Cricket 1904

346 CRICKET: A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. A ug . 18, 1904. and Mr. W . Carless, who is as usual the honorary secretary, is decidedly to be congratulated on being able to get together such strong elevens. The matches are South of England v. South Africans on September 5, 6 and 7, and North v. South on September 8, 9 and 10. T h e follow ing ten cricketers have promised to play for the South o f E n g­ land against, the South Africans : K . 8. Ranjitsinhji, Messrs. G. L. Jessop, W . H. B. Evans, S. H . Day, Hesketh-Prichard and M . W . Payne, with Braund, Hearne (J. T .), Seymour (Jas.), and Cox. The South team for the second match w ill include the above except that Mr. Hesketh-Prichard w ill be replaced by M r. B. J. T. Bosanquet and Seymour by Hayward. I t is hoped that Mr. C. B. F ry will be able to captain the South team in both matches, but Mr. Carless has not vet received a definite reply from him. Tue follow ing nine have accepted for tbe North in the second match : Lord Hawke, Messrs. R . H . Spooner and W . Brearley, with Hirst. Tyldesley, Rhodes, Lilley, K in g and Haigh. Mr. Carless hopes to complete the latter team with M r. A. C. Maclaren and Mr. A. O. Jones, who have both been invited to play. A n interesting sidelight is thrown on a bow ler’s vicissitudes b y Mr. A. E. Lawton in the D a ily M a il. Referring to the match between Derbyshire and the South Africans he says :— Warren bowled with very bad luck, having two catches missed. As he seemed a little disappointed, I advised him to hit the stumps. He thereupon hit Schwarz’s off stump hard with a very fast one, but the bails didn’t fall off. S e v e r a l famous old Kent cricketers have recently been playing for the well- known Band of Brothers. Am ong them are L ord Harris, who made 33 not out on Monday against The Mote at Maidstone, the Rev. W . Rashleigh, who has been scoring largely during the last week or two, Stanley Christopherson, the old fast bowler, and M . C. Kemp, the old O xford and Kent wicket-keeper. A t a meeting of the Yorkshire Com­ mittee on Monday at Leeds, it was decided that all the first-class counties should be met next year if possible, and also the M .C.C. and Cambridge Univer­ sity. A preliminary scheme for the home matches was arranged as follow s:— Sheffield—Lancashire, Notts, and Leicester­ shire. Leeds—Sussex, Surrey, and Worcestershire. B r a d fo r d - Middlesex, Gloucestershire, and Derbyshire. Hull—Kent and Hampshire. De » sbury—W arwickshire. Huddersfield —Essex. Harrogate—Somerset, Staffordshire, and Lancashire (2nd). Ripon—Surrey (2nd). M iddlesbrough— N orthum berland. Redcar—Durham. E ssex cricketers must have heen delighted at the success of Benham, their new bowler, on his first appearance in county cricket at Leeds, on Mondav, agiinst Yorkshire, for a man who can take five wickets for 111 in an innings of 379, may possibly be heard of again. Benham, who is an E-tsex man b y birth, was engaged by the Essex Committee last year, on account of his good perform­ ances for the Beckton C.C. He bowls fairly fast right-hand, and seems strong enough to be able to last. F o r Bedfordshire against Hertford­ shire R . W . Rice made 122 not out last week. This must be the well-known Gloucestershire player, who, although he could not get away until the end of tbe season, was for several years of great use to the county b y his steady play. F rom Port Elizabeth Mr. Lynden Webber writes “ Seeing that the South African team in England at present is attracting a good deal of attention, I thought that the averages of those mem­ bers that played in the Currie Cup tournament of last year m ight be of interest to your readers, and I no w enclose same. This was the last tournament played on the League system, as this year it was played on the knock-out system atdifferent centres. The 1903 tournament was played here at Port Elizabeth.” Below will be found these averages. The figures in the first column denote the placs held by the player in the list of Carrie Cup averages. BATTING AVERAGES. No. Times Most of not Total man inns. out. runs. inns. Aver. (1) Mitchell............... 6 ... 1 ... 271 ...102 ... 64 2 (3) Soooke ............... 6 ... 2... 139 ... 57 ... 3476 (4) Sinclair ............... « ... 0... 180 ..186 ... 30'00 (7) White .............. 5 .. 1... 96 ... 54*... 24'00 10) Tancred ....... 7... 1 ... 121 .. 40 .. 20-16 13) Shalders ........ 7... 1 . 96 ... 31 .. 16’00 (16) Schwarz ................ 6 ... 1 ... 79... 21*... 1580 (17) Shepstone ........ 5.. 0 ... 76 ... 36 ... 15'2 (23) Kotze .............. 6... 1 ... 47 ... 22 .. li’76 (82) Wallich ........ 8 ... 1... 15 ... 10*... 7 5 (65) Middleton ........ 2 ... 2... 0 ... 0*... — * Signifies not out. BOWLING AVERAGES. Ovrs. Mdns. Huns. Wkts. Aver. (1) Shepstone .........43 .. 17 ... 88 . . 13 . . 6-76 (2) Kotze ... ,. .. 1201 .. 3 1 .. 252 . . 34 . . 741 (5) bincJair .........95*5 .. 29 . 238 27 . . 881 (7) Snooke .. .........64-1 .. 15 .. 178 . . 15 . . 11*86 (11) Middleton .........36 .. 6 ... 88 . . 5 . . 17*6 (Less than 20 overs). (3) White ... ......... 9 . 0 ... 84 . . 3 . . 11*33 (8) Shalders ......... 6 • .. 0 ... 23 . . 0 . U p to Monday last J. Gunn alone had accomplished the feat of scoring a thousand runs and taking a hundred wickets this season, but several men were in such a position that their chances o f adding their names to his were con­ siderable. Thus Rhodes was at 98 wickets and 1,147 runs ; Hirst, 90 wickets and 1,836 runs; Hallows, 95 wickets and 973 runs; Haigti, 100 wickets and 830 runs; Bosanquet, 88 wickets and 1,191 runs ; Relf, 88 wickets and 9S9 runs; Braund, 101 wickets and 706 runs. On Tuesday, Rtiodts took his hundredth wicket, and thus took his place b y the side of J. Gunn. F o r the benefit of Frenchmen who visit England, a guide entitled “ Le Tonriste Frangais en Angleterre ” has been published. In case the tourist may like to visit a cricket ground, some attempt has been made to provide for his wants, and among many other interesting things he is told that “ grand champ dedans ” is the equivalent for “ long on,” and “ grand champ dehors ” for “ long off.” Cricket is described as one of the “ jeu x virils et me ne violents.” T h e “ M ixed S ch ool” at Hampstead, known as the “ K ing A lfred School Society,” is described in T. P .’s W eekly. O f cricket as played at the school our contemporary says :— After dinner, and a ten minutes’ lounge in the garden, during which the golden-haired prefect blasted my hopes by asserting that if she ever married (which was unlikely) she would marry a millionaire or a duke, we went off to cricket. Through the Hampstead bye- ways we tramped, green-clad all but I, disgracefully conventional, to the cricket field. There I discovered the first sex differentiation. The girls went out to field with the boys. But the first at the wickets was a four-foot girl—pads and all. How different it was when I and other brutal boys compelled sisters to bowl to us and spend dismal minutes and terrific seconds at long le g ! This is our punishment—-that we have educated a generation of women that cannot bat. One other distinction [ discovered. In all games, as in all instruction, the sexes share. Only from football are the girls excluded. That is the boy’s last ditch. E d it e d and compiled by J. Wynfred Gibbons, the Barbados Cricketers’ Annual for 1903-4 has just made its appearance. I t is in the tentn year of publication, and may be obtained at the G lobe Office, Victoria Street, Barbados. The price is a shilling. The Annual contains com ­ plete statistics of cricket in the Island last season. There seems to be a strong opinion in Barbados and Jamaica that something must be done if the game is still to flourish there, and several articles in the Annual refer to the decadence of the game. W it h reference to the above, Mr. P. A. Goodman, who was one of the most successful players in the West Indian team which visited England in 1900, writes a long and interesting article in the Annual. Am ong other things he sa ys:— Cricket in Barbados to-day and what it was in the near past! 0 , what a falling off is there ! O, for that erstwhile enthusiasm, that lost sporting spirit of the days gone by, that healthful and manly perseverance in the field, and that grim determination to do or die, which were once the sine qua non of our cricketers, both old and young! what en­ couragement have our fledging cricketers of to-day ? None, none ! they have to play to galleries unvisited, not only by men, but even the ladies have found—it seems—a greater diversion in watching the aquatic convulsions of water poloists. Our recollections take us back to the time when there were always to be found in our pavilion-galleries, or beneath the shade of some kindly overspreading tree, both sporting men and ladies too, who had