Cricket 1905

J u n e 8, 1905. CRICKET: A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME- 185 A f t e r being away in India for three years, Captain J. G. Greig returned to England at the end of May, and, with very little practice, played for Hampshire against Worcestershire on the first of June. He went in first in both innings, and made 115 and 130, a remarkable feat for a man who had not taken part in a first-class match for so long. It will be remembered that Captain Greig played many brilliant innings for Hampshire when he previously play ed for the county, including 249 not out for Hampshire against Lancashire, at Liverpool, in 1901. T he names of the men who have played two separate innings of 100 in a first-class match are now as follows :— C. B. Fry (4), Dr. W. G. Grace and E. E. Foster (3), B. J. T. Bosanquet (2), G. Brann, A. E. Stoddart, W. Storer, K. S. Ranjitsinhji, J. T. Tyldesley (2), A. C. Maclaren, Colonel B. M. Poore, W. L. Foster, G. L. Jessop, H . B. Chin­ nery, C. McGahey, H. Carpenter, Arthur Shrewsbury, Victor Trumper, P. Perrin, E. Arnold, A. O. Jones, J. Seymour (Kent), J. H. King (Leicestershire), and T. Hayward. All these are players of modem times, except Arthur Shrewsbury and W. G. Grace, and Shrewsbury did not accomplish the feat until 1902, when he was 47 years old. F rom the above list it will be seen that most of the best known cricketers of the resent day have accomplished the feat, ut there are still a few left who are behind the times, including all the Aus­ tralians except Trumper, as well as F . S. Jackson, Hirst, W. G. Quaife, Iremonger, P. F. Warner and L. C. H. Palairet. A lth o u g h G. L. Jessop can hardly be said to have been a failure this year with the bat, he has certainly not been in his usual form, and his record up to the present is as follows :—28, 1 and 60, 38, 14 and 38 not out, 10 and 0, 0, 1 and 25 ; total, 215 for eleven innings. But his fielding has been better than ever, if that is possible, and he would be worth playing in the test matches for his fielding alone. There are very few short runs when the ball goes anywhere near him, and he saves in the field more than most men make with the bat. O n Thursday last week Hampshire scored 423 against Worcestershire, and yet at one period of their innings five wickets fell in half-an-hour for 15 runs. On the following day Derbyshire brought their total to 224 for two wickets against Sussex, and at lunch time their score was 285, with five men out. The last five wickets then fell for 12 runs. G. E. W in te r , the old Cambridge Blue, scored 202 for Incogniti on June 1st in the second innings against Trinity College, Cambridge. He went in first and was last out. In the first innings the Incogniti only made 86 against 273 by their opponents. In the second innings they made 339. T h e match at the Oval last Thursday and Friday between the second elevens of Surrey and Lancashire had amost exciting ending. Surrey had to make 218 to win in a little less than three hours, and thanks to brisk cricket by W. Y. Butcher, Moulder and Goatly, seemed likely to make the runs. But gradually the for­ tunes of the game changed, and at last Surrey had to play very hard indeed to avoid defeat. They succeeded in bringing about a drawn game when the last two men, R. M. Bell and Stedman, were at the wickets. ------ F rom the Perth Morning Herald :— “ A very peculiar, and at the same time incorrect, decision was given by one of the umpires in the match between East and West Perth, played on February 25th. While Randell was .batting the players tried for a short run. The ball was returned fast to the wicket; it hit Randell's bat, and thrse overthrows were run. The over­ throws were disallowed on the ground that the batsman had wilfally obstructed the field. There is no provision in the rules of the game for such a course being adopted. Rule 30 says : ‘ Either batsman is out if he wilfully obstructs any fieldsman.’ I under­ stand that the West Perth captain did not claim the full penalty, but the position is that if he do not claim the wicket there is no alternative. It would have been a very interesting position had West Perth won by only two or three ruDs.” H a r r y T r o tt, the old Australian player, heads the bitting and bowling averages for Bendigo (Melbourne). In battiog he has an average of 70 5 for nine completed innings, and in bowling he took 42 wickets for 393 runs, average 9-3. ------ T he worm has turned at last, and a persecuted motorist, possibly wearied with being told that the public has as much a right to the road as he, has written to a contemporary complaining of the scandalous way in which cricket is played in the public highways. It appears that his motor car had actually to be stopped—think of i t !—because some children were playing cricket right in the middle of the public highway, with a sugar box for a wicket. The suffer­ ings of the motorist did not end here, and to crown his miseries his chauffeur had to descend and remove the box before the car could proceed. Two morelindividual innings of over two hundred have baen played since last Thursday, viz., 222 by J. F. Byrne, for Warwickshire v. Lancashire, and 233 by C. B. Fry for Sussex against Notts. This brings the total of two hundred this season to ten. It may be said that last year there were nineteen individual innings of over two hundred. B y rn e ’s 222 is his highest score in first-class cricket. His previous record was 110 for Warwickshire against Wor­ cestershire at Birmingham in 1901. The score of 333 for tbe first wicket made by Byrne and Kinneir in the match last week against Lancashire is a record for Warwickshire. The previous record was 288 by W. H. Bainbridge and W. G. Quaife against Hampshire at Southamp­ ton in 1897. H e r e is a vivid description, from a private letter, of the position at the end of the test match at Nottingham last week: “ Such a finish! Darkness coming o n ; two wickets to fa ll; and rain immi­ nent. And it came a quarter of an hour after the game was over! Such a game! ” L. G. C o lb e ck , who made such a promising dehut for Cambridge on Thurs­ day last against the Australians, scoring 52 not out and playing excellent cricket on a difficult pitch, is an old Marlburian. He was a Freshman at Cambridge last year, and would have played in the Freshmen’s match if he had not been ill, for he had a fairly good school reputa­ tion. He played for Marlborough in 1902 and 1903, but never made a hundred for the school, his highest score being 78 in 1903. This year he played in the Seniors’ match, scoring 21 and 2 not out. In the Next Sixteen against the Twelve he made 23 and 15, and was then not unnaturally dropped, until the inability of several Cambridge men to play against the Australians gave him his chance. A man who can make 52 not out on a difficult wicket against the Australians may be sure of a thorough trial. C. B. F r y and Hirst had both suffi­ ciently recovered from their injuries to be able to play for their counties at the end of last week. Hirst even bowled a few overs, but by no means at his usual pace. Trumper has not yet been able to take his place again in the Australian team, and it is to be feared that he will not be able to exert himself to the fullest extent for some time to come. F o r some years there has been a dif­ ference of opinion between the Liverpool police and Frank Sugg, the well-known old Lancashire cricketer, who has an outfitting establishment in Lord Street, Liverpool, a fine, wide road. Mr. Sugg has been in the habit of exhibiting the scores of some of the great cricket matches, and several times the police have issued a summons against him on the ground that the large crowds which are attracted interrupt the traffic. The results of the legal proceedings have varied, and the enterprising proprietor has sometimes been held up as a public benefactor, and at others as a disturber of the peace. This year, after the test match, there was the usual summons. It was dismissed, but the magistrate agreed to state a case for appeal. Here the matter ends at present. It may be pointed out that all the principal news­ paper offices in Australia have for years given an exact reproduction of the scor­ ing board as it appears from run to run in the great matches, and if the police have ever interfered with this arrange­ ment they gave it up long ago. In the match between Monmouthshire and Glamorganshire at Cardiff, the