Cricket 1901

A u g 29, 1901. CRICKET : A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. 377 by his fine iDnings of 153 for Hampshire against Somerset on Friday last). U n d o u b t e d ly one of the finest per­ formances of the season was that of Llewellyn at the end of last week. He, for Hampshire against Somerset, scored 153 in a hundred minutes, besides taking five wickets in the first innings for 115 and five in the second for 68, and Vine (who took his hundredth wicket against Surrey on Tuesday). W h ile cricketers in England have enjoyed a wonderfully fine summer on the whole, their brothers in Bombay have had anything but an enjoyable season. The Bombay Gazette of August 10th says : “ Local cricketers have been very hardly treated in the matter of the weather this season, Saturday after Saturday turning out wet and play being impossible. If there is not a change soon lovers of the game will be turning their attention to ping-pong and other equally interesting in­ door games. Saturday was a vile day in every sense of the term. After rainiEg steadily all Friday night it cleared upon Saturday morning, and there was every hope that play would be possi­ ble. Shortly after noon, however, the rain came down, and just about the time that players were turning out a very heavy shower, which lasted nearly an hour, put play out of the question.” W ith their decisive victory over Kent the Yorksbiremen finished their county season on Saturday. No one can doubt that they had the strongest team of the counties, nor that their position as the champions was thoroughly deserved. Nevertheless, their performances look a good deal better, as seen from the point of view of the championship table, than they were in reality, for four at least of their drawn games were not in their favour, while their victory over Somersetshire was a very narrow squeak indeed. Their great strength was shown by the way in which they crumpled up the weaker counties. I f we take the performances of York­ shire against the five strongest sides—or rather the sides which take the highest places in the Championship table—we find the following results:—Matches played nine (one abandoned against Surrey), won three, lost none, drawn I n the first-class matches which were played last week no fewer than thirty-one individual innings of a hundred were played. A nother sensational after-luncheon collapse occurred in the Kent first innings on Friday last. At luncheon Kent had scored 180 for five wickets. Immediately after luncheon Rhodes began a remarkable performance with the ball, and in the course of six overs and four balls he disposed of the last five wickets for six runs. I n the above innings .Rhodes took his two hundredth wicket, and at present is the only man who has accomplished the feat this year. No one is likely to follow in his footsteps. O nce more the nineties have been greatly in evidence. At the end of last week Mr. R. E. Foster scored 96, Mr. MacLaren 93, Hay­ ward 95, and Mr. Dowson 96. T here was a fine finish to the match— a drawn match— between I. Zingari and Na Shuler, at Dublin, on Friday last. I. Zingari had to make 207 to win, with not enough time before them, and when the match bnded their last two men were in. “ A n Old Harro­ vian ” writes :—“ Mr. Charles Jacob Bullock Marsham, a member of the family of the Earl of Romney, and brother of Mr. Mars­ ham, the well-known Metropolitan Police Magistrate at Bow Street, died on Tues­ day, August 20th, at Suffolk Street, Pall Mall, after a short illness, at the age of 72. He was a Magistrate for Oxford­ shire, and the eldest son of the late Mr. R. B. Marsham, at one time Warden of Merton College, Oxford. He was a good batsman, but not the equal of his two brothers, the Rev. C. D. Marsham, and Mr. R. Marsham, who were both first-rate “ all-round” cricketers. Once, at the Oval in 1857, he assisted the Gentlemen against the Players. I t is always with a little reluctance that one refers to the near approach of the Week at Hastings, for pleasant as are the matches which are played there, one cannot help thinkiug of the end of the summer and the coming of winter. This year the two matches are Yorkshire v. An All-England X I. and Gentlemen v. Players. The teams are in each match very strong indeed, and as several of the DE. W . Q. GBACE AND HIS GRANESON. I n an article on some “ Blunders in Subm arin e T ele­ grams ” the Evening News says:— Turning to the na­ tional game of cricket, which has done more to knit England and Australia together than all the efforts of diplomacy, the eagerness of a cable ‘ 1dresser- up ” in Melbourne once led to a funny blunder. A “ skeleton ” was cabled from London that ‘ ‘ Stoddart had completed his team (for the Australian tour), hut critics considered he would find the need of ‘ batters ’ before the end of the season.” That un­ cricket-like word “ batters” caused all the worry which the use of the right word “ bats­ men” would have avoided. The “ dresser-up ’ had never heard of “ Batteis,” but were his readers to be deprived of information con­ cerning Mr. Batters because of his ignorance ? Perishthe thought; andthe usual explanatory note to the cablegram stated firmly, “ Batters is one of the best county men of the year. He is at the head of the English averages, &c. When Stoddart’s team were later defeated in the test matches, English exiles, long absent from the “ dear homeland,” in many a fierce argument would contend that things would have beenverydifferent had ‘ ‘ Batters ’ ’ only accompanied the team. distinctly against Yorkshire fou r; drawn distinctly in favour of Yorkshire one, evenly drawn one. This is by no meaiis a great record. W hereas against the five weakest counties (not including Somerset, which lost the first match by a wicket only, and won the second by 279 runs), the results show overwhelming superiority. Matches played 10, all of which were won, six of them by an innings, another by 10 wickets, and yet another by 245 runs. I t is announced that on the suggestion of the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland a team of Irish cricketers will visit England next year in June, and that Sir T. C. O’Brien has been asked to endeavour to get a representative side together.