Cricket 1898

A p r il 28, 1898. CRICKET : A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. 85 Blues won by an innings aud 78 runs. R. S. Jones scored 4 1 ; Bligh, 40; and Whitfeld, 34 ; and Morton took nine wickets for 76. The M.C.C. bowlers, it is worthy of note, were Shaw, Mycroft, Flowers, Barnes, and G. G. Hearne—a formidable quintet; and on the side of the club were G. B. Studd, then a fresh­ man at Cambridge, and his elder brother, J. E. K ., who did not matriculate until nearly two years later. The third match, with the Gentlemen, ended in a draw; Cambridge having seven wickets to fall and wanting five runs to win at the finish. The Light Blue captain again played magnificent cricket, 32 and 77 not out being his scores; 109 out of the 266 from the bat made by Cambridge. A. F. J. Ford scored 51; A. G. Steel made 24 and 22; and, in the second innings of the Gentlemen, H . Wood took seven for 46. Far and away the most prominent figure in the scratch team was that of A. P. Lucas, who, re-visiting the scene of for­ mer great deeds, scored 70 (out of a total of 146) and 23. The first of the out­ matches, that with Surrey, at the Oval, was won b y 10 wickets, chiefly owing to the H on. Ivo Bligh’s batting and H. W ood’s fine all-round play. The Kentish amateur’s contribution to a total of 225 was 113 not ou t; while the Yorksbire- man was second scorer with 31, and bowled in the match 435 balls for 84 runs and 13 wickets. Doubtless it was Mr. A. G. Steel’s absence that gave the young slow bowler such a chance of proving his worth, but the recalling of such a feat as this causes one to feel regret that so little was seen of Mr. W ood in first-class cricket. Jupp, with 31, not out, and 36, and A. P. Lucas, with 37 and 17, did best for the county. In the return with the M.C.C., the last of their trial matches, the Cantabs had all the worst of a drawn game. On a dead wicket they could only score 72; this the club more than trebled, though only one man reached 20. But the score of this one man—Mr. Frank Penn— was 134, made, without a chance, by some of the finest batting ever seen at Lord’s, No batsman, up to then, had ever so thoroughly mastered Allen Steel’s bowling as did Mr. Penn in this game. When the Cantabs had scored 47 for one wicket in their second innings (Lyttelton 29, not out), a heavy storm stopped play ; and rain prevented any resumption on what should have been the third day of the match. Oxford lost their first match, v. the Gentlemen, by 185 runs. The only innings of over 11 played for them was a hard-hit 63 by Howard Fowler ia the second hands. The chief contributors to the Gentlemen’s second innings of 276 were B. E. Prothero (who went in last in the first innings) with 110, F. E. B. Fryer, 46, T. S. Pearson, 33, and G. F. Vernon, 27. F. G. G. Jellicoe had 8 for 36 in the scratch team’s first innings; for the gentlemen, James Bobertson took 10 for 82, and David Buchanan 9 for 51. Over a weak team of the M .C.C., at Oxford, the Dark Blues had an eight-wickets’ victory. For the club, William Hearn, of Hertfordshire, carried his bat right through the first innings (of 126) for 58 ; in the second, Mr. H . Boss scored 71; but the rest of the batting was very poor. In the first innings of the ’Varsity, W. A. Thornton, the Winchester fresh­ man, scored 70, and H . Fowler, 49; in the second, H . B. Webbe played well for 46. Rylott had 10 wickets for 97 for the club, and N. Mac- Lachlan 9 for 77 for the ’Varsity. The last of the home matches was with a strong eleven, including five or six old Oxonians, brought down by A. W. Bidley, the Dark Blue captain of 1875. A small-scoring game resulted in a win for the scratch team by 52 runs, a result which reflected no disgrace upon the ’Varsity team, as they had to play Shaw (who took 11 for 54) and Morley on a difficult wicket. Very fair form was shown in their first out-match, v. Middlesex, which was won by six wickets, twelve aside playing. G. F. Vernon, with 54 and 26, was, although on the beaten tide, the highest aggregate scorer in the match ; but for Oxford, in the first innings, Haskett-Smith scored 38 and Hirst 31, and in the second A. H. Heath made 61, Greene 38, and J. H. M. Hare 38, not out. No play was possible on the first day of the M.C.C. match at Lord’s, and, as the Saturday was to be a blank day as usual, there was really no interest in Friday’s play, of which the chief feature was Jellicoe’s bowling, five for 36. Oxford’s greatest partisans could scarcely have expected them to win the great match, and never once did the Dark Blues look like doing so. Heath’s 45 was the feature of their first innings of 149, a w ell-got score, worthy of a fourth-year man; E. T. Hirst made 35 by free hitting, A. G. Steel did the hat trick at the end of the Oxford innings, Hirst being stumped off the last ball of one over of his, and MacLachlan and Jellicoe clean bowled by the first two of the next. Alfred Lyttelton and Whit­ feld (53 and 31 respectively) put on 85 for the first wicket of Cambridge; and the brothers Steele (A. G. 64, D. Q. 27), added 46 for the fou rth ; but beyond these four no one got double figures, and the total was only 198. Thornton’s bowling analysis was curious. When he had bowled eleven overs he bad taken two wickets, Lyttelton’s and Bligh’ s, and had not had a run scored cff him. Then, from his twelfth over, 11 runs were made. His final analysis was 22 3 overs, 29 runs, 4 wickets. Heavy rain, which prevented any play on Tuesday, had been mainly responsible for the poor show made by the later Cambridge bats­ men, though Allan Steel made 30 of his 64 on the sodden wicket. When O xford’s turn to bat a second time came, they fared even worse. A. D. Greene was the only man who showed any ability to play the bow ling of Steel and A . F . J. Ford, and his 20 runs was the only double-figure score in an innings of 64. Steel took seven wickets for 23 runs, making bis record for the match 11 for 66. Thanks to a sharp bit of hitting by their captain, Cambridge had just hit off the runs required for victory, before a thunderstorm, which would have made further play impossible, deluged the ground. The tides were :— Cambridge.—H on. Ivo Bligh, A. F. J. Ford, L. K. Jarvis, B. S. Jonps, Hon. A. Lyttelton, P. H. M >rton, A, G. Steel, D. Q. Sfeel, G. B. Studd, H . Whitfeld, and H . Wood. Oxford.—A. H . Evans, H . Fowler, A . D. Greene, J. H. M. Hare, A. Haskett- Smith, A. H. Heath, E T. Hirst, F. G. G. Jellicoe, N. MacLiachlan, W . A. Thornton, and H. B. Webbe, PRINCIPAL AVERAGES. B atting . Not H’st Inns, out. Runs. Aver, score. Hon.A. Lyttelton (C.) 10 ... 3 ... 309 ... 44'14 ... 77* Hon. Ivo Bliffh (U.) .. 6 ... 2 ...176... 44'00 A. G. Steel (C.)......... 6 ... 1 ...174... 34‘80 A.Haskett-Smith (O.) 5 ... 1 ...98... 2450 ...38 H. Fowler (O .).......... 9 ... 1 ...154... 19 25...63 B owling . Overs. Runs. Wkts. Aver. A. G. Steel (C.) .......... 193 ... 206 ... 25 ... 8'24 H. Wood (C.) ............... 329 ... 393 ... 38 ... 10'34 A. H. Evans (O.) ..........1813 ... 216 ... 22 ... 11*18 A. F. J. Ford (C .).......... 164 ... 175 ... 13 ... 13 46 N. MacLachlan (O.) ... 190 ... 288 ... 21 ... 13 71 P. H. Morton (C.) .......... 270’2 ... 456 ... 31 ... 14 70 F. G. G. Jellicoe (O.) ... 352'1 ... 460 ... 29 ... 15 86 1880. Neither ’Varaity side did really well in 1880 ; but Cambridge, with as many wins as losses, and an average three runs per wicket better than that of their opponents, had a decidedly better record than Oxford, with every match lost, and an average 3J per wicket worse. Of the 1879 elevens, Cambridge had lost the Hon. Alfred Lyttelton, D. Q. Steel, L. K . Jarvis and H . Wood— at their best a very formidable quartette ; Oxford’s chief defections were A. H. Heath and H . B. W ebbe,but these were not the only changes in the ultimate team, for Haskett-Smith was also un­ available, and Hare and Jellicoe, both of whom were played in 1879, had to stand down. In strong contrast to their form in 1878 and 1879, Cambridge began with a couple of losses. They had the worst of the luck in "a match with a strong team of England (12 a side); and, Barlow bow ling in extraordinary form on a difficult wicket, they were put out for scores of 37 and 79. The scratch team scored 172 (F. Penn 66), and thus the Light Blues were beaten by an innings and 56, their first defeat since the ’Varsity match at Lord’s in 1877. Barlow’s analysis w a s: 66 2 overs, 48 runs, 13 wickets. One of Cambridge’s great players, C. T. Studd, made his debut for the team in the M .C.C. match at Cambridge, which followed, but; was not seen to any very great advantage, either with bat or b a ll; indeed, the only Cantab who played up to his true form was the captain, A . G. Steel, whose second innings of 70 was 52 runs higher than any other individual score on the side in the match, The Club, for which Barnes scored 51, William Hearn 42 and W . H . Fowler 36, and Shaw took 9 for 81, won by eight wickets. Then came the turn of the tide. The H on. Ivo Bligh batted in