Cricket 1907

44 CRICKET : A WEEKLY RECORD OF THE GAME. M arch 28 , 1907. A r e c o r d for Rhodesia was recently established by S. Tummel, a young South Australian, who made a score of 226 for Bulowayo. A newspaper cele­ brated the event in verse, of which the following is a selection :— A chance or two he gave at first, But when he found his “ eye,” Oh, mighty Caesar, how he made The leather spheroid fly. A six, and three-and-thirty fours, He added to his score; W h y ! Jessop, Trumper, Fry or Jones Could scarce accomplish more. We commend the idea to those reformers who are always complaining of the great superiority of the bat over the ball. If persevered with, it should do much to discourage heavy scoiing. S ome time ago I mentioned that the Philadelphians proposed playing a short series of matches iu Bermuda. The visit has now passed into history, and, it is pleasing to learn, the spoils were not monopolized by our American friends. Hamilton and a Garrison team were defeated with ease, but the final match of the tour—against Bermuda—resulted in favour of the home side by 47 runs. Chief credit for this performance rests with T. St-G. Gilbert, who took fourteen wickets for 46 runs, including all ten in the second innings at a cost of only 17. In the two matches wherein he appeared against the Philadelphians he took twenty-six wickets at a cost of o 'l l runs each. F rom the scores of the three matches, which appear on another page, it will be seen that some of the members of the visiting side are not unacquainted with English playing-fields. King, Baily, and Morris will be readily recalled, whilst Dr. Heasman appeared on a few occasions for Sussex between 1885 and 1895. T h e Royal Gazette, of Bermuda, iu a leading article wishing the tourists bon voyage, observes :— The visit of a good team from the United States to our little colony has imparted an additional interest to the game which is fitly to he regarded as a heritage of men of English blood and lineage. Wherever, two or three of such are gathered together, he it at Dawson City or Victoria Falls, there will he found a cricket club in the midst of them. If they can but find enough straight ground on which to set up the stumps they will play cricket, and sometimes very good cricket. B y faith in their game they will remove mountains to get a good crease, they will fill up marshes, build club houses, and generally display in the pursuit of their beloved pastime an amount of energy which their detractors say might be more profitably employed in other direc­ tions. Mr. Kudyard Kipling, in verse not his happiest, has deplored the devotion which attracts the manhood of England to the cricket field rather than to the barrack square. Yet ‘ the flannelled fools,’ as the author of Barrack-Koom Ballads terms the devotees of the game, do also their part, and that by no means the least important, in the task of empire-building, and fitting the shoulders of England to sustain the weight of ‘ The White Man’s Burden.’ They encourage Englishmen to go abroad and see colonial life for themselves, they invite colonials to visit the mighty mother of nations, and learn something of the life and institutions from which their own have sprung. In like manner cricket has brought men to Bermuda who, but for cricket, would in all probability never have known anything of these sunny isles except the name, if even that. Bermuda has never come to the fore in the cricketing world, although the game has been played there for v»ry many years, but this is probably owing to the very rare chances which occur of visiting teams being met—the Islands are almost six hundred miles east of North Carolina, the nearest mainland. For several years the only matches played there were by the Garrison against Naval teams. The earliest re­ corded that I can trace is one between the Garrison (31 and 51) and the 1st Batt., 20th Regiment (66 and 17 for three wickets), on August 30th, 1844. Sixty years ago there were certainly two grounds in existence, the Garrison Ground on St. George’s Island, and “ the Ground adjoining the Admiralty House.” T h e r e was some heavy run-getting by Tamar at Launceston, on February 2nd, in tbeir pennant match with Social Circle. Harrison, in just under three hours, scored 204, whilst D. Smith, who made 45 in eleven successive scoring strokes, and obtained 40 off three con­ secutive overs delivered by Baia and Robson, reached his hundred in 35 minutes and made two 5’s and twenty 4’s in his innings of 106. Tamar’s total at the end of the day stood at 477 for six wickets. W h ilst playing for.Glebe v. Redfern, at Sydney, on February 2nd, A. Cotter made 99, the highest score of his career, in three-quarters of an hour. In partner­ ship with C. Kellaway (37 not oul) he added 102 for the eighth wicket in thirty- five minutes. His scores this season have been as follows :—For New South Wales, 34, 32,47, 0, 8, 34; for Glebe, 2, 30, 14, 86, .1, 99. S om ebo d y in Australasia has evidently been drawing the long b ow ; at least, the following from the “ Answers to Correspondents ” column in the Sydney Referee would suggest it :— T . H . (Masterton, N .Z.) asks: Did Clem H ill ever catch a swallow in one hand and a cricket ball in the other at the same time ? A n s.: W e have never heard of Clem Hill performing that miracle. I n the last five innings played by South Melbourne, the highest total has been 256 and the lowest 244, which is striking evidence of consistency. A. J. H o pk in s , whose successful batting I alluded to in last month’s Gossip, continues to score well. On February 9th, he made 229 for North Sydney v. Middle Harbour, going in first and carrying out his bat. On the same day Frank Iredale scored 100 not out for Gordon, and H. Stuckey 251 for East Melbourne v. North Melbourne, who won the toss but put their opponents in. At the end of the day, the East Melbourne total was 404 for seven wickets. Mr. J. S t u a r t -M ason wrote as follows to the Sydney Referee of February 6th : — An extraordinary thing occurred on Saturday, 2nd inst., on North Sydney Oval No. 2, and I think it worth mentioning. The match was N .S. Vets v. Yaralla. The batsman at the end at which I was standing umpire was bowled off stump, the bail flying hack towards the bowler, but the leg bail was then seen to be perfectly balanced on the middle stump. On going up to adjust the wickets the wicket-keeper called my attention to this extraordinary fact. I never saw such a thing before, but perhaps some of your many readers may be able to quote a parallel case. Such an occurrence is very rare, but by no means unique. J. J. K i l l y , the leading Australian wicket-keeper of the last decade, left Sydney at the end of February in order to settle in Melbourne. It is said that he still has a lot of cricket in hitq, but it may well be doubted whether he will again be seen in first class matches. T h e Annual Dinner of the Wanderers C.C. will take place at the Hotel Cecil on Thursday, April 18th, at 7.15 p.m. Mr. Clement Colman, the President of the Club, will be in the Chair. I n his recent novel, Poison Island, Mr. Quiller Couch gives the following des­ cription of Miss Lydia Bslcher prepared for the cricket fray :— She wore top-boots; but this is a trifle, for she habitually wore top-boots. Upon them and beneath the short skirt of a red- flannel petticoat she had indeed a pair of cricket guards. Above the red flannel petti­ coat came, frank and unashamed, an ample pair of stays ; above them, the front of a yet ample chemise and a yellow bandana hand­ kerchief tied in a sailor’s k n ot; above these a middle-aged face full of character and not without a touch of moustache on the upper lip ; an aquiline nose, grey eyes that apolo­ gised to nobody. . . . So stood Miss Belcher, with a cricket-bat under her arm. It was, I may add, almost a hundred years ago that Miss Belcher indulged in the game—a time long before “ cricket guards ” came into general use. “ S h o rt -S lip ” of the Sydmy Mail recently stood umpire in a ladies’ match on the Redfern Oval, and had some amusing experiences. He writes :— One of the Sydney team, when at the wickets, evidently thinking that perhaps the opposing side might have more in the field than it was entitled to, called out, '* Captain, how many men have you got in the field ? ” Lady cricketers, like many of the opposite sex, have a mortal dread of the hat pin. One of the Penrith bowlers had made her run to the crease, and was just about to deliver the ball, when Bhe noticed a pin half-way out of