Cricket 1907

C R I C K E T ! A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. J U L Y 11 , 1 9 0 7 . e i S H | | I I a ! 1 i ^ y } \ W w v W ? J r - ^ I A l l “ Together joined in Cricket’s manly to il.” — Byron. n o . 756 . v o l . xxvi. THURSDAY, JU L Y 11, 1907. p r i c e aa. THE ETON AND HARROW CAPTAINS. H. S. HATFEILD. (Photo by Hills Saunders, Eton). ETON v. HARROW . P E E P I N T O T H E P A S T . M. C. BIRD. (Photo by Hills <f: Saunders , Hai'roic). A t Lord’s, to-morrow, the eighty- second recorded match between Eton arid Harrow will commence. Of the eighty- one which have already taken place, Eton have won thirty-one, Harrow thirty-three, and seventeen have been left unfinished. This is the generally accepted record, but Etonians do not count the match in 1857, aa being for players under twenty years of age, nor Harrovians that of 1805, on the ground that several of the players were not members of either eleven: the former match has been rejected, but not that of 1805. The first recorded meeting of the two schools was at Lord’s in 1805, but Mr. Haygarth, in Scores and Biographies, states that a few matches between the sides had been played even earlier, and that the scores had been lost. The game was certainly indulged in at Eton far back in the eighteenth century. Horace Walpole was sent to the College in 1726, and ten years later, in a letter to George Montague, wrote :— “ I can’t say I am sorry I was never a schoolboy; an ex­ pedition against bargemen or a match at cricket may be very pretty things to reccllect; but, thank my stars, I can remember things that are very near as pretty.” One of Walpole’s companions at Eton was the Earl of Carlisle, who, in later years wrote to George Selwyn, even from Mannheim, that he was up playing cricket before Selwyn was out of bed. The game was played extensively at Eton before 1750, and that the College pro­ duced some good players is evident from the fact that in 1751 Eton College Past and Present were strong enough to play single-handed against the Gentlemen of England in three matches for £1,500, the winning side in two games out of three to be entitled to the stakes. The rubber