Cricket 1895

S ept . 5, 1895. CRICKET: A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. 393 Ranjitsinhji and L . C. H . Palairet are, with Gunn, the only withdrawals of the original selection. Gunn is standing out by the advice of his doctor, but, with Shrewsbury and Mr. C. L . Townsend added, there will be new attractions. Shrewsbury’s presence, for the first time, will give a new interest to the Has­ tings’ Week of 1895, which I need hardly say opens to-day with the match between North v. South. T h e revised elevens, kindly sent me by Mr. Carless, are as under : N o r t h Mr. C . W. Wright, -with Shrewsbury, A. Ward, Briggs, Chatterton, Davidson, Mold, Lilley, Pougher, Denton, and probably Attewell. S outh Dr. W. G. Grace, Messrs. A. E. Stoddart* C. L. Townsend, S. M. J. Woods, and W. W. Read, with Abel, Richardson, Lohmann, Brockwell, Lock­ wood, and Butt. T h e England team against Mr. Stod­ dart’s Australian Eleven will be : Dr. W. G. Grace, Mr. C. L. Townsend, Mr. S. M. J. Woods, and Mr. W. W. Read, with Shrewsbury, Abel, Davidson, Lilley, Mold, rougher, and Martin. “ P e r h a p s ,” writes a correspondent, “ you will be good enough to say, for the benefit of Cricket readers, whether the fact that five Yorkshire(the five, of course, were Brown, Tunnicliffe, Moorhouse, Lord Hawke, and Mr. F. S. Jackson) have all made over a thousand runs this season constitutes a record— that is, have five men from any one county ever done so before in the same season ; also, whether any player in his first season in first-class cricket has made as many runs as David Denton has this year, as he has up to date scored 980, there may be even six York­ shire players to reach the thousand.”— Personally, I have not been able to get at the necessary data to answer the question definitely. But, “ without pre­ judice,” I should say not. B r ig g s and Mold, Mold and Briggs, has been the bitter cry of outcast batsmen many a time, and oft when Lancashire has been in the field. Still, I question whether even this extraordinary pair have ever done a much better performance than was recorded to them in Lancashire’s two matches of last week. For two bowlers to bowl unchanged throughout both innings is an achievement quite out of the common. But Briggs and Mold were not content even with a feat of this kind. They did it once against Middle­ sex at Lord’s early in the week, and duplicated it in the very next fixture against Leicestershire. It will be of interest to give their respective per­ formances in the two matches :— M id d le s e x . Overs. Mdns. Runs. Wkts. Briggs.................... 43 ... 21 ... 72 ... 9 Mold ..................... 43-4 ... 14 ... 78 ... 8 L e ic e s t e r s h ir e . Overs. Mdns. Runs. Wkts. Briggs -.................. 50*4 ... 29 ... 49 ... 12 Mold .................... 52 ... 13 ... 97 ... 8 I am not prepared off-hand to say that this is a record. Still, it is near it, very near it. T h e r e could hardly have been a closer finish in respect of time than that at East­ bourne in the match between the East­ bourne and Crystal Palace Clubs last Thursday. The local team went in at 5.25 with 89 to win, and as stumps were to be drawn at six there were only thirty- five minutes left to make the runs. To commence the task, two well-known smiters, F. G. J. Ford and Dr. Elliott were sent in, and they mide 30 in ten minutes. Parson Thornton (the Rev. E. T. that is) went in when Ford was out, and running some daringly short runs took the score to 13 to win at five minutes to six. Two were still wanted when the last ball arrived, and these were got as the clock struck the hour. M r . F r a n k M i t c h e l l ’s Oxford and Cambridge combination have won the first match of their tour on Tuesday with­ out much difficulty. Such a result cer­ tainly did not come under the category of the unexpected, and, indeed, they will have sterner foernen to meet at Philadel­ phia later on than they found in the Eleven of All New York on the ground of the Staten Island C. C. this week. N e x t Friday and Saturday the English team are to meet Canada at Toronto, and thence the party go to Philadelphia for the stiffest work of the tour. They are to have a few days’ practice before meeting the Past and Present of the University of Pennsylvania on September 13, 14, and 16. The first match against the Gentleman of Philadelphia is down for the 20th, 21st, and 22nd, and the last of the International series, also against the Gentlemen of Philadelphia, for a week later. A cu riou s coincidence marked the course of Maurice Read’s brilliant innings for Surrey against Hampshire at the Oval on Tuesday. Oddly enough, the one run wanted to make his century was also the run required to complete his thousandth run of the season in first-class cricket. That he got it, it is hardly necessary to add, gave general gratification. Indeed no cricketer has, and deservedly, more well-wishers, and he has certainly finished the season in a style thoroughly worthy of his best days in Surrey cricket. K e n t cricket would certainly not be poorer by the addition of J. N . Tonge to the county eleven. Anyhow, it is gratifying to notice that such an excellent all-round cricketer has been fully upholding his reputation recently in chib cricket of the best kind. The match between the Bickley Park and Tonbridge clubs at Tonbridge last Satur­ day, furnished him with a double performance quite out of the common. L . A. Shuter helped him to put on 112 for the first wicket, and he was still in when the tenth fell, haviug scored 126 out of a total of 191. He was not put on to bowl till Tonbridge had scored 90 for four wickets. Here, too, he was as successful, for he took all the last six wickets, three of them with successive balls, for only eight runs. I t is pretty early just now with one season still dragging its slow length along to be arranging for matches at quite the end of next summer. In these days, though, the race is generally to the swift, or at all events, to those who take time by the forelock. All this reduced to bare facts, means that the managers of some of the later cricket functions are already negotiating for the arrangement of a suitable programme for the tail end of the season of 1896. For instance, the Scarborough management hopes to arrange for a revival of-------- — . But “ there’s many a slip twixt the cup and the lip.” And this is one of the cases in which silence is golden. T. N ic e , the young professional who made a fairly promising debut for Surrey against Hampshire at the Oval this week, is a native of Redhill, and lives there, or rather, in the adjoining hamlet of Earlswood. Some of the papers have described him as a medium pace bowler, but his easy delivery is a little deceptive, and he is faster than he looks, getting up very quickly from the pitch. He has been very successful for Surrey’s second eleven during the last two years, and as he is also an excellent field, and -by no means a bad bat, though he is on the small side, he may be of use to Surrey iu the future. One thing in his favour is that he is only twenty years of age. Cricket readers everywhere will be glad to learn that Arthur Paul, the Lancashire cricketer who received such a nasty blow from Woodcock’s bowling in the match between Lancashire and Leicestershire at Leicester at the end of last week, is pro­ gressing quite as satisfactorily as could be expected. It was feared at first that one of his ribs might have been broken, but happily this seems to have been only a fear. He was fortunate in having more than one capable doctor on the spot when the injury was received, so that every possible attention was bestowed on him. He has reason, too, to be grateful to the staff of the Private Hospital at Leicester, where he has been treated with the greatest care as well as skill. THE COUNTY CHAMPIONSH IP. The season’ s county cricket ended, on Tues­ day with Surrey’s victory over Hampshire, and below is given a complete record of the fourteen counties :— . Played. Won. Lost. Drwn. Pnts. Surrey ........... ... 25 ... 17 ... 4 . ... 5 .. . 13 Lancashire . .. ... 21 ... 14 ... 4 ,... 3 ... 10 Yorkshire ... 26 ... 14 ... 7 ... 5 ..,. 7 Gloucestershire ... 18 ... 8 ... 6 ,... 4 .... 2 Derbyshire ... 16 ... 6 ... 4 7, .. 1 Warwickshire ... 18 ... 6 . .. 6 ... 6 .. . 0 Middlesex ... ... 18 .. . 6 ... 6 ... 6 ... 0 Essex ........ ... 16 ..,. 5 ... 7 ... 4 . .. —2 Somerset........ ... 17 .. ,. 6 ... 8 ... 3 ... —2 Hampshire ... ... 16 ... 6 ... 9 ... 1 .... —3 Sussex ........ ... 18 .. . 5 ... 9 ... 4 ..,. —4 Leicestershire ... 16 ... 8 ... 10 ... 3 ... .. —7 Notts ........ ... 18 .. .. 3 ... 10 5 ... — 7 Kent............... ... 18 ..,. 3 ... 11 ... 4 .. .. —8 Losses are deducted from wins, and drawn games ignored. The match, Lancashire v. Somerset, at Manchester, July *25th, &c., was abandoned through rain, without a ball being bowled, and is, therefore, not included in the above figures.