression that there was a “ row in the timber-yard.” Miss Mitford’s “ old Etonian ” would cer­ tainly insist on including, within the category of fiction, the match between Eton and Har­ row commemorated in Mr. Barlow’s “ Pageant of Life,” under the title, “ Husband and Wife at Lord’s.” The refrain of the poem is incom­ prehensible. He speaks, then muses— “ Well fielded! (Ah, the June wind camo Upon us like a burning flame. Thy mouth was close, thy breath was sweet, I felt thy bosom’s throbbing beat)— Click went the bat, click went the ball! ” “ Snicks ” we know, but what are “ clicks” ? And why should a cricket field be made the scene of reflections such as these, not intended (or fit) for publication? The owner of the mouth, it should be mentioned, was not the musing gentleman’ s wife; and that lady re­ sponds with reminiscences of a nature such as