Cricket 1903

472 CRICKET: A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. Dec. 31, 1903. the occasion of this, your first appearance among us since your return from your late extraordinary successful tour of England and South Africa with the team that visited the Mother Country. We further beg your acceptance of the accompanying gold medal, the gift of a few of your many admirers here, who desire to thus show in a medest though tangible form their high appreciation of your numerous good qualities as a gentleman, as well as one of the world’ s greatest cricketers. We sincerely trust that you may enjoy very many years of happiness and prosperity in which to gather additional laurels as an accomplished exponent of our splendid national game, and incidentally to win still more renown for New South Wales and Australia generally. —Believe us to remain, dear sir, yours faithfully, W . Cann (Mayor of Newcastle), C. H. Hannell, It. J. Bond, T. H. Hogue, T. Dover. A n active personality in Sydney cricket passed away at the end of October by the death of Mr. W. W. Stephen. One of the original trustees of the Associa­ tion cricket ground at Sydney, with the late Mr. Richard Driver and Mr1 Philip Sheridan, he gave up his trust some few years ago. The family has taken a prominent part in the adminis­ tration of cricket in Sydney, as his brother, the Acting Chief Justice, Mr. M. H. Stephen, is one of the present trustees of the ground, and his nephew, Mr. H. M. Stephen, represents Sydney University on the New South Wales Cricket Association. O n October 30th, at the Exhibition Ground, Brisbane, G. Arnold (61 not out) and E. G. Langford (84) put on 115 for the last wicket for Fortitude Valley v. Brisbane Grammar School. The information comes from a friend in Queensland, with the request that “ Mr. Feats, Facts and Figures” will duly note. M r. F r a n k C. D e n n is writes :—“ My friend, Mr. Harry Mansfield, and myself are cricket statisticians, and have nearly every cricket record of any kind down in our note books. In fact we had the two scores mentioned in Cricket for October 29th, namely 385 and 415, in our books four years ago. We saw part of the 385 made.” H it h e r t o the honour of victory has been sufficient inducement to make England and Australia do their level best to win the test matches, but it has seemed good to the Lord Mayor of Mel­ bourne to offer a trophy to be held by the country which is victorious in the test matches, and Mr. Warner has expressed his approval of the idea. This new move seems to be quite unnecessary and a complete mistake. Another suggestion for a trophy is in the air. This is made by C. B. Fry, who proposes that in addition to the county championship tk ere shall be another county champion­ ship competition on the lines of the Football Association Cup. Reference to this proposal will be found on another page. I t is announced from America that Mr. A. E. Rendle, the president of the Metropolitan Cricket League of New York, has inaugurated a movement for petitioning King Edward to confer a knighthood on Dr. W. G. Grace for his services in inculcating the sportsmanship of the game among British youths. T h e following remarks about a picture by Camille Pissarro, the famous French impressionist painter, who died not long ago, are from the Sketch : Sometimes Pissarro came to England, and I can remember him at work painting the picture of a cricket match on the balcony of a house near the ground at Chiswick. The picture is now in America, I believe, but I can recall the cool grass-field so like a lawn, the tall trees surrounding it, the white- flannelled figures that seemed to carry something of their vitality into the picture. I t has been decided to play the two matches next season at Hastings in one week, though this will cause a clashing with the concluding match of the Scar­ borough Festival—The M.C.C. Australian team v. Mr. Thornton’s team. The matches arranged for Hastings are : Monday, September 5th, etc., South of England v. South Africans; Thursday, September 8th, North v. South. The Indian team is to oppose the South African team at Lord’s in August. A t the annual meeting of the Lanca­ shire County C.C. A. C. Maclaren took occasion to make a speech, in which he stated that he had never made any money by his trips to Australia, and that if the M.C.C. were going to take it upon themselves to manage the cricket affairs of England without allowing the captains of the counties to give their opinion on matters, they were going to speak out and make themselves heard, and he for one was not going to remain silent. Maclaren also said that he was going to play for Lancashire again, and that he intended to live in the North of England and take up a business in person. A t the same meeting it was pointed out that the majority of the team last year had consisted of amateurs who had acquitted themselves splendidly, and that the county would probably be able to rely less on professionals than for­ merly. Despite the miserable weather of 1903 the profits on the season’s matches were satisfactory. The club now com­ prises 2,938 members, 731 lady subscribers and 78 life members. The committee expressed their sincere sympathy with Mr. S. H. Swire, the popular honorary secretary, in his severe and protracted illness, and expressed a hope that he might yet be spared to aid in shaping the destinies of Lancashire County cricket for many years to come. Mr. Swire was again elected honorary sec­ retary. M r . G eor g e H a in in g , Dumfries, one of the best-known cricketers in the South of Scotland, has died suddenly at the age of 37 years. He had been a prominent member of the Dumfries cricket eleven for the past sixteen years, and was a first- rate all-round cricketer. He was for some time captain of the club, and some years ago was also a well-known foot­ baller. C a p t a in W. L. F oste r , D.S.O., R.A., one of the famous family of Worcester­ shire cricketers, has been appointed Deputy-Assistant-Adjutant-General to Major-General Sir C harl es Knox on Salisbury Plain. He has seen active service in South Africa and Somaliland, and in the ordinary course of things would have gone to India. I t is stated that Bishop Welldon, who is accompanying the M.C.C. team in Australia, will write a book on the tour in conjunction with P. F. Warner. M r. A. G. S t e e l made some comments on the M.C.C. team at the annual dinner of the Great Northern Railway A.A. He said among other things that the tour would cost them about £14,000—of course they hoped to get it back—but if there was any profit it would not go into their own coffers but be devoted to cricket— the Cricketer’s Fund and the first-class counties to help them to tide over their recent troublous times. He could not prophesy the result of the Test games, but he believed they had got together a rare good side. It was not, it was said, fully representative, and they had undoubtedly some fine batsmen who were unable or unwilling to make the journey. E a r l y in the month C. B. Fry was the guest of the Author’s Club, and in the course of the evening he made a speech in which he said that he was partly a journalist and partly a cricketer. He had learnt that modesty was the best of all virtues in cricket, but when one was a journalist and was asked if he could write an article on cricket, he must say, : “ Yes, I can write the best cricket article |in the world.” It was the immodesty of the journalist fighting hard against the modesty of the cricketer. Both were acquired qualities. H. K. F o ster was re-elected captain and Lord Coventry president of the Worcestershire team at the annual meet­ ing of the county club. Naturally many suggestions were made at the meeting as to the best way of increasing the funds of the club, which are in a bad way, the debt now amounting to £2,694. I n his speech at the annual meeting of the Yorkshire County C.C., Lord Hawke said that they had not done so well as in the previous three years, and no doubt some of them were disappointed at the loss of the Championship, and the team was also disappointed. Still, the team felt that, notwithstanding the handicap, they were somewhat to blame. There was no doubt that the fielding was not the fielding of the old Championship team. It was a curious thing that the