Cricket 1908

“ Together joined in Cricket’s manly toil.”— Byron. N o 7 7 9 . v o l . xxvii. THURSDAY , MAY 21, 1908. o n e p e n n y . CKET : A W EEK LY RECORD OF T H E GAME. MAY 21, 1908. YORK SH IRE CRICKET. On the wet wickets which have been so general during the past fortnight York­ shire have done as well as even their greatest admirers could have wished, the soft pitches suiting their bowling to per­ fection without revealing the comparative weakness of their batting. Should the season be a wet one, it would not be in the least surprising if the county succeeded in carrying off the Champion­ ship, for, although the majority of their chief players are over thirty years of age, the fact remains that they are still a great side. Not once during the last four years have they occupied a lower position than second in the Championship table. It is probable that the average age of the side is a good deal in excess of that of any other first-class county team, for Hunter and Lord Hawke were born in i860, F. S. Jackson in 1870, Haigh and Hirst in 1871, Denton in 1874, anc* Rhodes in 1877, the average age of the seven working out at 39. That such a thing should be at a time when it is seldom one comes across a cricketer of forty playing regularly in first-class cricket must be considered altogether re­ markable. It was not until 1833 that Yorkshire placed a represent­ ative team in the field, but cricket had been played in the County long before. The earliest match of which we have any note took place at Stanwick, the seat or the Earl of Northumberland, near Richmond, in August, 1751, between the Duke of Cleveland’s XI. and the Earl of Northumberland’s, who won by a great many runs. The same year the Sheffield authorities engaged professional cricketers to amuse the populace, and so draw them from cock-fighting exhibitions, whilst in J757 the accounts of the Church Burgesses of Leeds contain this item:—“ Paid cricket players on Shrove - Tuesday, to entertain the populace and to prevent the infamous practice of throwing at cocks..............14s. 6d. ” In 1771 was played the first of a series of twenty-six matches between Sheffield and Nottingham which covered a period of ninety years, the last of the games taking place three years Photo by\ [.Hawkins & Co., Brighton. HAWKE. jjefore the formation of the Yorkshire County C.C. in 1863. Doubtless the game ]ivas pretty general throughout the County by the end of the eighteenth century but scores were seldom preserved in those early (lays, and consequently records of the do­ ings of many great players have been lost beyond recovery. But soon after the dawn of the nineteenth centurv recognised clubs —they were generally called societies— sprang up on all sides, one of the earliest to become famous being that at Ripon, which, like that at Sheffield, played matches with Nottingham. The Sheffield Wednesday C.C. was established in 1816, the Doncaster C.C. in 1817, the Bedale C.C. in 1828, and the Bradford C.C. in 1836. All these clubs pro­ duced fine players, but Shef­ field was the recognised home and head of the game in the County. Sparks and Fennex, two of the chief cricketers of their time, were engaged specially, to coach the young players of promise at Shef­ field, where it was, by-the- way. th^t Fuller Pilch learnt to handle bat and ball. Two of the earliest cricketers of note produced by Yorkshire, were Sheffield men —Tom Marsden and James Dearman. Both were fine single-wicket players and practically invincible in the North, those not a match for Pilch or Alfred Mynn. Mars­ den was a left-handed bats­ man and a very severe hitter. All his best feats had been performed by the time he was twenty-five years of age, though he continued to play in the leading matches of the day for some seasons after. His great feat was to score 227 in 1826 for Sheffield and Leicester v. Nottingham, who had Clarke and Barker to bowl for them. Although he has been dead sixty-five years his name is still remembered in Sheffield, where^ at any cricket gathering, it was for years after his death cus­ tomary to drink “ To the memory of the immortal Tom Marsden. ” It was not until 1833 that Yorkshire placed a representative team in the field; they then met Norfolk on the Hyde Park ground, at Sheffield, and won by 120 runs. In the following year out- and-home matches were played between the same sides, Norfolk—thanks to Pilch, who scored 87 not out and 73—winning at Norwich by 272 runs, but “ giving it up ” in the return, at Sheffield, thoiT^h their