Cricket 1906

CR ICKET : A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE SAME. AUG. 2, 1906. 8— —3- '/?£CO/Zl ■■ *4— 0®fl— m f c “ Together joined in Cricket’ s manly to il.”— Byron. wo. 729 . v o i. xxv. THURSDAY, AUG. 2, 1906. price ad. A CHAT ABOUT NOTTINGHAM­ SHIRE CRICKET. Although unable to boast so great a history as either Surrey or Kent, Notting­ hamshire can, nevertheless, claim a record of much antiquity. A? far back as August 26ih, 1771, Nottingham played Sheffield on the ground of the former, the arrangement eviiently being that each side hould have three innings. Sheffield scored 81, 62, and 105 for eight wickets, and Notting­ ham 76 and 112. The visitors, with two wickets in hand, were then “ only 60 a head ” and “ left the field,” presumably imagining it to be impossible to recover the lost ground. In the following June the same sides met at Sheffield, when we read that “ Ttie Notts men went in first, after a long journey, and had to play on wet ground, 14 notches only being their score. The Sheffield Club men had coal slack thrown down, and gained 70 notches, which gave them such a superiority as could not be recovered.” The Nottingham men, in fact, “ gave in,” as their opponents had done in the previous year. The next recorded match between the same sides did not take place until 1800, but there can be little doubt that several took place during the intervening twenty-eight years. In 1789, however, Nottingham twice played Leicester at Lough­ borough, winning the first match by an innings and 16 runs, but losing the return by a single notch. Two years later a team representing the Marylebone Club, which had been established iu 1787, coached down to Notting­ ham, and beat Twenty-two of the lace town by 21 runs, after they had defeated Eleven by ten ■wickets. Among the visitors were many gentlemen of title, including the Earl of Wincbilsea, Lord W. Bentinck, the Hon. E. Bligh, and the Hon. Colonel Lennox, who put up at the White Lion and the Blackamoor's * underhand bowler he ever saw, is found recorded. He was born in 1780, and could not, therefore, have been more than eleven jears of age at the time. Prom time to time we come across the score of a match between Nottingham and Sheffield, or Nottingham and Leices­ ter, but in 1817 we find tha Eleven of England beat Twenty- two of Nottingham, on the Forest Ground, by 30 runs in a match which was said to have been sold on loth sides! William Clarke appeared for the home team in this match, but the score-sheet does not credit him with any wickets. He was, how­ ever, but eighteen years of age, and had not yet begun to make a name for himself as a bowler. Nine years later—in 1826, to wit —the Nottingham men considered themselves strong enough to play single-handed against the com­ bined forces of Sheffield and Leicester, but they paid dearly for their temerity, being beaten by an innings and 203 runs. Tom Marsden, of Sheffield, immortalised himself by scoring 227 off his own bat, which was a very fine performance, seeing that his runs were obtained against such bowlers as Clarke and Barker. He was at the wickets for over eight hours, and struck a ball “ over a stone­ wall 45 ft. high, and which alighted at a distance of 130 yards from the wicket.” The proto­ type of Mr. 0. I. Thornton evidently. The well-known Trent Bridge ground was opened in 1838 by William Clarke, who married a widow, Mrs. Chapman, who kept the Trent Bridge Inn, and to that year the modern history of Nottinghamshire cricket may be said to date beck, although on a few occasions before that time genuine inter-county matches had taken place. Clarke—“ Old Clarke,” as he was irreverently called by younger players—is, perhaps, the most picturesque figure in the whole history of Nottinghamshire cricket. His Head,'and “ Staid in Nottingham a week> ; devoting every spare hour to cocking) milling, or some other kind of gentle­ manly amusement.” In the second of the matches against Marylebone the name of the famous Tom Warsop, whom ; William Clarke described as the best