Cricket 1898

298 CRICKET : A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. J u ly 28, 1898. not out against Middlesex, I did nothing. In the following season the only times that I played were against M.C.C. and ■Warwickshire. I did no good in either match. I wasn’t nervous, and I can’t account for my want of success in any way. During this season I was qualifying for Surrey." “ Did you think that you had a better chance of playing for Surrey than for Notts ? ” “ It wasn’t that at all. But Surrey had advertised that year for young players to act as groundmen at the Oval. There are lots of young fellows who go out from Nottingham and the neighbourhood every year to take engagements; and no doubt Arthur Shrewsbury, who was kind enough to write about me to the Surrey com­ mittee, had no other thought than that I might get a good engagement, rather than give up the game. He knew that I had done several good performances for my club.” “ How did you get on at first at the Oval P” “ I didn’t play in very many matches for the club and ground, but I headed the bowliDg averages with 22 wickets in the first year. In the following year I was only called upon occasionally. I had not fallen o ff; but there were so many good players to choose from that some­ body had to be left out. In 1889 I was asked to play for Notts, and I did not know what to do. In my difficulty I spoke to Mr. Alcock, who told me that Surrey would give me a fair trial, and as they had given me an engagement I thought it was right to stay with Surrey.” “ What was the result ? ” “ I played right through the season. My first match was against Gloucester­ shire, as far as I remember, and I did nothing special; but after a time I made 83 against Notts, and this gave me a good start. During this year I did not bowl much.” “ How did you discover your slow b a ll?” “ In matches I had noticed that other bowlers owed much of their success to varying their pace. So I set to work at the nets to see what I could do in that way. I soon found it very easy to vary the pace of the ball, and to bowl a slow one, but it was quite another thing to bowl it with exactly the same action. I was not very accurate with the slow ball at first. I can still bowl the slow, but not with the same certainty that I could before, owing possibly to want of constant practice at it.” “ Are there any men who have ever collared you very badly ? ” “ I should think so, at times; twice I have been hit for 20 in an over. The first time was by Hall, the Derbyshire batsman; he hit me for four 4’s over cover point’s heads, and then made a snick through the slips to the boundary to finish the over. The second time was by Mr. Woods; his hits were all drives in front of the wicket. I remember very nearly doing the same thing against Sussex at the Oval, when Humphreys was bowling, but off the fifth ball I was caught in the long field.” It will be remembered that Lockwood succeeded in finishing off the great match this year at Lord’s between Gentlemen and Players, by getting Mr. Kortright caught only two or three minutes before time, after he had made such a determined stand with Dr. Grace. Lockwood was also “ in at the death ” in the famous tie match at the Oval, between Surrey and Lancashire, in which it has often been said that but for mistakes in umpiring, Lancashire would have won. With regard to this, Lockwood said, “ I was bowling to Mold when the match was a tie, and although he feels sure that he did not touch the ball, I am positivethathe did, and that he was rightly given out. We ought to have won that match. When one run was wanted to win, I had a chance of running Mold out by five or six yards, but the ball missed the bails by a hair’s breadth. I was bowling at the end of the match at the Oval between Gentlemen and Players, whenwe won by eightruns. Irememberit well, because it was the first time that I had ever got W. G. out, although I had been trying to do so for seven seasons. He was caught at point off a lofty hit, and I began to be afraid that he would escape me once more, for the catch was one of those awkward ones, which three or four men might easily get. The consequence was that no one dared to move for it, until Johnny Briggs called out ‘ Gunn, Gunn,’ and Gunn got it safely.” “ Were you not one of the discoverers of Banjitsinhji ? ” “ I don’t know about that exactly, but I was bowling at the University for a month, with Bichardson and Hayward, in the year when he got his ‘ Blue.’ When we began to bowl to him he hardly knew how to play at all—that is to say, against anything like first-class players —and had practically no defence, but he was very quick to pick up hints. Even then, he nearly always tried to pull everything to the on-side, although he was by no means certain to make the stroke successfully. When he made a mistake, or a ball jumped up quickly, he never made any remaik, but used to whistle quietly to himself. As time went on, we got him out less frequently. The ’Varsity men didn’t seem to take any notice of him. I may say, that the reason why Bichardson and I bowled to him so frequently was, that he invariably asked for the fastest bowlers he could get, whatever might be the state of the pitch, whereas other men were not so anxious to play against them unless the wicket was perfect. I remember bowling to him one day in the Orchard, when Mr. Jackson, who was then the captain of the team, came up and looked on. He asked me what I thought of him, and I said ‘ Well, sir, you are playing two or three, worse Blues than he is.’ Then he asked me ‘ Can he really play ? ’ So I said, ‘ Well, sir, you come and try to bowl him ou t! ’ He laughed and went away, and I believe he took notice of him afterwards. At any rate, as you know, Mr. Jackson gave him a fair trial and also gave him his ‘ Blue.’ ” “ What was your first introduction to moderately good cricket ? ” “ After I left Badford I joined the Notts Forest Wanderers, a club which included a lot of men who were quite good enough to play for the county, such as Anthony, Jackson, and Bowlzer. But at that time there were a very great many good men to choose from, and after all you can only get eleven on a side. We played some good matches and I was generally pretty successful both in batting and bowling. In the first match I played for them I didn’t get a wicket, but made about 70 runs. In the next one I took six wickets for two runs against Basford Park. While I was a member of this club I was asked one Thursday at the last moment to play for the Post Office against the Thursday United, in place of a man who could not get away. I was lucky enough to make 114, and after the match they gave me the very first money I ever received for playing cricket. It was half-a-crown. I remember that I went back to my lace machine at six o’clock and worked on until midnight. I always liked my lace machine, although it was sometimes tedious work.” “ Do you ever play cricket in the neighbourhood of your old club ?” “ Not very often now-a-days. But once in September I was playing during Clifton Feast, and was inwith Mr. Sharpe, the father of Jack Sharpe, the old Surrey bowler. We ran a run and both got in our creases; in fact Mr. Sharpe was on the far side of the wicket when the ball was thrown in and the bails taken off. An appeal was made, and he was given out—run out. He said ‘ Why, I was standing where I am now when the wicket was put down ! ’ to which the umpire replied, *I never saw you come up to the wicket. You’re out.’ And out he had to go.” On his visits to Australia and the Cape, Lockwood and the rest of the team had, as usual, a little shooting and hunting. “ In Australia,” he said, “ we went out wallaby shooting, but it was very difficult to get near them, because we had no dogs. We only killed one wallaby all day, I brought him down at the end of the day with the second barrel. I was also the first to kill an opossum on tour, while Brockwell had the first native bear. At the Cape we had no shooting, except with catapults at the doves, which are much larger birds than ours. We had some fun in hunting for lizards, which get under the bark of the trees. When you touch them they cast their tail, which is about as long as the rest of their body. They say tbat this is to enable them to get over the ground more quickly. I found the weather rather hotter at the Cape than I cared about, and although I could bowl on the matting wickets, 1 never succeeded in timing the ball properly when batting.” W, A. B e t t e s w o r tij ,