Cricket 1899

wo. 529 . T o il, xviii. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 21, 1899. p b i c b ad. chats ; on the cricket f ie ld . E. J. DIVER. As a first-class cricketer Diver has had a career which is unique. He does not stand alone as having represented both Gentlemen and Players, for Mr. Daft has also had this distinction, but Diver has also played for North v. South, South v. North, and Gentlemen of the South v. Players of the South—a remarkable record. In addi­ tion to this he has repre­ sented the Gentlemen against the Australians at the Oval. From 1881 to 1885 he played for Surrey as an amateur, and in 1886 appeared as a professional in the match against Gloucestershire, in which W. R. Gilbert also became a professional. They had followed the example of Mr. Daft, who, many years before, finding that cricket was too expensive for him, pluckily threw in his lot with the professionals, until such time came that he was able to play again as an amateur. Diver’s cricket is of the kind which everybody likes to watch. He does not play a rash game, but on the other hand he never misses a chance of scoring, and while he is at the wickets it is a certainty that there will be some altogether delightful hits. Any fieldsman who has been standing on the ofl while Diver was playiDg a long innings would be able to speak in an authoritative manner about the force with which it is possible for a ball to come off a bat. This year Diverhassurpassedhimself,and hasplayed a great many very fine innings indeed, notably on# of 181 against Leicestershire in fast time. The fielding may some­ times appear to be indifferent while he is batting—for reasons which are obvious— but it never has any chance of becoming slack. Before he began to qualify for War­ wickshire, Diver had a season’s cricket with the Cambridge Victoria Club. It was an altogether remarkable season for him, and his batting made the dub quite famous. In match after match he made big scores, and ended up the season with an average of about 120, his scores in­ cluding an innings of 312 not out, four innings of over two hundred, and five F. J. DIVKB. (From a Photo by H. J. Whitlock , Birmingham.) over one hundred. Good judges who saw him bat during this year were unanimously of opinion that it would be a thousand pities if he did not appear again in county matches, and no one was surprised when it was found that the temptations of first-class cricket had proved too strong for him, and that he had begun to qualify for Warwickshire. One of Diver’s best performances—or, rather, one of his most noticeable perfor­ mances—came off in a match between Gentlemen and Players. He was then playing for theGentlemen, who, when he went in, had to make something over 40 runs, with three wickets to fall, on awicket which was not very clever. As the other two batsmen to follow were Mr. Stanley Christopherson and Mr. Bush, the situation was criti­ cal, but Diver and Mr. Allan Steel knocked off the runs without the loss of a wicket. Of another performance when he was playing for Surrey, he said, “ We had to make five runs against Lancashire when the last man came in—I think it was Beaumont. At that time I had made about 20, and they had just taken Robinson from long leg and put him on the off where I had been making many runs. Johnny Briggs gave me a ball on the middle stump, and I pulled him round to square leg to the boundary, so that the game was a tie. Then we ran a short run—it was just as well that the ball was not picked up clean— and the match was won.” “ For what club had you been playing before you were in the Surrey team? ” “ I became qualified for the county as a master at Wimbledon College. I was born at Cambridge. It happened that I scored over a thousand runs ineach year, and I was asked to play for Surrey, although I could only get away at the end if the season on account of my sohool duties. In the next year Mr. Burbridge made arrange­ ments by whioh I could play regu­ larly. But the expense of playing as an amateur was too great for me to afford, so that I decided to become a professional, and I have never found that, amongst gentlemen, it ever made any difference to n_e from a social pjiut of view.”