Cricket 1899

374 CRICKET : A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. A u g . 31, 1899. the result that he offered to give a bat to anybody who could stop in for an hour on that wicket. As it happened, I went in first in the second innings and stayed there for rather more than an hour, making 38 out of 50. H is Lord­ ship was not the man to forget a promise, and he sent me the bat.” It is well known that to M r. Pattisson is to a great extent due the present arrangement by which Kent cricket is under the control of a managing com­ mittee, and the suggestion that Mr. Pawley should be appointed general manager also emanated from him. But the history of the struggle to bring about this desirable reformation is not so well known. W ith regard to this, Mr. Pattisson said: ‘ ‘ Ever since I went on the committee I advocated a system of management which should take the place of the old committee. For years the committee had consisted of twenty-four, in addition to several ex officio members, and only met twice a year as a ride, in March and November. I believe that I am right in saying that for several years it did not meet during the cricket season more than twice altogether. I recollect a meeting at Tonbridge and another during the Canter­ bury Week, and that is all. Almost from the firstl took up the position that this was an impossible state of things, since ques­ tions must continually arise during the season with no one to deal with them. A t last it came to be regarded almost as a joke when I brought up the subject year by year, although I must have con­ verted a good many people, for when Lord Harris returned from India and had seen what changes had taken place in county cricket during his absence, he at once saw that something must be done, and accordingly brought forward the same proposal, which was unanimously carried. Since Pawley has been the manager the membership of the club has been increased by upwards of six hundred.” “ Do you play cricket at all now ? ” “ I thought that I had given up the game at the end of 1893, when I finished the season with a hundred, but I played two or three times in the following year. After that, I felt that I had done with active cricket. But last year I was asked to get up a couple of matches for the M .C .C . and played in them, while this year I again got together the M .C.C. team which played at Beckenham, and I don’t suppose I am ever likely to forget it, or to play again, as I suffered intensely for several days afterwards.” “ What is your opinion about the very high scoring this year ? ” “ W ell, I think that the weather has been altogether exceptional; at any rate I cannot remember anything like such a dry season. Things would soon right themselves in an ordinary year. Not but what everything nowadays, including the rolling of wickets in the morning before the game is resumed, tends to favour high scoring. The wickets in my time were nothing like as good as they are now— whether in county or club matches. M y own experience serves to show that plainly enough, for although when I was between twenty and thirty years old I was certainly a better batsman than I ever was afterwards, I used to make four hundreds in about 1886 and 1887 to every one that I made in the seventies. I shall never forget seeing Lord Harris go up to the ground man at Gravesend on the morning of a county match and asking him with much solemnity whether the ground was down for hay ! It is sometimes said that the present system of neutral umpires makes a very great difference to the batsmen, who reap the advantage of not being given out by men who, representing their own side, were always supposed to be more or less partial. But I must own that one hears quite as much grumbling nowadays about awe-striking decisions as one ever did in my time. I am told that although you don’t get partial decisions you get pretty bad ones. A t the same time I think that the old umpires who were appointed by their own side went pretty straight until one of them gave a decision which in the opinion of the other required balancing. “ There were certainly some queer things done in that way ! ” “ Well, takin g thingsall round,theselittle eccentricities were generally pretty evenly divided. In the old days there used to be very great rivalry between Bickley Park and Beckenham which extended to the umpires— I played for Bickley at that time. When one of the umpires started there was no holding either of them, for the other felt it absolutely necessary to try to get in two decisions to his one. Perhaps the funniest thing that I ever heard of in the way of peculiarities in umpiring occurred in a match between Blackheath and a well-known school; Stanloy Christopherson will remember it. When the last school boy came in the match was a tie and he had to receive the next ball. Now he was a bowler pure and simple, and it was notorious that he couldn’t stop a straight ball, so that a victory seemed out of the question. But the school umpire rose to the occasion like a man; the moment the ball left the bowler’s hand he called ‘ no ball,’ and the match was w on ! I don’ t suppose that the bowler had ever been no-balled in his life until this interesting moment.” Many readers of Cricket must have read in Dr. Grace’s last book his reference to his famous score of 344 not out against Kent at Canterbury. Mr. Pattisson was playing for Kent in this match, of which he says:— “ We had played an innings of 473, which was the highest total ever made by the county— indeed, I fancy that it was the highest total made up to that time in any first-class match. I remember that we were all photographed on the strength of that performance, which was all the more remarkable because Prank Penn, who was undoubtedly one of our best bats, had been run out before he scored. W e got out the M .C.C. for 144 in the first innings. This pleased us very much, because it was a very strong team, while Grace was at his very best. 1 kept wicket all through the follow on. There was practically nothing for me to do when W . G. was batting, for he hardly let a ball get by him. There was never the slightest chance of getting him out, for he never even looked like making a mistake. I may say that we were none of us distressed that such a big score—a record— should be made against us, for we never professed to be a strong bowling side, and, moreover, we had got W .G . out in the first innings for next to nothing, which was certainly a feather in our cap. You will remember that a few days after­ wards he made 318 against Yorkshire, who had a very strong bowling side indeed.” It is not only in connection with cricket that Mr. Pattisson is well known. As a Rugby Union footballer he was a good three-quarter, who played in several of the international trial matches in 1874, 1875, and 1876, while in 1876, 1877, and 1878, he was captain of the now defunct Gipsies P.C. Owing to the force of circumstances he was tried as a half­ back instead of a thiee-quarter, and he was parlicularly unlucky in just missing his international cap. But his two youngest brothers— he is one of a family of sixteen— both played for England at Rugby football. He was elected on the committee of the Rugby Union in 1877. In the international sports between England and Ireland, at Stamford Bridge, in that year, he was chosen as therepresen- tativeof Englandinthehammer-throwing. As an all-round athlete he might have done much if he had only been able to find the time for practice, and great things were prophesied of him when he was at school, where he won twenty-three prizes for sports and swimming. He could jump 21 feet broad, and 5 feet 4 inches high, without much practice, so that it may easily be guessed that with practice he would have been a “ flyer.” Mr. Pattisson has two sons and five daughters, of whom the eldest is captain of her school eleven, while all her sisters play cricket. The young ladies, like their mother, take the greatest pleasure in watching a good match, and, also like their mother, they obviously understand the points of the game—which is quite another thing. The youngest boy, Sey­ mour, is a good all-round sportsman of six years and a-half, whose latest achievement in a 250 yards race at the Beckenham C.C. sports, with a 70 yards handicap, was to do his 180 yards in 33 seconds. W . A . B e t t e s w o r t ii . LLOYD’S REGISTER v. MR. R. ESCOMBE’S XI.-Played at Honor Oak on August 12. R. E scom be’s X I. J. Bartlett, b Wood ... 3 C. Dunsmore, b Brad­ shaw .. .................13 B. Falle, b Bradshaw.. 0 E. P. t obertson c Mar­ tin, b Carey ..........87 G. T. Sunderland, run fiut ........................17 H .Lemarchand,b Carey 1 4 L. Nepean, b Wood... S. Wimble, b Brad­ shaw ................. ... 0 R.Aldous,b Bradshaw 11 E. Valentine, not out. 1 C. Woodcock, c S. A. Hill, b Bradshaw ... 4 B 11, lb 3 ..........14 Total .166 L lo y d ’ s R e g is t e r . C.F.Redman.b Nepean 51 C. H. Bradshaw, c S. A. Bill, c Wimble, b Robertson.................44 A. S. Hill, b Falle ...11 E. Carey, b Woodcock. 17 F. B. Wood, not out... 12 Wimble, b Nepean. 0 A. S. Martin, not out. 10 B^, lb 2, w 2, nb2 14 ................................. Total (5 wkts)169 J. A. Flower, E. M. Salmon, F. A. Spry and J. H. Sandall did not bat.